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Show HN: I redesigned my landing page to be as unprofessional as possible
- drcursor 5y agoGot to admit a "502 Bad Gateway" is not the most professional thing ever ;)
- okozzie 5y agoHaha! It's back up now :)
- animal_spirits 5y agoDown again! Very unprofessional. Well done
- stevebmark 5y agoNo it's not
- okozzie 5y agoIt's back up haha. It's been down twice so far, but only 1 minute downtime for each
- epse 5y agoAnd down again
- mcharezinski 5y agoThe same. I think it is technically correct and I initially thought that 502 error is intentional.
- xPaw 5y agoIt's currently returning 502 Bad Gateway, so the title is very fitting.
- samcgraw 5y agoIronically this page is experiencing HN's hug of death and 502ing - so still working as expected?
- floatingatoll 5y agoOkay, so, like. For the record. BUILDING and CLOUD are genius. I'm not even upset at what you've done with that. I wish more sites took themselves so blatantly as this one. EDIT: omfg SUN
- okozzie 5y agoHaha, thank you! :)
- hinkley 5y agoYour Clouds are not rendered in Comic Sans. Completely unreadable.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- splch 5y agowhy do i want this aesthetic for my own site? oh god
- okozzie 5y agoWhy not!
- ggm 5y agonot enough green, or amiga-style florid colour changes. where's the dancing cat? otherwise, bis!
- tombert 5y agoI'm really disappointed that there's no midi of the X-Files theme playing the background. For everything I built that never leaves my home network, I always use the HTML `marquee` tag somewhere, simply because I think it's funny and it's bizarrely still supported.
- one_off_comment 5y agoI love it. Honestly, it could be less professional.
- kixiQu 5y agoI love this! A large appeal of this kind of thing is unlocking possibilities outside of the Generic Website box, so making that dead obvious to people is a very straightforward demonstration of value.
- platz 5y ago"unprofessional" is the wrong word. It's simply punk/brutalist. You can find a similar aesthetic in many art spaces: https://rhizome.org/events/ https://rhizome.org/events/ https://indigo.ooo/en/ https://indigo.ooo/en/ https://2019.indigo.ooo/en/ https://2019.indigo.ooo/en/ https://2017.indigo.ooo/en/ https://2017.indigo.ooo/en/
- kgwxd 5y agohttps://neocities.org https://neocities.org is a fun one.
- fleaaaa 5y agoI agree with sentiment, it"s slightly sophiscated and good haha!
- marginalia_nu 5y agohttps://dreamcult.xyz/ https://dreamcult.xyz/ I like this one
- mherdeg 5y agousepath.com (YC S19) kinda has this feel too, I think I get it.
- jessriedel 5y agoPunk is explicitly unprofessional. > "The punk ethos is primarily made up of beliefs such as non-conformity, anti-authoritarianism, anti-corporatism, a do-it-yourself ethic, anti-consumerist, anti-corporate greed, direct action and not "selling out"." That punk is treated as a serious artistic subject does not conflict with that. There's lots of other unprofessional subjects and motifs in art spaces, e.g., nudity.
- bikeshaving 5y agoI hate to ask, but are you fun at parties?
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- protomyth 5y agoYou are missing the "Under Construction" and flame gifs. To me, those defined the early era. Those were truly the mark of unprofessionalism.
- Scarblac 5y agoAlso the guest book and the Web ring.
- beaconstudios 5y agoand the guestbook has to trigger at least 5 XSS alertboxes for it to be the authentic experience. and the visitor counter.
- throwaway984393 5y ago"This page has been visited 999999 times"
- johnisgood 5y agoGod, this thread is a blast from the past. I love it! Please do not forget the circling text or clock around the cursor.
- webmaven 5y agoAnd some stuff should be blinking. Also, you must choose between a spinning logo or a flaming logo. And the background should be a tiled animated GIF. Gotta keep it subtle. I'm put in mind of an early client of mine that absolutely refused to take any of my advice concerning design: https://web.archive.org/web/20011127214330/http://www.lvweddings.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20011127214330/http://www.lvwedd...
- blutack 5y agoSee also: https://lingscars.com/ https://lingscars.com/ Yes, it's a real car leasing company. Desktop version is best but mobile is still great.
- belter 5y agoWe take it up a notch... http://www.subgenius.com/newdevivals.html http://www.subgenius.com/newdevivals.html "Become an Ordained Minister" http://www.subgenius.com/index.htm http://www.subgenius.com/index.htm
- npteljes 5y agoOne I found that's similar is http://9front.org/ http://9front.org/. I scratched my head in disbelief because I was looking for an operating system, and the website looked like I arrived at a kooky conteo place.
- sabujp 5y agoit's gross, i love it
- simonswords82 5y agoI've leased a car from Ling's, don't be fooled by the website. Their back office systems are fantastic and optimise the paperwork process perfectly. Great customer service too - she runs an excellent business. She was on UK dragon's den too! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc1ktZRZ5ZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc1ktZRZ5ZM
- isoprophlex 5y agoThis must be the global optimum for car site freshness, super amazing. https://m.lingscars.com/ghc https://m.lingscars.com/ghc "god hates cars" You can't make this shit up. I hope they can keep this up forever.
- cosmodisk 5y agoIt's a multimillion pound business- she's been around for ages.
- davio 5y agoI was expecting a cookie consent form... and then a prompt to subscribe to your email newsletter... and then a modal box offering 15% off UX is probably in the top half of commercial sites
- bdcravens 5y agoDon't forget scroll-jacking and loading in 5MB of framework files
- kreeben 5y agoYeah this has nothing on: "Hey 50.000 people are looking to book this exact room at this exact moment". So unannoying, this site, that it's not even funny.
- MrOxiMoron 5y agoinstall to your home screen, install the app
- commandlinefan 5y agoActually those things are all super "professional", they just shouldn't be...
- vmception 5y agoAnd a notifications permission from your browser or directly from the Operating System Followed by the same for location access And then finding out I have to consider turning off ad block to consider consuming the content And then turning it off and refreshing the page just to find it was paywalled all along, just under the fold!
- hermitdev 5y agoIt also renders fine (and quickly) with no Javascript. I'm going to guess it's probably also friendly on the data. It's (mostly) legible, despite the color scheme. There's no autoplaying video or audio that assaults my senses. I think we could use more design like this on the web, but, you know, with interesting stuff to read.
- 5y ago
- mcdonje 5y agothe googly eyes are chef's kiss
- jaredsohn 5y agoThey should be more toward the middle of the page so they look down more often. Maybe are there because of 'follow on Twitter' and that was best on the bottom of the page.
- okozzie 5y agoHey guys, straw.page is a drag and drop website builder that works on mobile. I just redesigned the landing page, in preparation for a huge update coming next week (blogging!) Twitter for updates: https://twitter.com/okozzie_/status/1467951581408727047 https://twitter.com/okozzie_/status/1467951581408727047
- adamqureshi 5y agocan you make me a landing page? :-)
- oreilles 5y agoSome time ago this was showcased on hn too: https://build.mmm.page/ https://build.mmm.page/ It too is a dnd website builder that prone fun and brutalist design and whole tld also is .page. Are these two projects related ?
- stunt 5y ago"Straw.Page lets you create unique websites straight from your phone. A drag and drop website builder that works on mobile." It clearly tells me what the product does unlike many landing pages these days. I often have to read docs to understand what a product does because someone decided to put too much effort to make it look unique.
- tgtweak 5y agoI think we need to bring back cursor-tracking googley-eyes. No doubt it would increase average time on page.
- cblconfederate 5y agoHow unprofessional is it? Can you guarantee that i will lose customers if i use it? How many will i lose? How am i supposed to trust this service, it's so doesnt look very professional
- pseudolus 5y agoIt ain't unprofessional until there's blinking text.
- rurban 5y agoNot in Asia. They do love colors. You should switch more font sizes and mix in bold and italic
- bg0 5y agoYou need the classic geocities trailing mouse text
- ecubed 5y agoNeeds a guestbook at the bottom of the page
- hereforphone 5y agoNeeds animated gif of bill gates growing horns
- mesozoic 5y agoNeeds more "Under Construction" Man with shovel sign
- beaconstudios 5y agoI love the textual replacement for the dull/predictable vector graphics header/footer.
- innocentoldguy 5y agoI like your website for the same reason I use HipsterDB for all my database needs: https://github.com/robmerrell/hipsterdb https://github.com/robmerrell/hipsterdb From their Github README.md: "hipsterDB is a key/value store that only returns data as long as it isn't mainstream. The more often that you access a key the more mainstream it becomes. After data has gone mainstream you will have to wait for it to go out of style before using it again."
- hereforphone 5y agoYou are a true artist
- okozzie 5y agoWhat a compliment haha, thank you! :)
- hereforphone 5y ago> 420 page views > 5 somaliland Guessing the stats are fabricated
- okozzie 5y agoJust to be clear, those aren't stats for my site (or any site) haha. Premium users get analytics on their website - that was just supposed to highlight the analytics feature. I'll try to make it more clear that they aren't real stats (it's a demonstration of the feature)
- anm89 5y agoThe scrolling 'clouds' got me right away. Awesome.
- lbj 5y agoWhat's the conversion rate on that baby?
- zachkatz 5y agoI really love this! Any plans to make it a bit easier to use on desktop? I'd love to build my personal website on this, just like GeoCities back in the day.
- aledalgrande 5y agomissing vital features... like I can still read the text in Firefox
- Dig1t 5y agoOh man, this is so awesome. Great job!
- DaveSchmindel 5y agoAh, so that's what a "Human" looks like.
- jareklupinski 5y agoi love it you're hired :P on a serious note, imo knowing exactly how to subvert a design or pattern shows not just mastery of the topic, but also flexiblity and when _not_ to use the thing
- commandlinefan 5y agoWow, that is horrible. The only thing missing is a _blink_ tag.
- rvba 5y agoMissing the "under construction" picture
- yawaworht1978 5y agoWell, I would agree on that. I get a white page , a horizontal line and this content: 502 Bad Gateway nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu)
- a-uz 5y agoI remember building sites like this using my feature phone way back when I was a kid, likely around 2006-2008. At the time I didn't have any other options to access the internet, so I used what I have. Used all of my allowance to buy some credits for a prepaid cell plan and spent most of my time on WAP site builders.
- chainwax 5y agoLove it, gives me https://www.pitviper.com/ https://www.pitviper.com/ vibes. I think I'm going to go for this aesthetic for my bike club's website.
- riffic 5y agoI'd advise putting something in front of your web services so you can handle the excess load HN is throwing at you. however, I saw what you had and it was great style.
- deltron3030 5y agoWhat makes it professional is that it's designed, with the intent to look oldschool/unprofessional. You've likely used a process and tools you were already familiar with. Vernacular/unprofessional web design is search engine driven these days – using what's in reach. Basically searching for "create a website" and using one of the guides and tools popping up in the search results.
- unemphysbro 5y agohell yeah brother!
- sergiotapia 5y agoCruelty Squad as a Service
- ssalka 5y agoAn ex-coworker of mine had a hobby of building visually distressing sites like this. Here are the few I remember: http://fastcashmoneyplus.biz/ http://fastcashmoneyplus.biz/ https://ronamerch.co/ https://ronamerch.co/ https://friendworld.social/ https://friendworld.social/ http://fakebullshit.news/ http://fakebullshit.news/
- scintill76 5y agoI enjoyed the integration between ronamerch and fastcashmoneyplus.
- jldugger 5y ago502: Bad Gateway checks out
- kbuchanan 5y agoYeah, but it's unprofessional in just the right ways, which signals sophistication lol.
- walrus01 5y agoneeds more BLINK and bonzi buddy
- ok_dad 5y agoI wish the whole internet looked like this again, along with very little or no Javascript. Thanks for the best looking site I've seen today, aside from Ling's cars[0], which is also awesome. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29465025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29465025
- Cu3PO42 5y agoThis also reminds me of http://durgasoft.com/ http://durgasoft.com/ which is, as far as I can tell, an actual offer for programming courses.
- dang 5y agoYou had a big Show HN with this project a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29270909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29270909, as well as 15 other submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=okozzie https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=okozzie. Beyond that, you have posted it dozens of additional times and then deleted it. That's abusive. It's also against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Note this guideline as well: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." You've been breaking that one badly too.
- okozzie 5y agoIt's a huge update each time! This is completely different to the last and I posted this to show the new landing page... 99% of the discussion is focused on the landing page
- dang 5y agoThat argument might hold some water if you hadn't been blatantly abusing the submission system and violating the site guidelines. From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html: "If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok." Emphasis added. From both https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please don't delete and repost. Deletion is for things that shouldn't have been submitted in the first place." From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity."
- okozzie 5y agoFor the delete and repost, I did not read that guideline so I apologise for that. However, the discussion itself is something new to Hacker News - is there a way to have it back up please? 99% of the comments are about this form of web design vs professionalism
- cvhashim 5y ago> Somaliland Huh ?
- okozzie 5y agoProblem ?
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