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Show HN: SimplyBuilt – Makes building a website so easy, your mother could do it
- pizza 12y agoOT: http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2014-08-05/ http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2014-08-05/
- deedubaya 12y agoLove it. SimplyBuilt uses Rails as a backend too!
- pizza 12y agoThe comic is trying to dissuade stereotypes such as the one in the title..
- lazylizard 12y agoand https://xkcd.com/327/ https://xkcd.com/327/ too i suppose..
- klibertp 12y agoMore like http://xkcd.com/385/ http://xkcd.com/385/ Although the Dilbert strip (with a "sexist imbecile" punchline) sums it up perfectly. I'm trying hard to find a relevant context where "your mother" phrase would be appropriate, but so far I'm failing. It's poor marketing at best.
- filearts 12y agoI don't think that's off-topic at all! With the recent efforts to improve access to programming for all genders this type of tag line may not resonate very well with some of your technical audience. I would consider replacing 'mother' with 'grandparents'.
- Ad_Nauseam 12y ago> your mother could do it are you implying that my mother's stupid?
- deedubaya 12y agoNope. I'm implying that your mother most likely doesn't have the skills necessary to build a website either from scratch, or other existing tools.
- groby_b 12y agoAs opposed to, say, my father?
- spicavigo 12y agoCmon. Say something constructive about the OP's work. Event 'it sucks' would be acceptable but nit-picking on title of the post is not good. Let OP know that his/her title is inappropriate or sexist, but please also help OP by answering the his/her's question
- sehr 12y agoAs opposed to say, younger people more familiar with technology. It's a humorous stereotype, not everything is sexist.
- pessimizer 12y agoIt's a sexist stereotype, not everything is humorous. My mother read her first core dump 40 years ago.
- sehr 12y agoSeriously? If this was about something physical, then yeah definitely. But just because it includes a woman, it's sexist? Because I've never heard of an "older women are bad at technology/moms are bad at technology" stereotype, but the genderless equivalent is pretty popular. And if we're going off of anecdotal evidence, neither of my parents are technically inclined. We're not all privileged enough to have multiple generations of experience with technology in our family, let alone computers.
- moeedm 12y agoNo matter how easy these tools get, most people and their mothers probably won't use them. It will always be used by people who make websites, and even a lot of those people will opt-in for a more customizable solution they can control.
- johnkpush 12y agoAgreed, most people won't use them. But that doens't mean more people won't use them. Tools that are easier to use means less technical people can use them. This is why websites like Weebly, Squarespace, and Simplybuilt exist. Technical people who build websites will be recommending these tools to those clients they can't or won't take on.
- 23andwalnut 12y agoLooks good, but it seems like there should be some example sites so we can see what the service is capable of. I would have liked to try out the editor too...
- deedubaya 12y agowww.simplybuilt.com is build using SimplyBuilt, we'll be adding more examples soon. Also, you can create an account and use the editor for free! Publishing for the first month is free too!
- robertpohl 12y agoI tried out SimplyBuilt early on and found it very easy and flexible. Love what you guys have done here!
- iliaznk 12y agoThe video is really cool!
- surreal 12y agoThis is one of the most effective, informative and attractive landing pages I've seen as a Show HN. The video in particular is short, to the point and effective (aside: did you outsource it or produce it yourself? With which tools?). As a result I'm tempted to give the product a go even though I don't have a web site I need to build with it. It's a shame, in a way, that the "your mother could do it" in the title is what's getting most of the attention here – really shows the importance of choosing your words carefully.
- dnerris 12y agoWe did produce this ourselves using ruby on rails and some js. We are still in beta and are pushing out new updates to the app almost daily. Stay in touch! TW: @SimplyBuilt
- fsniper 12y agoGreat implementation. We are using the same concept for our Local targeting basic crm + website tool. We may get a few lessons from your tool ;)
- gxespino 12y agoNeeds examples websites - like right now.
- dnerris 12y agoWe should have some live examples up next week! Fun fact, we built SimplyBuilt.com using SimplyBuilt.
- masnick 12y agoSquareSpace seems to be the big leader in the easy-enough-for-mom website space. To compete, I think you need to really differentiate on features and also somehow indicate you plan to be around for the long term. The reason this is important is that long term sustainability is probably the most important feature for websites for non-nerds. People just don't want to deal with moving content to a new service, learning a new interface, etc. For this reason I would only recommend something that looks like it will be around for 5+ years. I'm confident that SquareSpace is stable and has a business model that works, whatever other flaws they have.
- ZenoArrow 12y agoSquareSpace probably is still the market leader, but Weebly are becoming very successful (they're YC alum too)... http://www.weebly.com/ http://www.weebly.com/
- lindig 12y agoThis looks good but I didn't find example pages that would back up the claims. So: make these more prominent as I would never sign up before seeing these.
- adivik2000 12y agoLove the video! Would've been great if you had some design showcase of sort. GL! :)
- dnerris 12y agoThanks for the feedback! Live examples coming soon :)
- rjknight 12y agoI don't understand why "your mother" is the reference point here, when "so easy, someone who works in marketing could do it", since that's more relevant both in terms of commercial application and likelihood of technical knowledge.
- rhspeer 12y agoOh no, be prepared for some really harsh criticism for the "your mother could do it". I did that here: http://www.robertspeer.com/blog/apostrophenow-a-cms-so-easy-even-your-mom-could-use-it http://www.robertspeer.com/blog/apostrophenow-a-cms-so-easy-..., it's not because my mom's dumb, she's kind of a big deal in the cruise agent world (http://www.cntraveler.com/travel-tips/travel-specialists/linda-allen http://www.cntraveler.com/travel-tips/travel-specialists/lin...) and the kind of person I don't mind talking about on the internet, because she's also a bit of a badass. It's because she's my harshest critic, in the nicest (ish) way and will not tolerate wp & drupal's nonsense. It's not that mother's are ignorant, it's that mother's care about your success more than your feelings and will tell you drupal & wordpress suck no matter how much work you put into it. I'm working on a new Apostrophe 2 site for her now. Mom if you read this it's coming, and it'll be good I promise :)
- rhspeer 12y agoin hindsight we both should have substituted would for could
- deedubaya 12y agoMy mother wouldn't be able to build a website with traditional tools. With SimplyBuilt, she could. My mother falls into this stereotype that everyone is hating on. If anyone should be offended by this, I should be in that crowd. I'm not offended, because a) she's not dumb, she just hasn't been given the right tools until now b) this post isn't really about my mother or someone else's mother. Good thing I didn't say "a caveman could do it" as I might be in a similar situation. Except with cavemen. Or people related to cavemen.
- kazinator 12y agoThe stereotype is statistically true in the sense that many (probably most) programmers have a mother who isn't a programmer. Secondly, most programmers' mothers are 20-35 years older than they are. So even if they are also programmers themselves, they are senior, which means many of them are probably not coding any more (or are possibly retired,even). They wouldn't be able to build a web site without ramping up on how it's done. Nobody is saying that anyone's mother is an idiot. What is troublesome, though, is that the example person is invariably a female ancestor or relative: it is always "mother", "grandmother" or "kid sister" ("encryption scheme that will keep out your kid sister but not the NSA"). Many programmers have a father or grandfather who are not programmers, or technologically savvy. Many have a prying kid brother rather than kid sister.
- filmgirlcw 12y agoLike others, I find the title of this thread problematic. I also find your apparent refusal to understand _why_ it is problematic, even more problematic. You could have said parents instead of mom. Think about why you didn't. Got that off my chest, moving on: The video and landing page are very attractive. The video is solid but too long. While watching it, I kept mentally inserting edit markers. You can get this down to 30 seconds and it will be crisper and more to the point. When the bulk of a video is audio (you're basically just overlaying some audio on top of AE or Motion, and it looks great, but this isn't a complex story), make sure you're being as concise as you can be. If I were you, I'd edit the audio track first, cut some pauses and redundant phrasing, get it to 30 seconds, then match the animation accordingly. The end result will likely be way more successful and impressive. Brevity is bliss. Other thoughts: * You need examples of other sites, of the site builder tool (and of the data entry form) and of the backend. * You are going up against Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Yola and others. Wix, Weebly and Yola also have "free" options. I'm not advocating that you take that approach (on the contrary, I think when you do that it is often a deterrent to viable, paying customers because your main appeal is to the bottom of the barrel), but you need to be able to answer the question, "why not X." This is a saturated market, you need to be able to explain why your solution is better/easier/more-secure/whatever * I want to know more about the company. I know this is just a Show HN, but before I would plunk down a credit card, I want some sort of idea (even if it is bullshit) of the people behind the site. As someone mentioned upthread, lay people fear losing their stuff if a host goes kaput. Speaking of which, what is your data portability process? - Good early launch page. Solid design. Now make sure you can actually answer real questions about your product!
- tshile 12y ago>Like others, I find the title of this thread problematic. I also find your apparent refusal to understand _why_ it is problematic, even more problematic. You could have said parents instead of mom. Think about why you didn't. Hah. So it's ok to be ageist but not sexist? Think about why you don't see 'parents' as ageist... This is the problem with today's politically correct climate - it's not about what the person is intending to say anymore, it's about how people perceive what is said. And if a group perceives it as offensive then look out, because it doesn't matter what your intentions were anymore because your intentions are now being decided by others for you. Any hypocrisy in those people's stances is obviously to be ignored. It's an interesting dynamic to watch. It's a shame you have to tip toe so much, it almost seems to take away from the actual issues these days.
- pbjorklund 12y agoWhy price it higher than squarespace?
- zachb 12y agopbjorklund asked a good question. Do you have good answers to what makes you different from SquareSpace, Weebly, Wix, etc? And why people should give their money to you instead of them? Because, while your landing page is clean and informative, your branding doesn't inspire me to believe you're special. If I were you, I'd leverage my small, scrappy status to show users I can give them something that the big players in the site-builder market can't. Also: cool that you designed the landing page using SimplyBuilt! I would advertise that.
- GrinningFool 12y agoI see elsewhere that you built this site with this tool - does it offer wider variety? (I personally dislike the trend of lots of scrolling, oversized pictures that don't give any meaningful information, and little content...)