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Please review my recent launched site Crosstips.org
Is it obvious what it does?
Does it work?
Does it help?
- mikeyur 18y agoI like the idea, but I would make it a bit more clear what the site actually does. I'd also recommend making the boxes quite a bit larger since there's so much white space. Done right, overly-large boxes work - like at tumblr ( http://www.tumblr.com/register http://www.tumblr.com/register )
- peterbe 18y agoOk. I'll certainly consider that.
- guywithabike 18y agoWas it really necessary to rip off Readernaut's HTML and CSS wholesale? I mean, Jesus, it's a simple web app. It shouldn't take you more than a few hours to come up with your own design and code.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- peterbe 18y agoYes it was necessary. I don't know how to do design and CSS and there's no money made or invested into it. I tried putting together a design but it looked shit and never worked very well.
- ryanwaggoner 18y agoYou could have at least used a free template... http://www.oswd.org/ http://www.oswd.org/
- patio11 18y agoConvenient to you and necessary are not synonyms. There is an Internet full of free (beer and/or speech, your call), legal, pretty designs that you can use to your heart's content. I recommend anything by Styleshout (great web 2.0y designs), MultiFlex (more traditional, a little boring by default but clean and fits just about anything), and several of the designs on oswd.org for projects which don't have the budget for a custom design. I actually ran a profitable business off of an OSWD template for almost two years: http://www.oswd.org/design/preview/id/2583 http://www.oswd.org/design/preview/id/2583 Strip out the giant sunflower, add in a header, and bam, its a B2C software sales site.
- alaskamiller 18y agoAs of 1355 Sunday it's popping up 502 error.
- amr 18y agoI get a "502 Bad Gateway" when trying to access the provided link.
- peterbe 18y agoI crashed! I'll need to review the setup and support that with proper stress tests that tests the actual search as well as the static media.
- matt1 18y agoYou really need to explain what this is for.
- peterbe 18y agoDamn it! That's what I hoped I wouldn't have to. Especially the example under the form.
- ryanwaggoner 18y agoEven a simple sentence at the top explaining who the site is for and what it does would be a HUGE improvement. "Crosstips helps you finish that crossword you're stuck on." "Need help with your crossword?" "Can't solve a tough crossword? We're here to help..." These aren't very good, but at least I know what the site is for now...having a description will also help with SEO.
- catch23 18y agoNot just crosswords... scrabble!
- joe_adk 18y agoI don't think it would be all that useful for scrabble. For that you would have to be able to input random letters and get words out. I didn't, however, have any difficulty figuring out what the site was for (the name and the icon made it fairly clear I thought). The "crossword puzzle" metaphor could have been incorporated a bit more in the design, maybe.
- stuntgoat 18y agoWell, Google does not explain what their search is for; why should you have to? Considering it is a niche market for folks that want to solve crossword puzzles, and you had enough people talk about it with each other, you could keep the front page non-descriptive. It is a destination site that people will visit when they know about what it does. I wouldn't want to see a slogan every time I visited the site, anyways. Change the tip word daily to mix it up a bit.
- geuis 18y ago@peterbe if you add http:// http:// to your blog link in your profile, it becomes clickable.
- geuis 18y agoGet rid of the About page. Move that content to the left column of the front page.
- peterbe 18y agoThat would add noise I think. Plus don't people expect an About link/page? Kinda similar to how people expect to find a link to the home page near the upper left corner.
- codeinthehole 18y agoIt would help if you provided definitions for the returned words to aid matching an answer to the clue. Nice idea though.
- peterbe 18y agoThat could definitely go into a version 2. I thought about it but decided I'll just this one released first.
- peterbe 18y agoFor all HTTP optimization junkies, check out the headers on all the static stuff. Pretty good caching, eh?
- ryanwaggoner 18y agoWhy would I use this? Isn't the fun of a crossword struggling through stuff like this without help?
- peterbe 18y agoExcellent question. I made the site for the same reason a crossword solver solves a crossword: to see if I can pull it off.
- ryanwaggoner 18y agoI don't mean to sound like an asshole, but if you did it just as an exercise to see if you could, why are you soliciting feedback?
- kailashbadu 18y agoprobably to have you affirm that he actually pulled it off.
- peterbe 18y agoBecause I'm a web developer. Not a crossword mathematician.
- raptrex 18y agoon your suggestions, feedback, tips at the bottom, you might want to add some captcha or your gonna get spammed :P
- markessien 18y agoYikes, I had absolutely no idea what this was for. I thought it was some type of word generator. After finding the very tiny link at the bottom, I saw the magic word: crosswords. Most people don't do crosswords. Add that word to your page, or a lot of people will be completely lost.
- tdonia 18y ago"length" is a strange way to begin the conversation with your audience. i get it, length is critical to finding the right word, but that doesn't make sense until you understand what it does. i would think about this from a user experience perspective and see if maybe there's a better way to get this information from your User.
- peterbe 18y agoGood point. Perhaps "Number of letters:" is better. Yeah, it does sound better.
- suhail 18y agoHow about a "Crosstips helps you figure out the answers to crossword puzzles, provide in a letter length and a few letters to get started."
- ryanwaggoner 18y agoI think you'd be far better off to swap the "About" page text for the statistics on the front page. I doubt the average visitor to your site cares how many searches have been run in the last 30 days (especially since they all seem to be zero), but judging by the comments on this page, the average new visitor probably would like to see something explaining what this is.
- adrianwaj 18y agogroovy feedback form, more sites should have something that easy.
- cabalamat 18y agoSome suggestions: - add options for UK/US English - add an option so that you can solve anagrams and find scrabble words
- peterbe 18y agoI automatically assumes British English if you're located (by GEO IP) in the United Kingdom and likewise for American English. For people in France for example they can chose between "English (GB)" and "English (US)".
- jfarmer 18y agoWhat is this for and why do you break my browser back button?
- garply 18y agoI don't get it.
- m_eiman 18y agoAdd some javascript to skip next input box automatically when entering text.