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Ask HN: business guy tries to build a website - qrisper.com
Hi folks, business guy here (meaning no techology background outside of what I learned at the job). Found myself with a lot of free time recently (same ol story). Took this opportunity to work on an idea that I had to aggregate opinions and generate top ten lists. But rather than outsource, took it upon myself to learn how to code (cuz I always wanted to know how).
Would love to get feedback from the HN community. Curious to hear whether or not folks feel qrisper provides a useful service. Tips/comments/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Jung
http://qrisper.com
- SwellJoe 17y agoBut rather than outsource, took it upon myself to learn how to code You're not a "business guy" any more. You're a hacker.
- junglee 17y agoyes...yes i am. hooray! whoda thunk id become a hacker...
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- SwellJoe 17y agoI humbly disagree. He built something. He now hacks. Perhaps your definition and mine do not match...but there's nothing you can say about your pet language or your specific feature list for what makes a hacker. I only have one requirement: Does he write real, working, useful code? Looks to me like he's a hacker.
- junglee 17y agowow joe, thanks! you really are swell.
- trapper 17y agoI was under the impression that a hacker is in the top 2% of all programmers. What is the currently accepted definition for hacker around here?
- SwellJoe 17y agoI was under the impression that a hacker is in the top 2% of all programmers. Quite right. And only those who are better can judge who the top 2% are. So if we can just figure out who the top 1% of hackers are, we'll get this figured out once and for all, eh?
- trapper 17y agohttp://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- vorador 17y agoDoes it really matter to be a hacker or not ? - or rather, to be called a "hacker".
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- vorador 17y agoYes, but calling somebody a "hacker" is completely subjective, contrary to a doctor for instance. And somebody's hacker is someone else's noob.
- stijnm 17y agoI beg to differ when you say '[...] contrary to a doctor'. The semantics of a word are always subjective - even 'doctor' does not imply a clearly defined occupation/activity-set. This is due to: - own experience I beg to differ when you say '[...] contrary to a doctor'. The semantics of a word are always subjective - even 'doctor' does not imply a clearly defined occupation/activity-set. This is due to: - own experience - knowledge of a language - intelligence - ... Sorry, completely off topic. On topic: I had a quick look and I like the idea junglee Some comments: - It is 'messy' in my subjective unprofessional view. (sorry to be vague) - It may be good for some of your lists to get some data/be influenced by 'trusted specialist sites'. - Colours are atrocious - It seemed to load slow switching between FAQ and Blog. (Only thing I tested.) - Try to have a separate section on your site for partners or those wanting to work with you commercially. Have a discrete link going from the main site to that separate section. I am looking at 'Advertise' link. Carrying on from the previous point, why have prime-website-real estate near the top of your page point to boring things like 'privacy' and 'terms'. Just some random thoughts.
- junglee 17y agoaww mang! you do have a point though...had to look those things up on wikipedia...and i still dont know what they are. but i am using oop and mvc architecture...that counts for something right?
- oomkiller 17y agoAmazing, you took the words right out of my 'mouth' :)
- vaksel 17y agoWell for one your background color choice is just horrible
- chanux 17y agoI think he can fix it with help of http://www.colourlovers.com/ http://www.colourlovers.com/
- junglee 17y agoHa! Was wondering how long it'd take for that feedback to come out. I tried a number of different colors...just like the muted yellow for some reason. Will definitely add a design editor so users can change the bg color.
- yummyfajitas 17y agoI didn't notice the design editor (or it's absence) in the 4 seconds it took me to close the qrisper tab.
- junglee 17y agoHey at least you remembered how to spell qrisper! I'll take what I can get.
- chanux 17y agoclickable link - http://qrisper.com http://qrisper.com And I suggest you adding OpenID, Facebook connect, Google friend connect etc. There's a similar service from twitter I guess.
- junglee 17y agoActually had Google Connect...didn't really see the value just yet so I took it out. Added Facebook Connect via Disqus for comments. Still learning OpenID... The thing with Twitter...you ask for best sushi restaurant in NY, followers will respond. but that information isnt aggregated for future use...theyre one-offs. I figured, provide a way for people to answer commonly asked questions and collate the data into easily digestible top ten lists.
- coconutrandom 17y agoIt seems like he meant add the ability to twitter a page from your site. Like a "Tweet this" link.
- junglee 17y agoI do have the addthis button on all of the answer pages...if that's what you mean.
- coconutrandom 17y agoSome the the answers have vague or generic names which does not lead to good Google search-ability by itself. Perhaps add the keywords from the question. Also, if the answer is a url, you may want that to be the link itself. But great job, keep it up!
- junglee 17y agoYeah those generic answers could become problematic. However, I'm hoping that unhelpful answers get pushed down as more relevant answers are voted up...that's the assumption anyway. But great tip about adding keywords from the question to the Google search...will definitely do that. I'm still playing around with the links for the answers. As you saw, the default is a Google search. I'm also toying with direct links (for urls) as well as affiliate links.
- adamBA 17y agojust curious to know if you have a plan to make $$ other than through ads
- junglee 17y agooutside of ads and affiliate marketing, yes i do. that wont matter till i find an audience but a plan exists.
- knightinblue 17y agoI'm going to guess that the plan involves selling the app once there's a strong audience.
- junglee 17y agothat could be a potential exit...something to dream about i guess. but lets not get ahead of ourselves. this was simply an experiment to see if i could really build a useful app. built - check! useful - TBD.
- thebeatbox 17y agoAs a fellow "business guy" who is an aspiring hacker, I have to ask: how'd you get started?
- junglee 17y agowell, having a younger brother who knew how to code helped. also, in my previous life, i was a product manager developing web products for an investment bank. so i had some experience with design and knew how stuff worked. just never actually coded anything before. so i took an intensive web dev course to build a foundation and have been learning on my own since. i found that, with so many references and tutorials online, once you have an idea of what you want to build, its just a matter of writing (more often borrowing) some code and tweaking it till the frickin thing works. it's definitely been frustrating at times. but the payoff - the satisfaction i feel when i solve a problem or make the site behave exactly how i want it to - it's been well worth the effort.
- pj 17y agoWell, first impression: They Live is an alien invasion movie, not a zombie movie, so I gotta question the accuracy of the data!
- junglee 17y agowell, dont blame me, blame whoever voted for that movie (my fav was shawn of the dead).
- dwynings 17y agoHow long did it take you to do?
- junglee 17y agocalendar time...about 5 months. actual coding time...probably less than 2. the rest was reading and learning.
- adrianb 17y agoI noticed that the site has very good graphics. Did you do that yourself? Did you work with an expert?
- junglee 17y agodo you mean the design (logos, layout, images, etc.)? yep, all me. i noticed that while i do enjoy working on the server side stuff, i have more fun tinkering with the design.
- iterationx 17y agoyour search is a little broken, neighborhood got me 2 results with new york, and then "neighborhood new york" got me 0 results. you're going to want to push tags i think, you've got "favorite bar" and "best bar", you want either favorite or best. Also i think a tag cloud would be good. i think its a clever idea, and could morph into a popular review site, i think you'll probably need some kinda forum to keep people there.
- junglee 17y agothanks for the feedback iterationx! i agree that search needs to be fixed...gonna need a little help with that so if anyone wants to volunteer! interesting point about favorite vs best. i guess you could have two different answers...but i took them to be synonymous. im still playing around with the types of questions and how to best word them... also played around with tags but thought they cluttered up the site. hoping to rely primarily on one top category and one or two subcategories. i did have a forum set up at one point but decided instead to go with disqus comments for each top ten list and included a prominent feedback link to initiate open discussions. but ill revisit the idea of a standalone forum...its mostly a matter of do i have the time to moderate...
- iterationx 17y ago>>one top category and one or two subcategories categories are really old school like early yahoo... i guess do you want to find "best fish restaurant madison wisconsin" via the search, or via tags? i think the 2.0 answer is both...
- junglee 17y agohmmm...i see your point and i definitely need to revisit tags. my db was set up with tags in mind so switching over wouldnt be a problem. looks like ill need to do more testing!