6 ms·

Show HN: My weekend project, written on Friday and Today

79 points by mootothemax 16y ago

mootothemax 16y ago
I wrote this tool after seeing a number of beginner Facebook developers complaining about how difficult it is to set up test users. The plan is to keep on adding more helper tasks (e.g. banning users from apps - and I'm open to other ideas!) as time goes on. Right now, it asks for the Offline Access permission purely because managing access token expiry dates is a low priority - I want to see if anyone will use it first :) Once a few people do, I'll sit down and write the session management properly :)
jayzee 16y ago
Looks great, especially for a weekend's work. But I think that is a classical example of going too far with the minimum viable product concept. I would never let you have offline access. I think that quite a few others might not as well. So you might have a great idea but without that feature you might not have a mvp and your trial run will give you misleading data.
- mootothemax 16y ago
  Thanks, and you have a good point about offline access; I'm honestly not sure about how big a gamble this is. The thing is, I've noticed that whilst a lot of people who work in IT are completely against the idea (myself included, to be perfectly honest), it seems that there are also lots of people who plainly - for want of a better term - don't give a damn. My rough plan is to give it a week, and if I don't get even a couple of sign ins by then, spend the weekend sorting out session fun. If you like, I can reply to your comment with an update? :)
mattmanser 16y ago
Looks really good, nice work. Btw, typo in point 1 on home page, launced = launched. Also hovering over the feature set links in /public/tour looks like you've left the default title tags on them.
- mootothemax 16y ago
  Fantastic, thanks for the typo catches - now fixed :)
tszming 16y ago
Error? Database_Exception [ 0 ]: [1062] Duplicate entry '' for key 'uniq_email' ( INSERT INTO `users` (`username`, `password`) VALUES ('xxx', 'yyy') )
- mootothemax 16y ago
  Damn, that's two bugs - one that the production site's showing real errors, and that there's a db bug. I think I've now fixed this - can you try again? :) Oh, and thanks for letting me know :)
  - tszming 16y ago
    Thanks, now working.
- amerine 16y ago
  Plaintext password?
  - daniel1980fl 16y ago
    not necessary. sql quoted does not prove it.
    - mootothemax 16y ago
      No passwords stored at all - I've hacked my Kohana install for the stake of convenience, and all stored passwords are the MD5 of the user's facebook id, i.e. basically meaningless.
MichaelStubbs 16y ago
My suggestion for the homepage would be to make the screenshots expandable/zoomable. They're so small I can't really make any detail out apart from a few pieces of bolded text. Moving on from that, I'd be willing to give this a try but currently I'm getting a MySQL error after trying to login with my Facebook account. "Database_Exception [ 0 ]: [1062] Duplicate entry '' for key 'uniq_email' ( INSERT INTO `users` (`username`, `password`) VALUES ('<removed for privacy's sake>', '<removed for privacy's sake>') )"
- mootothemax 16y ago
  Ooh, great suggestion about the screenshots, I'll see what I can do about that with the time I have left today :) Can you try logging in again? I think that I've fixed that bug now - although need to generate some more test users to make sure ;)
  - MichaelStubbs 16y ago
    Just tried again and I am able to login now. Will be testing this shortly!
    - mootothemax 16y ago
      Brilliant, and thanks again - I really appreciate having someone that isn't me testing it :)
Homunculiheaded 16y ago
I have what feels like a stupid question: Most of the weekend projects I see here on HN look surprisingly polished, this one included. Any quick projects I make just don't have that polished look and feel. Is it just a matter of have enough design experience that you can just make it happen, are you using templates or a library of some sort? Any advice on how to get my projects to look nicer faster would be greatly appreciated!
- mootothemax 16y ago
  Template from ThemeForest are what I use to add some polish; plenty of people will criticise for using themes, but in my opinion, and coming from someone with zero design skills, they get you in a better place right from the start :) So, most of my sites are written using Kohana and a couple of themes from ThemeForest - one for the sales side, and one for the admin area itself. Edit: and really, that's nowhere near to being a stupid question - I only found out about options like TF when a friend told me a few months ago :)
  - gabriele 16y ago
    just curious, did you use the Facebook Oauth 2 Graph API for Kohana 3? I'm the author. [http://forum.kohanaframework.org/discussion/5772/ http://forum.kohanaframework.org/discussion/5772/]
    - mootothemax 16y ago
      I didn't. I looked through the available modules and whilst they looked decent for a long-term project, for my needs of knocking something short-sighted out pretty quickly, I found writing my own code a bit less demanding.
  - vs2 16y ago
    I agree, I can do the programming but not the design and themeforest has a selection of excellent themes. Used it on one called http://www.venturesocially.com http://www.venturesocially.com
  - 16y ago
perssontm 16y ago
Whatever eases the massive pain and frustration involved in developing things for facebook, is imho a good thing.
jwomers 16y ago
Your two days worth is looking like a great site! Well done! :) Two points: On the tour page, there are two "tour" headers right under each other, which is strange. I recommend the tour bar in the header section just leaving the tour header in the main section. Secondly, on homepage, under "why do you ask for offline access" typo anyony=>anyone. Also, no-body really reads the lots of text in footers (or anywhere really!) so if you have something important to say (like why you want offline access), somewhere physically closer to the facebook login step would make more sense. And lastly, who did you design? If you did it in just 2 days, that's amazing, well done!
- jwomers 16y ago
  Oh, i see my design question has just been answered. There's definitely nothing wrong with using templates if they look that good. Well done!
- mootothemax 16y ago
  Thanks for the typo catch, and point about the header, I'll get started on fixing these :) And lastly, who did you design? I cheated and used a couple of templates from ThemeForest :)
LiveTheDream 16y ago
I'm not clear on what this gives me that I can't already do. Is it somehow easier to preview dialogs or create test users?
d0m 16y ago
Quote: "What is FasterDev? This is the initial release of FasterDev, written by Thomas Buck, a developer originally from London, UK. It was only launched on February 20th 2011, and if you have any questions or comments, please ..." That doesn't really answer the question.
- mootothemax 16y ago
  Thanks, you're right - really need to tighten up the copy :)
dstorrs 16y ago
"For a limited time during this soft launch, we're making our amazing service available for $19.99 per year. This offer won't last forever, so get in early." This is good, but it would work better if I knew what the price would eventually be and when it would change. Right now, I'm sitting here saying "well, maybe I don't need this right now, but I might in a few weeks. If the price is going to go from $20 to $25, I don't care about getting in now. If the price is going from $20 to $200, I might throw the money at it right now just to lock it in. Alternatively, at least tell me when the price change will happen.
Elepsis 16y ago
That's incredibly polished for a weekend project. That said, I'm quite confused by the choice of icons on the right of the "Tour" page. The calendar doesn't scream "Test Users" to me, nor do any of the other icons seem to be tied to what they're meant to be describing.
- mootothemax 16y ago
  Thanks! Because it's a weekend project, I basically threw together the icons as a last-minute "text goes here" kinda thing. I'm hoping to sort this out later on this week :)

79 points by mootothemax 16y ago

I wrote this tool after seeing a number of beginner Facebook developers complaining about how difficult it is to set up test users. The plan is to keep on adding more helper tasks (e.g. banning users from apps - and I'm open to other ideas!) as time goes on. Right now, it asks for the Offline Access permission purely because managing access token expiry dates is a low priority - I want to see if anyone will use it first :) Once a few people do, I'll sit down and write the session management properly :)

jayzee 16y ago

Looks great, especially for a weekend's work. But I think that is a classical example of going too far with the minimum viable product concept. I would never let you have offline access. I think that quite a few others might not as well. So you might have a great idea but without that feature you might not have a mvp and your trial run will give you misleading data.

mootothemax 16y ago
Thanks, and you have a good point about offline access; I'm honestly not sure about how big a gamble this is. The thing is, I've noticed that whilst a lot of people who work in IT are completely against the idea (myself included, to be perfectly honest), it seems that there are also lots of people who plainly - for want of a better term - don't give a damn. My rough plan is to give it a week, and if I don't get even a couple of sign ins by then, spend the weekend sorting out session fun. If you like, I can reply to your comment with an update? :)

mattmanser 16y ago

Looks really good, nice work. Btw, typo in point 1 on home page, launced = launched. Also hovering over the feature set links in /public/tour looks like you've left the default title tags on them.

mootothemax 16y ago
Fantastic, thanks for the typo catches - now fixed :)

tszming 16y ago

Error? Database_Exception [ 0 ]: [1062] Duplicate entry '' for key 'uniq_email' ( INSERT INTO `users` (`username`, `password`) VALUES ('xxx', 'yyy') )

mootothemax 16y ago
Damn, that's two bugs - one that the production site's showing real errors, and that there's a db bug. I think I've now fixed this - can you try again? :) Oh, and thanks for letting me know :)
- tszming 16y ago
  Thanks, now working.
amerine 16y ago
Plaintext password?
- daniel1980fl 16y ago
  not necessary. sql quoted does not prove it.
  - mootothemax 16y ago
    No passwords stored at all - I've hacked my Kohana install for the stake of convenience, and all stored passwords are the MD5 of the user's facebook id, i.e. basically meaningless.

MichaelStubbs 16y ago

My suggestion for the homepage would be to make the screenshots expandable/zoomable. They're so small I can't really make any detail out apart from a few pieces of bolded text. Moving on from that, I'd be willing to give this a try but currently I'm getting a MySQL error after trying to login with my Facebook account. "Database_Exception [ 0 ]: [1062] Duplicate entry '' for key 'uniq_email' ( INSERT INTO `users` (`username`, `password`) VALUES ('<removed for privacy's sake>', '<removed for privacy's sake>') )"

mootothemax 16y ago
Ooh, great suggestion about the screenshots, I'll see what I can do about that with the time I have left today :) Can you try logging in again? I think that I've fixed that bug now - although need to generate some more test users to make sure ;)
- MichaelStubbs 16y ago
  Just tried again and I am able to login now. Will be testing this shortly!
  - mootothemax 16y ago
    Brilliant, and thanks again - I really appreciate having someone that isn't me testing it :)

Homunculiheaded 16y ago

I have what feels like a stupid question: Most of the weekend projects I see here on HN look surprisingly polished, this one included. Any quick projects I make just don't have that polished look and feel. Is it just a matter of have enough design experience that you can just make it happen, are you using templates or a library of some sort? Any advice on how to get my projects to look nicer faster would be greatly appreciated!

mootothemax 16y ago
Template from ThemeForest are what I use to add some polish; plenty of people will criticise for using themes, but in my opinion, and coming from someone with zero design skills, they get you in a better place right from the start :) So, most of my sites are written using Kohana and a couple of themes from ThemeForest - one for the sales side, and one for the admin area itself. Edit: and really, that's nowhere near to being a stupid question - I only found out about options like TF when a friend told me a few months ago :)
- gabriele 16y ago
  just curious, did you use the Facebook Oauth 2 Graph API for Kohana 3? I'm the author. [http://forum.kohanaframework.org/discussion/5772/ http://forum.kohanaframework.org/discussion/5772/]
  - mootothemax 16y ago
    I didn't. I looked through the available modules and whilst they looked decent for a long-term project, for my needs of knocking something short-sighted out pretty quickly, I found writing my own code a bit less demanding.
- vs2 16y ago
  I agree, I can do the programming but not the design and themeforest has a selection of excellent themes. Used it on one called http://www.venturesocially.com http://www.venturesocially.com
- 16y ago

perssontm 16y ago

Whatever eases the massive pain and frustration involved in developing things for facebook, is imho a good thing.

jwomers 16y ago

Your two days worth is looking like a great site! Well done! :) Two points: On the tour page, there are two "tour" headers right under each other, which is strange. I recommend the tour bar in the header section just leaving the tour header in the main section. Secondly, on homepage, under "why do you ask for offline access" typo anyony=>anyone. Also, no-body really reads the lots of text in footers (or anywhere really!) so if you have something important to say (like why you want offline access), somewhere physically closer to the facebook login step would make more sense. And lastly, who did you design? If you did it in just 2 days, that's amazing, well done!

jwomers 16y ago
Oh, i see my design question has just been answered. There's definitely nothing wrong with using templates if they look that good. Well done!
mootothemax 16y ago
Thanks for the typo catch, and point about the header, I'll get started on fixing these :) And lastly, who did you design? I cheated and used a couple of templates from ThemeForest :)

LiveTheDream 16y ago

I'm not clear on what this gives me that I can't already do. Is it somehow easier to preview dialogs or create test users?

d0m 16y ago

Quote: "What is FasterDev? This is the initial release of FasterDev, written by Thomas Buck, a developer originally from London, UK. It was only launched on February 20th 2011, and if you have any questions or comments, please ..." That doesn't really answer the question.

mootothemax 16y ago
Thanks, you're right - really need to tighten up the copy :)

dstorrs 16y ago

"For a limited time during this soft launch, we're making our amazing service available for $19.99 per year. This offer won't last forever, so get in early." This is good, but it would work better if I knew what the price would eventually be and when it would change. Right now, I'm sitting here saying "well, maybe I don't need this right now, but I might in a few weeks. If the price is going to go from $20 to $25, I don't care about getting in now. If the price is going from $20 to $200, I might throw the money at it right now just to lock it in. Alternatively, at least tell me when the price change will happen.

Elepsis 16y ago

That's incredibly polished for a weekend project. That said, I'm quite confused by the choice of icons on the right of the "Tour" page. The calendar doesn't scream "Test Users" to me, nor do any of the other icons seem to be tied to what they're meant to be describing.

mootothemax 16y ago
Thanks! Because it's a weekend project, I basically threw together the icons as a last-minute "text goes here" kinda thing. I'm hoping to sort this out later on this week :)