4 ms·

BizTravel: first public StackExchange beta site

20 points by df07 17y ago

spicyj 17y ago
It's interesting to see how similar it looks, to the pixel. Perhaps the framework doesn't leave much room for customization.
- df07 17y ago
  It's partly the framework, and partly because Joel threw this together on a Friday afternoon. The only thing customized on this site is the colors and the logo, but you can also add blocks of HTML in a bunch of places where ads are usually shown.
  - spolsky 17y ago
    And of course you can override CSS, which we didn't bother to do.
dshah 17y ago
Interesting pricing model. No free option and a premium (per-server based) model for on premise. Very different from what you usually see for web-based services. I think it might work. Planning to try it out.
- spolsky 17y ago
  Dharmesh, the free option in a freemium model usually exists to spread the word, but we have StackOverflow.com to spread the word. And most of these sites people are building will have big audiences, and those audiences are getting it free, so we don't really need a free entry-level option just to get our first customers.
petercooper 17y ago
I'm intrigued how they've got people who aren't related to StackOverflow or programming on there already. Someone's already trying to work out what "code" means :-) http://biztravel.stackexchange.com/questions/11/feedback-about-this-site http://biztravel.stackexchange.com/questions/11/feedback-abo... Just realized, I'm actually asking a question here.. how would you kick off one of these sorts of sites if you wanted it to become popular? Pre-populate it with a fake community? Get a group of friends to use it in anger?
- nopassrecover 17y ago
  The remants of StackOverflow are kind of an important issue. The guy raises good questions (how do I post maps (say Google Maps) or do other industry specific stuff) and brings up good points about how applicable some stuff is to non-programming sites.
  - petercooper 17y ago
    If they haven't done it already, I expect a Wordpress style "plugin" system could cater for all this if.... it were an open source (or even self hosted) app. Except, it ain't and I can only see "enterprise" customers finding this app any way attractive.
klodolph 17y ago
I just went there. #1 question? "What are the must hit brothels on a biz trip to Prague?" Yeah, that's classy right there.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Sex!!??? On the Internet??!!! Well I never!
mattiss 17y ago
I'm not a big fan of the current color scheme.
- df07 17y ago
  Anything in particular? As Joel said, this is mostly a beta testing site, but feedback on the colors would be useful for picking some nice preset color schemes.
  - Dylanfm 17y ago
    That blue used for backgrounds (i.e. the login box) is a bit too saturated and dark. Coupled with the dark blue text, they fail in colour contrast checks http://skitch.com/dylanfm/b6nj6/colour-contrast-analyser http://skitch.com/dylanfm/b6nj6/colour-contrast-analyser . I suggest knocking it back to something like #B5D2E4. The greens for answered questions are a bit dark too and could be changed to #afff4b for accepted answers and #D1FF7E for answered. Here's a screenshot with those colours firebugged in http://skitch.com/dylanfm/b6nk3/biztravel http://skitch.com/dylanfm/b6nk3/biztravel .
  - viggity 17y ago
    I think the color scheme looks really nice, I prefer it to stackoverflow. Just my opinion though.
spolsky 17y ago
biztravel is mostly intended so that I could dogfood StackExchange (http://stackexchange.com http://stackexchange.com), which is our white label version of the code that runs StackOverflow.com. StackExchange is currently in invite-only beta. I didn't really expect to get a critical mass of road warriors on that site since I'm not planning to spend very much effort promoting it, but I am interested to see how small a StackOverflow-like knowledge exchange site can be and still get enough traffic to work. Someone, I'm sure, will take travel Q&A far more seriously than I did, and get someone like Rick Steves or a big travel site like Orbitz or TripAdvisor behind it, and that'll be huge. Either way I'm pretty confident that Jeff Atwood's goal of having knowledge exchanges like StackOverflow replace crappy old PHPBB sites everywhere on the Internet is pretty much inevitable and this will be a huge opportunity to create new communities where old entrenched ones used to be locked in.
- andrewljohnson 17y ago
  Joel, I would like to set up a StackOverflow for Graphic Design questions. Could I get access to the beta to do this?
- nopassrecover 17y ago
  Yeah it will take off, but the discussion aspect may need work for certain communities (one example crafts, see crafster). I can think of these sites I'd visit: Car repairs/advice, Graphic Design, Business advice (freelanceswitch will probably be someone to approach), Marketing, Maths, Food/Cooking/Recipes, Cocktail Mixing Sites that will work: Crafts, ESL, Athlete/professionals training advice The pricing will need to drop for smaller communities to make the port, and include a donations feature to help communities fund themselves.
deleted 17y ago
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20 points by df07 17y ago

It's interesting to see how similar it looks, to the pixel. Perhaps the framework doesn't leave much room for customization.

df07 17y ago
It's partly the framework, and partly because Joel threw this together on a Friday afternoon. The only thing customized on this site is the colors and the logo, but you can also add blocks of HTML in a bunch of places where ads are usually shown.
- spolsky 17y ago
  And of course you can override CSS, which we didn't bother to do.

dshah 17y ago

Interesting pricing model. No free option and a premium (per-server based) model for on premise. Very different from what you usually see for web-based services. I think it might work. Planning to try it out.

spolsky 17y ago
Dharmesh, the free option in a freemium model usually exists to spread the word, but we have StackOverflow.com to spread the word. And most of these sites people are building will have big audiences, and those audiences are getting it free, so we don't really need a free entry-level option just to get our first customers.

petercooper 17y ago

I'm intrigued how they've got people who aren't related to StackOverflow or programming on there already. Someone's already trying to work out what "code" means :-) http://biztravel.stackexchange.com/questions/11/feedback-about-this-site http://biztravel.stackexchange.com/questions/11/feedback-abo... Just realized, I'm actually asking a question here.. how would you kick off one of these sorts of sites if you wanted it to become popular? Pre-populate it with a fake community? Get a group of friends to use it in anger?

nopassrecover 17y ago
The remants of StackOverflow are kind of an important issue. The guy raises good questions (how do I post maps (say Google Maps) or do other industry specific stuff) and brings up good points about how applicable some stuff is to non-programming sites.
- petercooper 17y ago
  If they haven't done it already, I expect a Wordpress style "plugin" system could cater for all this if.... it were an open source (or even self hosted) app. Except, it ain't and I can only see "enterprise" customers finding this app any way attractive.

klodolph 17y ago

I just went there. #1 question? "What are the must hit brothels on a biz trip to Prague?" Yeah, that's classy right there.

jrockway 17y ago
Sex!!??? On the Internet??!!! Well I never!

mattiss 17y ago

I'm not a big fan of the current color scheme.

df07 17y ago
Anything in particular? As Joel said, this is mostly a beta testing site, but feedback on the colors would be useful for picking some nice preset color schemes.
- Dylanfm 17y ago
  That blue used for backgrounds (i.e. the login box) is a bit too saturated and dark. Coupled with the dark blue text, they fail in colour contrast checks http://skitch.com/dylanfm/b6nj6/colour-contrast-analyser http://skitch.com/dylanfm/b6nj6/colour-contrast-analyser . I suggest knocking it back to something like #B5D2E4. The greens for answered questions are a bit dark too and could be changed to #afff4b for accepted answers and #D1FF7E for answered. Here's a screenshot with those colours firebugged in http://skitch.com/dylanfm/b6nk3/biztravel http://skitch.com/dylanfm/b6nk3/biztravel .
- viggity 17y ago
  I think the color scheme looks really nice, I prefer it to stackoverflow. Just my opinion though.

spolsky 17y ago

biztravel is mostly intended so that I could dogfood StackExchange (http://stackexchange.com http://stackexchange.com), which is our white label version of the code that runs StackOverflow.com. StackExchange is currently in invite-only beta. I didn't really expect to get a critical mass of road warriors on that site since I'm not planning to spend very much effort promoting it, but I am interested to see how small a StackOverflow-like knowledge exchange site can be and still get enough traffic to work. Someone, I'm sure, will take travel Q&A far more seriously than I did, and get someone like Rick Steves or a big travel site like Orbitz or TripAdvisor behind it, and that'll be huge. Either way I'm pretty confident that Jeff Atwood's goal of having knowledge exchanges like StackOverflow replace crappy old PHPBB sites everywhere on the Internet is pretty much inevitable and this will be a huge opportunity to create new communities where old entrenched ones used to be locked in.

andrewljohnson 17y ago
Joel, I would like to set up a StackOverflow for Graphic Design questions. Could I get access to the beta to do this?
nopassrecover 17y ago
Yeah it will take off, but the discussion aspect may need work for certain communities (one example crafts, see crafster). I can think of these sites I'd visit: Car repairs/advice, Graphic Design, Business advice (freelanceswitch will probably be someone to approach), Marketing, Maths, Food/Cooking/Recipes, Cocktail Mixing Sites that will work: Crafts, ESL, Athlete/professionals training advice The pricing will need to drop for smaller communities to make the port, and include a donations feature to help communities fund themselves.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]