4 ms·

Author here. Thanks for all the feedback, very much appreciated, I wasn't expecting this. Feel free to email me if you have questions you'd like to take off-lis

Author here. Thanks for all the feedback, very much appreciated, I wasn't expecting this. Feel free to email me if you have questions you'd like to take off-list (email in profile). Some stats, which may be useful for anyone doing a Show HN soon and wondering about volumes: - 11k visits at the time of writing (3 hours in) - 71% of hits so far are from the Americas (hit the California server), 29% from elsewhere (hit the London server). Given the time in Europe, there is significant bias here though. - 6.7% of hits used IPv6 - 76% used Chrome, second place was FF at 11%

pkaye 12y ago
You need to put up some examples of what can be done by this service. Something visitors can interact with without registering is ideal to convince them to register.
- samcrawford 12y ago
  There's an example API created with the service here: https://sheetlabs.com/#/services/doc/ACME/getDomain https://sheetlabs.com/#/services/doc/ACME/getDomain This is linked off the front page, but could certainly be more prominent (as another commenter said)
  - zmmmmm 12y ago
    I stared at that for 10 minutes trying to find the spreadsheet. I assume there is a spreadsheet backing it? You should actually show people the spreadsheet - just seeing an API description without demonstrating that it runs off a simple spreadsheet almost kind of defeats the whole purpose of the service!
    - samcrawford 12y ago
      Thanks for the feedback. Yes, it is backed onto a spreadsheet effectively. Showing it is a good idea for the front page. But I don't think showing the spreadsheet in the API docs is so useful; the idea is to present a clean API to the users, and they don't even need to know that the data was originally from a spreadsheet.
      - berkay 12y ago
        +1 on showing the spreadsheet. It doesn't have to be on the docs, can be on the website. I'd put front and center, if you have this spreadsheet, it creates this API. You can even look into giving access to the sample spreadsheet for testing directly from the web pages.

pkaye 12y ago

You need to put up some examples of what can be done by this service. Something visitors can interact with without registering is ideal to convince them to register.

samcrawford 12y ago
There's an example API created with the service here: https://sheetlabs.com/#/services/doc/ACME/getDomain https://sheetlabs.com/#/services/doc/ACME/getDomain This is linked off the front page, but could certainly be more prominent (as another commenter said)
- zmmmmm 12y ago
  I stared at that for 10 minutes trying to find the spreadsheet. I assume there is a spreadsheet backing it? You should actually show people the spreadsheet - just seeing an API description without demonstrating that it runs off a simple spreadsheet almost kind of defeats the whole purpose of the service!
  - samcrawford 12y ago
    Thanks for the feedback. Yes, it is backed onto a spreadsheet effectively. Showing it is a good idea for the front page. But I don't think showing the spreadsheet in the API docs is so useful; the idea is to present a clean API to the users, and they don't even need to know that the data was originally from a spreadsheet.
    - berkay 12y ago
      +1 on showing the spreadsheet. It doesn't have to be on the docs, can be on the website. I'd put front and center, if you have this spreadsheet, it creates this API. You can even look into giving access to the sample spreadsheet for testing directly from the web pages.