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Every single project, open source or not, needs to have a "Why Use It" page. (Now this is more of a "Testimonials" page, but for server tech it will do.) > Ap

Every single project, open source or not, needs to have a "Why Use It" page. (Now this is more of a "Testimonials" page, but for server tech it will do.) > Apache is like Microsoft Word, it has a million options but you only need six. Nginx does those six things, and it does five of them 50 times faster than Apache. This is exactly how I felt. I'm a pea-brained dolt in the server sphere, and when I was remaking my server I went with nginx over apache on the advice of a friend because "the config file is easier to understand." He was right. And instead of being frustrated and bumbling through apache until it worked the way I wanted, I was able to configure nginx (for the first time!) in mere minutes. With nginx I was able to move on to the "get frustrated by Wordpress" phase of server setup much sooner!

rlpb 14y ago
> Every single project, open source or not, needs to have a "Why Use It" page. Not only that, but a mention of all the major competitors with an honest factual comparison with them is really handy as well. In the FLOSS world, naming competitors won't necessarily cause a major problem and does a huge amount for trust.
- StuieK 14y ago
  Still building the "feature comparison" feature but we have the "why use it" pretty much sorted, example: http://slant.co/topics/what-is-the-best-search-engine-for-web-applications/opinions/elasticsearch http://slant.co/topics/what-is-the-best-search-engine-for-we...
- byamit 14y ago
  yeah but you can't ask Product X to tell you about Product Y because they honestly don't know Product Y well enough to speak to it.
  - stedaniels 14y ago
    You have to ask yourself, if your building a product and you know nothing about it's potential competitors, what are you really doing? Research is key my opinion. It avoids cases of "Hey guys, look what I invented! I call it the wheel.."
zobzu 14y ago
Yep feature comparisons, benchmarks even if never perfect,.. and.. what this cruft is for, are, well, useful. But yep also, this nginx page is a testimonial page. Testimonial pages bring very little value as it's 100% subjective, and usually just "fanboy" content. And the 2nd half of your post is equivalent. Personally I find Apache easier to configure, and with mpm-event its as fast as nginx (albeit both are fine httpds, and nginx has cleaner code). I could also compare both to text editors. But none of this brings valuable info to me. It's way too subjective, and you know how people get touchy feely -and extremely subjective- when it's about favorite brand/software/company/validation-that-what-they-use-is-the-current-cool-thing
- vacri 14y ago
  My favourite testimonial was a generic 'I like this product' that was signed 'anonymous'. Yes, the product is so good, I won't put my name to it. Maybe if the testimonial said something specific, but as it stood it was pretty laughable.
pointernil 14y ago
> Every single project, open source or not, needs to have a "Why Use It" page. True and while creating such a list please consider to add as well a short list of scenarios in which you would not recommend the use of the product even if this may be a little "contra-marketing" and is probably even harder to come up with for the authors than the positive list.
jacques_chester 14y ago
I recently bought some leathergoods from a company who have a page called "Our Competitors". It's a list of 20 companies who make the same categories of goods. Nothing quite inspires confidence like that.
- chatmasta 14y ago
  Interesting. I'm sure they gained some customers due to that confidence, but I wonder how many they lost.
  - eru 14y ago
    If you are making those comparisons, you should also wonder about the quality of those customers. I.e. people who stay with you still are probably profitable customers.
simula67 14y ago
> Every single project, open source or not, needs to have a "Why Use It" page. Let me expand your comment (with your permission) to make it more general. "Every project, open source or not, needs to be run with all the branches of a proper organization" Let me flesh it out with an example: some time ago there was a flame here and on proggit about cricitisism of C++. Some arguments and counter-arguments (http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/197dn1/introduction_to_c_a_series_of_46_videos_created/c8lks22 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/197dn1/introduc...) got me thinking (have mercy, o' HN C++ overlords) 1. Problems are due to power and flexibility Design : build simple and tight systems or get smart enough to build tight complex systems. 2. clang is fixing template error messages Execution: reasonable to demand this be done before standardization 3. This is an implementation problem Management apathy: Passing the buck 4. C++ is not one language but actually many different ones Marketing : Positioning etc There should be no reason why open-source projects should be 'good code, bad with everything else'.
dredmorbius 14y ago
Not just a "why use it" page, but a "what the fuck it is" page. The number of projects I've encountered which don't even have this .... Words fail me.
- jlgaddis 14y ago
  The number of projects I've encountered on HN which don't even have this... Maybe it's because I'm not a developer or working at a startup, but I get majorly annoyed whenever I click on some "Show HN" link only to be presented with a landing page on some unheard of web site that contains a few nice images and a text box wanting me to give up my e-mail address before I can even see what the application looks like or, in many cases, before I even know what the hell it is or is supposed to do! (On a side note, that may be the longest sentence I've ever written.) > SIGN UP NOW! For what!?

rlpb 14y ago

> Every single project, open source or not, needs to have a "Why Use It" page. Not only that, but a mention of all the major competitors with an honest factual comparison with them is really handy as well. In the FLOSS world, naming competitors won't necessarily cause a major problem and does a huge amount for trust.

StuieK 14y ago
Still building the "feature comparison" feature but we have the "why use it" pretty much sorted, example: http://slant.co/topics/what-is-the-best-search-engine-for-web-applications/opinions/elasticsearch http://slant.co/topics/what-is-the-best-search-engine-for-we...
byamit 14y ago
yeah but you can't ask Product X to tell you about Product Y because they honestly don't know Product Y well enough to speak to it.
- stedaniels 14y ago
  You have to ask yourself, if your building a product and you know nothing about it's potential competitors, what are you really doing? Research is key my opinion. It avoids cases of "Hey guys, look what I invented! I call it the wheel.."

zobzu 14y ago

Yep feature comparisons, benchmarks even if never perfect,.. and.. what this cruft is for, are, well, useful. But yep also, this nginx page is a testimonial page. Testimonial pages bring very little value as it's 100% subjective, and usually just "fanboy" content. And the 2nd half of your post is equivalent. Personally I find Apache easier to configure, and with mpm-event its as fast as nginx (albeit both are fine httpds, and nginx has cleaner code). I could also compare both to text editors. But none of this brings valuable info to me. It's way too subjective, and you know how people get touchy feely -and extremely subjective- when it's about favorite brand/software/company/validation-that-what-they-use-is-the-current-cool-thing

vacri 14y ago
My favourite testimonial was a generic 'I like this product' that was signed 'anonymous'. Yes, the product is so good, I won't put my name to it. Maybe if the testimonial said something specific, but as it stood it was pretty laughable.

pointernil 14y ago

> Every single project, open source or not, needs to have a "Why Use It" page. True and while creating such a list please consider to add as well a short list of scenarios in which you would not recommend the use of the product even if this may be a little "contra-marketing" and is probably even harder to come up with for the authors than the positive list.

jacques_chester 14y ago

I recently bought some leathergoods from a company who have a page called "Our Competitors". It's a list of 20 companies who make the same categories of goods. Nothing quite inspires confidence like that.

chatmasta 14y ago
Interesting. I'm sure they gained some customers due to that confidence, but I wonder how many they lost.
- eru 14y ago
  If you are making those comparisons, you should also wonder about the quality of those customers. I.e. people who stay with you still are probably profitable customers.

simula67 14y ago

> Every single project, open source or not, needs to have a "Why Use It" page. Let me expand your comment (with your permission) to make it more general. "Every project, open source or not, needs to be run with all the branches of a proper organization" Let me flesh it out with an example: some time ago there was a flame here and on proggit about cricitisism of C++. Some arguments and counter-arguments (http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/197dn1/introduction_to_c_a_series_of_46_videos_created/c8lks22 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/197dn1/introduc...) got me thinking (have mercy, o' HN C++ overlords) 1. Problems are due to power and flexibility Design : build simple and tight systems or get smart enough to build tight complex systems. 2. clang is fixing template error messages Execution: reasonable to demand this be done before standardization 3. This is an implementation problem Management apathy: Passing the buck 4. C++ is not one language but actually many different ones Marketing : Positioning etc There should be no reason why open-source projects should be 'good code, bad with everything else'.

dredmorbius 14y ago

Not just a "why use it" page, but a "what the fuck it is" page. The number of projects I've encountered which don't even have this .... Words fail me.

jlgaddis 14y ago
The number of projects I've encountered on HN which don't even have this... Maybe it's because I'm not a developer or working at a startup, but I get majorly annoyed whenever I click on some "Show HN" link only to be presented with a landing page on some unheard of web site that contains a few nice images and a text box wanting me to give up my e-mail address before I can even see what the application looks like or, in many cases, before I even know what the hell it is or is supposed to do! (On a side note, that may be the longest sentence I've ever written.) > SIGN UP NOW! For what!?