4 ms·

Author here. Microcosm is the first startup by us, and it's taken a while to get out of the door as customer feedback changed our initial plan and most of our

by buro9 13y ago

Author here. Microcosm is the first startup by us, and it's taken a while to get out of the door as customer feedback changed our initial plan and most of our priorities. The initial plan was to take forums and evolve them into a flipboard/Verge style magazine of user-generated content. But actually people just wanted really good forums that were more capable of providing tools that communities needed. This mostly came down to "We want events and other stuff to be organised where the people are hanging-out", and we found that the magazine approach set expectations that people were consumers rather than creators of content. We are a Shopify or Tumblr, but for forums. And the obvious question amongst the HN crowd is how do we stack up to Discourse? The answer is that the forum market is HUGE and we see Discourse being the equivalent of a Wordpress (a comparison they themselves have made) whilst we are the equivalent of Tumblr. We're a hosted platform obsessed with simplicity for the admin and users, not an installable piece of software. An example of what we're doing: http://forum.islington.cc/ http://forum.islington.cc/ A forum on that site: http://forum.islington.cc/microcosms/114/ http://forum.islington.cc/microcosms/114/ Note that events exist within forums and not in a separate global calendar. An event page: http://forum.islington.cc/events/79/ http://forum.islington.cc/events/79/ Another example: http://forum.espruino.com/ http://forum.espruino.com/ A conversation with images, code and video: http://forum.espruino.com/conversations/706/ http://forum.espruino.com/conversations/706/ Ask me anything.

eitland 13y ago
Just want to say that I'm happy to see someone taking on stack.* and discourse. Stack.* turned toxic (imo) and discourse seems to still have no real site after two years, just a sandbox that is reset on a daily basis. (I might have missed something here but I honestly tried to find examples.)
huhtenberg 13y ago
Some basic feedback based on first impression, if you don't mind. 1. On the landing page - the row of faces at the top is off-putting. Something is just fundamentally wrong with their mouths, they just look ... freaky. 2. Links to the examples should be at the top. How a forum looks is the first thing that anyone would want to look at, not that you "help to grow my community". Re: forum design itself (going by Espruino example): 1. TOO MUCH VERTICAL WHITESPACE. I'm on a laptop running at 1080 lines and 96 DPI and I can see only 8 threads in the index of General section. That's simply unacceptable. That's something that a designer with a Mac would produce for his designer buddies :) 2. Each index entry has 4 information bits. "Started" and "replied" aren't really needed, they just take up the space. 3. Bunch of other nitpicks -> You should really consider adding a whole bunch of alternative designs, including a way for others submit their own designs to the publicly available gallery. The importance of visual candy and stylistic variety is exceptionally important. As I said above, forum appearance is the first thing everyone looks at - that's your chance to impress and the way to do it is with the variety. But all in all - it's a good and meaningful project. Break a leg.
- buro9 13y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. On #1 and #2 on the landing page... I agree with both. Those line drawings looked way worse with teeth, so our relative perception is that these are better, but we shall revisit it. On the more critical things with the product... #1. Too much whitespace. This has been a hard fight for us, that single issue, as the vast majority of forums set the font far too small (10px) but information density is high. We've used vBulletin and phpBB as our compare point and we show 8 items per page where the default theme from those would show 10, but ours are far more readable. We think our defaults are fairly good, but want much more active sites so that we can create meaningful A/B tests on the front sizes and white space. It's definitely one of the more frequent pieces of feedback. #2. Started and Replied are extremely critical. Remove them and engagement drops off. Started helps people choose, from the newer items, which ones they want to read and reply to, based on who started it. Replied is extraordinary, remove it and people do not go into the item and make their own reply, they stop engaging with it. People tend to hit the page of items, scan for who made the last reply and when, and then make the decision to go into it. The ones who make the most comments navigate by the engagement of others, not by the topics and subject of the items. We experimented with that, and even the absence of the last author's name on the list of forums continues to generate feedback. We think we can just about get away with that one, but the numbers are strongly against removing them from the item list. #3. Agree wholeheartedly, a number of designs are possible but our defaults today are equivalent to Twitter customisation. We plan 3 levels of theming and customisation and they are all effectively supported already but not yet available for a number of dull reasons. The first: Twitter customisation: Logo, background colour/image, font colour. We support this today. The second: Upload your own CSS (with some security restrictions), or pick from a theme gallery. The third: Fork https://github.com/microcosm-cc/microweb https://github.com/microcosm-cc/microweb , put it on Heroku, and fundamentally change all HTML, CSS, UX, everything. Today we only expose #1, and anyone can go do #3 already. #2 is designed for, but we haven't yet built the security bit. We do have some far more attractive examples of forum than the ones I've shared, but they're currently testing their communities and it would not be right for me to make them public before they are ready. We will definitely update the linked examples of forums once some of the really good looking ones go public. Thanks for the feedback, I'll definitely put the vertical height A/B test back on the urgent todo list for when the numbers will make it meaningful.
revorad 13y ago
Congrats on the launch, David and team. Quick first impressions from trying this out now: 1. The Persona sign up surprised me a bit. I'm ok with it, but if you're aiming at non-tech folks, it might be a bit of a problem. Do you offer a normal email+pwd signup too? 2. I chose a name for my forum and signed up with Persona. After logging in, I'm expecting to see my forum, but this is what I see: http://i.imgur.com/lWG9Ta0.png http://i.imgur.com/lWG9Ta0.png Not sure what to do, maybe I need to click "Add a site"? When I do, I realise it's for creating another forum. Oh I didn't know I was making an account which allowed me to make multiple forums! Also, using "site" and "forum" interchangeably threw me off. 3. Ok, so what I was first looking at after signing in was my dashboard. So now I go back there, and I notice the tiny greyed out link babies.microco.sm. Click on it and it takes me to: http://i.imgur.com/FI5HKPF.png http://i.imgur.com/FI5HKPF.png "This is such a new site that there are no forums." Now I'm really confused. A site has multiple forums? So I'm not logged into my own forum? Click on Sign in or Register in the top right corner. Persona again! Now, as a forum owner nerd I might be ok with it, but other users of my forum almost certainly won't be. Anyway, sign in. Then click on "Create your first forum" and get these two questions: http://i.imgur.com/75GNpQ6.png http://i.imgur.com/75GNpQ6.png "What is the name of the forum?" and "What is the forum about?" But I thought I already answered these questions when I first signed up!! -> http://i.imgur.com/QirI0Sx.png http://i.imgur.com/QirI0Sx.png Anyway, I do that and then my forum is finally created and I was able to make a post and reply to it. The Microco.sm logo on my site/forum is confusing. It'd be nicer if you used the name of my site by default instead. That's probably enough for you to go on for the initial UX :) Caveats: I've never run a forum and I'm unlikely to do so in the near future. I did this purely as an exercise to try your app out. So, take it with a giant boulder of salt.
- buro9 13y ago
  You've raised some good points. We're already changing the account dashboard as it's likely that most people will only run 1 or 2 forums, so a list is not ideal. We're going to take you straight to editing the forum colours and logo, rather than to the list of sites. And if we keep a list it will only appear when a second site has been created. Agree on the bad interchangeable use of forum and site. Persona is a strange one... every technical person raises it as an issue and some get confused by part of the process, but no users have. We've got 70 year old cyclists excited that it's the first time they've ever joined a community and engaged with it, and 16 year olds equally joyous at just being somewhere others who share their interest are. None raise Persona as an issue, but it does keep coming up from technical people. Given that Persona feels like it's in flux (recent HN item on it), we may re-visit this to ensure that even the tech people are happy.
biot 13y ago
On your pricing page, every plan except the cheapest one shows up as "Cheapest plan". And the $99/month (per site!) plan doesn't have half the benefits the $10/month plan has.
- buro9 13y ago
  This is a confusion created by us that was not intentional and the designer is looking to fix very very soon by gutting that part of the page. The compare + pricing is comparing our offering "Microcosm" to our competitor offerings. It isn't comparing various packages we offer. We only have one plan, it includes everything. Though other founders suggest we invent another couple of plans to hit the Goldilocks "too hot, too cold, just about right" method of selling. And yes, Vanilla is strangely priced considering the market, but they do have some compelling features too... everyone draws up their comparison tables to favour themselves. I actually wanted to promote the fact that we don't support signature at all as a positive.
  - biot 13y ago
    Ok, I get it now. It reads like every other SaaS pricing page with columns showing multiple plans but is actually a competitive analysis. It doesn't help that I'm not aware that "Vanilla" is a competitive product as it seems like the name of one of your plans.

by buro9 13y ago

eitland 13y ago

Just want to say that I'm happy to see someone taking on stack.* and discourse. Stack.* turned toxic (imo) and discourse seems to still have no real site after two years, just a sandbox that is reset on a daily basis. (I might have missed something here but I honestly tried to find examples.)

huhtenberg 13y ago

Some basic feedback based on first impression, if you don't mind. 1. On the landing page - the row of faces at the top is off-putting. Something is just fundamentally wrong with their mouths, they just look ... freaky. 2. Links to the examples should be at the top. How a forum looks is the first thing that anyone would want to look at, not that you "help to grow my community". Re: forum design itself (going by Espruino example): 1. TOO MUCH VERTICAL WHITESPACE. I'm on a laptop running at 1080 lines and 96 DPI and I can see only 8 threads in the index of General section. That's simply unacceptable. That's something that a designer with a Mac would produce for his designer buddies :) 2. Each index entry has 4 information bits. "Started" and "replied" aren't really needed, they just take up the space. 3. Bunch of other nitpicks -> You should really consider adding a whole bunch of alternative designs, including a way for others submit their own designs to the publicly available gallery. The importance of visual candy and stylistic variety is exceptionally important. As I said above, forum appearance is the first thing everyone looks at - that's your chance to impress and the way to do it is with the variety. But all in all - it's a good and meaningful project. Break a leg.

buro9 13y ago
Thanks for the feedback. On #1 and #2 on the landing page... I agree with both. Those line drawings looked way worse with teeth, so our relative perception is that these are better, but we shall revisit it. On the more critical things with the product... #1. Too much whitespace. This has been a hard fight for us, that single issue, as the vast majority of forums set the font far too small (10px) but information density is high. We've used vBulletin and phpBB as our compare point and we show 8 items per page where the default theme from those would show 10, but ours are far more readable. We think our defaults are fairly good, but want much more active sites so that we can create meaningful A/B tests on the front sizes and white space. It's definitely one of the more frequent pieces of feedback. #2. Started and Replied are extremely critical. Remove them and engagement drops off. Started helps people choose, from the newer items, which ones they want to read and reply to, based on who started it. Replied is extraordinary, remove it and people do not go into the item and make their own reply, they stop engaging with it. People tend to hit the page of items, scan for who made the last reply and when, and then make the decision to go into it. The ones who make the most comments navigate by the engagement of others, not by the topics and subject of the items. We experimented with that, and even the absence of the last author's name on the list of forums continues to generate feedback. We think we can just about get away with that one, but the numbers are strongly against removing them from the item list. #3. Agree wholeheartedly, a number of designs are possible but our defaults today are equivalent to Twitter customisation. We plan 3 levels of theming and customisation and they are all effectively supported already but not yet available for a number of dull reasons. The first: Twitter customisation: Logo, background colour/image, font colour. We support this today. The second: Upload your own CSS (with some security restrictions), or pick from a theme gallery. The third: Fork https://github.com/microcosm-cc/microweb https://github.com/microcosm-cc/microweb , put it on Heroku, and fundamentally change all HTML, CSS, UX, everything. Today we only expose #1, and anyone can go do #3 already. #2 is designed for, but we haven't yet built the security bit. We do have some far more attractive examples of forum than the ones I've shared, but they're currently testing their communities and it would not be right for me to make them public before they are ready. We will definitely update the linked examples of forums once some of the really good looking ones go public. Thanks for the feedback, I'll definitely put the vertical height A/B test back on the urgent todo list for when the numbers will make it meaningful.

revorad 13y ago

Congrats on the launch, David and team. Quick first impressions from trying this out now: 1. The Persona sign up surprised me a bit. I'm ok with it, but if you're aiming at non-tech folks, it might be a bit of a problem. Do you offer a normal email+pwd signup too? 2. I chose a name for my forum and signed up with Persona. After logging in, I'm expecting to see my forum, but this is what I see: http://i.imgur.com/lWG9Ta0.png http://i.imgur.com/lWG9Ta0.png Not sure what to do, maybe I need to click "Add a site"? When I do, I realise it's for creating another forum. Oh I didn't know I was making an account which allowed me to make multiple forums! Also, using "site" and "forum" interchangeably threw me off. 3. Ok, so what I was first looking at after signing in was my dashboard. So now I go back there, and I notice the tiny greyed out link babies.microco.sm. Click on it and it takes me to: http://i.imgur.com/FI5HKPF.png http://i.imgur.com/FI5HKPF.png "This is such a new site that there are no forums." Now I'm really confused. A site has multiple forums? So I'm not logged into my own forum? Click on Sign in or Register in the top right corner. Persona again! Now, as a forum owner nerd I might be ok with it, but other users of my forum almost certainly won't be. Anyway, sign in. Then click on "Create your first forum" and get these two questions: http://i.imgur.com/75GNpQ6.png http://i.imgur.com/75GNpQ6.png "What is the name of the forum?" and "What is the forum about?" But I thought I already answered these questions when I first signed up!! -> http://i.imgur.com/QirI0Sx.png http://i.imgur.com/QirI0Sx.png Anyway, I do that and then my forum is finally created and I was able to make a post and reply to it. The Microco.sm logo on my site/forum is confusing. It'd be nicer if you used the name of my site by default instead. That's probably enough for you to go on for the initial UX :) Caveats: I've never run a forum and I'm unlikely to do so in the near future. I did this purely as an exercise to try your app out. So, take it with a giant boulder of salt.

buro9 13y ago
You've raised some good points. We're already changing the account dashboard as it's likely that most people will only run 1 or 2 forums, so a list is not ideal. We're going to take you straight to editing the forum colours and logo, rather than to the list of sites. And if we keep a list it will only appear when a second site has been created. Agree on the bad interchangeable use of forum and site. Persona is a strange one... every technical person raises it as an issue and some get confused by part of the process, but no users have. We've got 70 year old cyclists excited that it's the first time they've ever joined a community and engaged with it, and 16 year olds equally joyous at just being somewhere others who share their interest are. None raise Persona as an issue, but it does keep coming up from technical people. Given that Persona feels like it's in flux (recent HN item on it), we may re-visit this to ensure that even the tech people are happy.

biot 13y ago

On your pricing page, every plan except the cheapest one shows up as "Cheapest plan". And the $99/month (per site!) plan doesn't have half the benefits the $10/month plan has.

buro9 13y ago
This is a confusion created by us that was not intentional and the designer is looking to fix very very soon by gutting that part of the page. The compare + pricing is comparing our offering "Microcosm" to our competitor offerings. It isn't comparing various packages we offer. We only have one plan, it includes everything. Though other founders suggest we invent another couple of plans to hit the Goldilocks "too hot, too cold, just about right" method of selling. And yes, Vanilla is strangely priced considering the market, but they do have some compelling features too... everyone draws up their comparison tables to favour themselves. I actually wanted to promote the fact that we don't support signature at all as a positive.
- biot 13y ago
  Ok, I get it now. It reads like every other SaaS pricing page with columns showing multiple plans but is actually a competitive analysis. It doesn't help that I'm not aware that "Vanilla" is a competitive product as it seems like the name of one of your plans.