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Rate my startup: Make stupid simple websites for work, play and life.
- shirai 16y agoPlease let us know what you think about our startup. It's the best of a wiki, a website builder and a book. We built this in response to our own needs. We needed a way to collaborate and publish but wikis weren't working for us. They were easy, but not easy enough and they are typically too ugly to use as a primary website. The key innovations for us were: Snap Editor: Click anywhere on the page and you edit in place. The page "snaps" around the text to let you know that you can edit. Drop dead stupid easy. Table of Contents: In wikis, you end up with orphan pages. In normal website navigation, you are usually limited to only around 5 pages before it gets messy. The table of contents on the right makes sure you never lose a page and that you can organize up to 1000 pages. It is drag and drop all the time. Site Decorator: Wikis (and many website builders) are ugly. We built a template designer that we know works because even our developers were making good-looking websites. One thing we aren't sure of is how to sell our product. Is it a new type of wiki? Is it a simple website builder? Curious what you guys think.
- barmstrong 16y agoThe snap editor is definitely cool. What is it built in?
- sdizier 16y agoWe built it using Javascript with the Mootools framework.
- catch404 16y agoReally like it and agree with your wiki point! are you planning to offer ssl and an API? That's all it would take to move from my ugly backpack page
- catch404 16y agoAlso do you plan custom domain support? I'd imagine that could be a money earner if you made it exremely simple for customers
- shirai 16y agoActually, we already have custom domain support built in but we turned off the upgrade feature for now while we figure out pricing. It works though as you can see on this site: http://mominvancouver.com/ http://mominvancouver.com/
- scottward 16y agoWhat would you like to see as far as the API?
- catch404 16y agolate reply I know, something along the lines of what 37signals offer for their pages api (backpack) would be great! Generally just the ability to post a page - ability to hack up an offline system/ personal backups would be nice!
- howard_yeh 16y agoI impressed by how easy it is to use. Perfect for Church moms organizing themselves. I don't like how it's sending my password back to me in plaintext when I register, though.
- shirai 16y agoWe'll get that fixed. We use it for our staff wiki at both of our companies. We've tried wikis before but found they were lacking in usability, particularly the problem with keeping it organized.
- chaosmachine 16y agoThe no-signup functionality is nice. Your tagline is wrapping in a way you probably don't want (osx/firefox): http://imgur.com/PKOyC.png http://imgur.com/PKOyC.png
- shirai 16y agoUrgh. Thanks. Just in case people are worried, apart from the home page, our app has been well tested on all the major browsers on three platforms (Mac, Win and Ubuntu). We just changed the homepage yesterday, partially for putting up this notice on Hacker News. I'll get it changed to an image and hotfixed. Sunny
- cschep 16y agoIn the Dev channel of Chrome (windows 7), 7.0.517.5, I had a really frustrating experience where it says "Click here to edit this page." and I just kept clicking and clicking, feeling like I was missing something? And it just wouldn't work. Popped open Firefox (latest on windows 7) all worked beautifully, and I'd like to echo that the site looks great! I'm also running Vimium as an extension in Crhome, so possible conflict? Dunno. You guys are competing in a really tight space (weebly, posterous), so kudos and good luck. The design is top notch.
- shirai 16y agoHmm... we do full testing and many of our staff, including myself, use it with Chrome regularly (and also Safari). I think this may be a bug only appearing in the Dev version of chrome which we aren't targetting. We are trying to differentiate ourselves with the table of contents on the right. It's hard to tell when you start (because there aren't many pages) but the tree-like Table of Contents (with drag and drop) is great for larger sites. Our staff site, for example, has over 100 pages but is nicely organized. The software can support 1000 page sites. Probably more but we haven't tested performance over 1000. Sunny
- warfare_expert 16y agoDo you plan to support search ? for a information filled wiki, search is vital. Any possibility for private pages/orbs ? especially for a couple to share information.
- ImperatorLunae 16y agoI like that I'm thrown immediately into the interface. I don't have to "just sign-up, it's free" to try it out. Signing up for something means giving someone else my e-mail, verifying the e-mail, logging back in... all of this just to see how something works, when in all likelihood, I won't touch it again. This though, this is a good idea. I've already made the website, and I'd have to sign up if I wanted to save it. I have something invested in it; it's now worth my time to save the site. It's intuitive, easy, and useful. You guys have a good shot at survival.
- webwright 16y agoREALLY well done. I'm very impressed-- one of the slicker edit implementations I've seen in a while! I hope it's a fun project rather than a business effort, though-- seems like competing with Posterous, WordPress, Weebly, and a bajillion other site builders/editors out there is going to be awfully hard when the going rate for such things is free (read: get funded or shift to a business market ASAP). Apps like this have a reasonable viral loop (i.e. view a site built on it, see a button that says, "get your own Orb in 15 seconds!")... But if that's wildly successful, how exactly do you make money?
- shirai 16y agoMy company built and owns CityMax which is a website builder for small businesses. We have about 20,000 paying customers there and are profitable. This is more of a "can we change the world?" effort. One of the key differences we believe is the table of contents on the side. Blogs are a modern representation of newspapers, magazines and other periodicals. One of our goals is to see if we can make a modern representation of books. One nice thing that we have found is that many of our staff actually have multiple sites for different uses. We use one each for our two companies. I've got one between my wife and I. I have one to keep personal notes. It doesn't feel like we are using them just because we built it either. In many ways I use it like a wiki but organizing a wiki has always been a weak point for me. I always end up with orphan pages with no links to them. Also, wikis are almost categorically ugly for some reason. On the other hand, blogs are often beautiful. One of our design goals was to be "beautiful." Please check out our template designer. We think it might be one of the best in the industry (blog, website builder, or otherwise). Sunny
- erikig 16y agoQuick initial comparo btw CityMax and Orbs (might as well...) AKA: Challanger (Upstart) vs. Incumbent (Traditional) 1. Orbs throws you into the workflow without asking for anything. That is quite attractive compared to the traditional (CityMax) model. I really prefer to divulge my information if and only when I like the product. 2. I have decided: "Free" is the new 4 letter word. I don't want to see it until I decide I like the product. 3. Both have wierd names, it is tough to tell what either does from the outset. Anyone else?
- howard_yeh 16y agoa screencast of the app would nice
- notahacker 16y agoI actually prefer the "one click to start using"
- howard_yeh 16y agomaybe directly embed the screen cast in the starting template
- Poiesis 16y agoUnless I'm missing something, this needs an obvious hook of why it's easier, right up front. I see a number of attractive screenshots, but nothing to excite a user into "Wow! This is simple!". I mean, everyone says their software is simple. You're going to have to show, not tell, right on the front page. Your audience is nontechnical users, and I think there may be a bigger hurdle there to get them to "click on the big green button". At least a better screenshot maybe? I can see it's supposed to show editing I think but it's not clear.
- shirai 16y agoWe have a quick video (30 seconds or so?) but didn't stick it up yet. Maybe we'll try and stick that in today though.
- bretthellman 16y agoNice job, as soon as I clicked the "start now button" orbs exceeded my expectations thanks to the wysiwyg type editor. Couple thoughts: 1. Where can customers submit feedback, get support, make feature requests, etc.? That's priority #1 2. Any thoughts on how can you get the word out, I'd stop building new features and focus on the viral component.
- shirai 16y agoThanks for the feedback. Would you mind giving us some examples of sites where you like how they collect feedback? Sunny
- mdemare 16y agoLooks great! I'd like to see some demo orbs to see what's possible with the editor.
- shirai 16y agoHere's some demo orbs that we created. http://honeymoon.orbs.com/ http://honeymoon.orbs.com/ http://hrteam.orbs.com/ http://hrteam.orbs.com/ http://ultimate.orbs.com/ http://ultimate.orbs.com/ http://teacher.orbs.com/ http://teacher.orbs.com/ http://mominvancouver.com http://mominvancouver.com http://foodies.orbs.com/ http://foodies.orbs.com/ http://mominvancouver.com/ http://mominvancouver.com/ Sunny
- usernoms 16y agovery slick
- robaato 16y agoLooks very nice. You might also consider licensing the technology to other sites etc...
- sjf 16y agoI like the frontpage, I wish everything was this easy. Couple of suggestions: In design: Customized is the top item, but I don't have any customized layouts (nor is there a hint how to make one). The layout editor is confusing. I don't see what is the difference between bars and banners, etc. Eventually I figure out these are the categories of the layout, and not particular parts of the page I am going to design. The names are still not very clear to me, seems like the categories should be named after the banner image: something like nature, business, buildings, sport, etc. It turns the customised design editor is actually very cool. I'd like to be able to resize the images though, and delete them - the theme I was editing had three banners images (the 'money' theme), and I wanted to get rid of the extra two. The color set with the black background wasn't working for me (using Chrome). In the editor: Inserting a url, when I select the text and insert a link the text becomes the caption - but if I choose one of my own pages the caption text gets replaced with the name of the page. It doesn't look like I change it either (without using the html editor). In settings: Why does my username have to be six characters long? I'm quite attached to 'sjf' Settings, privacy and invites look great, very simple. As an un-privileged viewer I can still see the design and settings links even though they don't do anything. This is frustrating. Hope it works out for you guys. I share your frustration with wikis, they are so ugly.
- thesunny 16y agoThe feedback on the design section is really helpful. We have been thinking of how to redesign the design section because of the issues with discoverability and these comments clarify some other issues. The Insert URL issues has been noted. Thanks. In terms of username, we did this to prevent somebody from just squatting all the good names. But clearly 'sjf' is not something we need to protect. I think we'll just take the most common first names and 1000 or so most common dictionary words and protect them though.
- petervandijck 16y agoI'm sorry, I don't like it. The editing interface is way confusing and cluttered. Sorry.
- shirai 16y agoThanks for the honest feedback. I just want to clarify whether it was the "snap", the fact that editing happens inline or the editor toolbar that you found confusing and cluttered. Or something else. Sunny
- city41 16y agoReally awesome site, I hope it does well. However, after signing up your welcome email contained my password in plain text. Which probably means you are storing it in plain text. Please consider doing a one way hash on it for better security.
- city41 16y agoAnd here is a tiny nitpick: I can log in with my email address even though the login form says "Username".
- Huppie 16y agoIf both of them work that sounds like a great feature for most people.
- eru 16y agoBut why require a username, then?
- Huppie 16y agoIt does indeed seem a bit strange to require a username when an email-address is enough. However, my point was that even though they use usernames, they still allow you to simply login by using their e-mail address. That's a lot better than sites having a 'lost your username?' link IMHO.
- scottward 16y agoWe need the username in order to say who edited what.
- eru 16y agoHow about using the email address instead (and offer a username as a display alias only, if people don't want to have their email address displayed).
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- marknutter 16y agoYou guys own orbs.com? Wow, how much did that run ya?
- thesunny 16y agoCan't remember exactly but I think it was around $10,000. We bought it a long time ago.
- DeusExMachina 16y agoA little detail: the home page title is "Home", does not look good in the browser and is bad for SEO. For the rest it's a really awesome website.
- thesunny 16y agoThanks. Don't know how we missed that. It's on the fixit list.
- newmediaclay 16y agoI wish the site had a nice Features Area, so I could get an overview of what the product will do without actually signing up for it. I bet you'll lose some legitimate customers who would rather read about the product before making a "purchase" decision.
- Poiesis 16y agoI've seen that before, PearBudget is the site I remember the most. I get that you're trying to get me through the funnel, but if the funnel is the only thing there and there's nothing there to tell me how gong the funnel is or why I should want to go through the funnel, then I'm going to bounce. I get that you don't actually have to sign up, but pressing a big green button is a commitment of sorts.
- eru 16y agoHow about getting rid of the button and just making the first example part of the starting page?
- jvandonsel 16y agoI was really expecting to see some links to sample sites on the front page, rather than just thumbnails. I refused to sign up just to see what they looked like.
- Vweller 16y agoWe added links to the sites on Friday! :)
- FraaJad 16y agoI'd pay $5/year for CNAME support + export content feature.
- warfare_expert 16y agosame here
- Huppie 16y agoI bet most people would easily pay $50/year for those features.
- smysore 16y agoThis is great. I see one immediate problem with group collaboration that sort of makes me not want to use the site -- I have to recruit all my friends and convince them to keep adding to the site. Is there some sort of feedback loop to encourage contribution and maintain content so I don't have to do that myself?
- silverlight 16y agoA couple critiques for the front page: - Change the wording on your "Call to Action" button. The fact that you can jump right in and start editing without filling out a form is great -- emphasize it, don't hide it. Saying "Sign up, it's free" makes me think I'm going to be filling out a form, creating a username, giving out my email, etc. It should just say "Try it now for free" or "Jump right in" or something along those lines. - The screenshots of example sites should most decidedly either open up larger, or open to the actual live sites on which those screenshots were taken. If I knew better what the button did (see above) I might not have cared as much, but I always like to see what the creators consider some "ideal end results" with their product. A tiny thumbnail is just not going to cut it in that regard. EDIT: Okay, going back, I see now the button actually says "Start Now, it's Free". I don't know why I thought it said "Sign Up", but I guess if nothing else it's worth noting that an actual "user" went to your site and misread the button. I don't know if that means it still needs to be changed, but at any rate, it happened. :-)
- Bitmobrich 16y agoI agree, the screenshots of example sites should open to the actual live site.
- thesunny 16y agoThanks for the suggestion. It is doing this now.
- aquark 16y agoI read the 'Start now' button as 'sign up' on a first glance too and was then confused by the 'no signup' text below it. Maybe choose a word that doesn't begin with 'S' and doesn't have a shape like 'Sign Up' ... I like the 'jump in' idea, but maybe that is not culturally neutral enough.
- admorphit 16y agoMaybe 'No registration required' is what you're looking for?
- fady 16y agohave you heard of http://www.squarespace.com/ http://www.squarespace.com/? They have the same pitch: build a site, no programming required... They have a good model for income..
- warfare_expert 16y agoso expensive though for casual personal use...
- neodude 16y agoThe challenge for Orbs is to come up with a way to be profitable without make it too expensive for casual use.
- tofumatt 16y agoThis is really slick! Great job in terms of design, UI, responsiveness, etc. Dunno how it looks as a business, but it's a slick product for sure.
- 3ds 16y agoWell done! 2 things: - make all images on the landing page clickable, maybe link them to an example that uses that design. I clicked and nothing happened. - don't show the "delete" or "rename" menu item on the "Home" page, when you can't use them anyways.
- SolarUpNote 16y agoWhen glancing at a site like this, I'll give it 5 minutes. Usually the 5 minutes are spent reading headings/paragraphs, watching an intro video, checking pricing / features. But in this case, I spent the 5 minutes actually using the product. (because that's ALL you can do!)... (which is good) I like that you don't have to create an account - I was able to get in and start building a site in less than a minute. I also liked the "Text Style" and "Color Set" pickers. (I like that they're combinations of heading/paragraph styles, instead of having to choose them separately). I also like that you don't have a bunch of different layouts too choose from. Picking a header image should be enough for most users to start with. Very impressive!
- Goosey 16y agoJust to offer a counter-opinion, I went to the site searching for a video to explain it to me and left when I couldn't find it. I did click to start creating a site, but since I didn't have any site I actually wanted to create I felt intimidated by this approach and gave up immediately. Looks like a slick product though, I will definitely give it a try when I have something I actually want to make! :)
- ollysb 16y agoVery impressed, been looking for something like this for a couple of weeks. Are you planning on adding 'comments' functionality.
- scottward 16y agoYep. That's on the list.
- emilis_info 16y agoI am very impressed. Do you have any plans to make it possible to use an orb for blogging? One very simple way to turn a wiki into a blog is to add shortcut for "todays page". The shortcut should open page "/blog/yyyy/mm/dd" for editing. It is a killer feature for me in Zim desktop wiki (http://zim-wiki.org/ http://zim-wiki.org/). You will probably have to add some sort of pages-listing-child-pages, but it shouldn't be very hard. I know, because I have tried it myself for a wiki I have been developing ;-)
- ollysb 16y agoWill it be possible to design a template from scratch in html?
- scottward 16y agoProbably not. Our focus is on simplicity and on the 20% of features that deliver 80% of the value. Is that a deal breaker for you?
- admorphit 16y agoI think there are not enough templates yet if you wish to make this big enough to be profitable, so perhaps an advanced mode that allows you to tweak css would be good.
- ollysb 16y agoUnfortunately that is. My intended use is as a simple content management system for a friends business website. The interface is perfect, however they have paid for a website design(couple of sample pages) with the correct branding etc. Without being able to apply the branding we can't make use of your service. It's worth noting that I'd happily pay $20/month for your service if that was a possibility. The simplicity really is a strong selling point.
- thesunny 16y agoI think this idea if quite compelling. We will consider this for a future project. I can think of some things we can do to make this a perfect hybrid of "complete control for the designer" and "completely simple for the designer's client." Very interesting... Sunny
- Aegean 16y agoIt's very neat. I had a minor issues with changing text formatting. I would make sure they're smooth. Also the UI updates are mildly slow, e.g. when you press enter for a new line. Could make that a bit simpler/faster.
- tomerico 16y agoSuggestion: Provide the user with starting templates based on their goals e.g. blank, wedding, blog, Company Information... There templates will contain a default theme and the structure inside, which I could use as a guide when editing. In any case, fantastic site! I'll try and do my wedding site with it.
- thesunny 16y agoHow should we find out what your goal is? Little afraid of asking since that would add to our quick startup process. Sunny
- eru 16y agoHow about: Have one big button for Quick Start, like you do, and either adding some buttons for "Wedding Quick Start", "Company" etc below that button. Or on the page you land on after hitting "Start Now" keep your editable page, but also add those more specific buttons at the top (and also one with "Nah, leave me alone." to get rid of them). You can also get rid of the "Start Now" button and just allow people to get started on the front page. (Have your invariable welcome section at the top, but put the edit area below. And of course you will need a good idea for how to get the URL of the newly created temporary page to your users.)
- hariis 16y agotrying it out right now. How do you share once I make it private? it wasn't obvious to me.
- scottward 16y agoClick "Settings" at the top then "Users". Maybe we need to make that more obvious.
- Tichy 16y agoI don't understand it: why does it mention things like todo lists or trip organizers, when it is just a web editor?
- scottward 16y agoThe idea is that since creating an Orb is so quick, it makes sense to create sites for all kinds of different things. We're trying to lower the threshold. Instead of storing stuff locally, in Google Docs, in email, etc., Orbs becomes a handy place to store almost any kind of textual information.
- Tichy 16y agoOk, but for example for a trip advisor I would have thought there would be registration of travelers, mailing lists, and so on. Maybe I misunderstood - of course if instead of an algorithm, you have some human updating the data on the site, all that is doable.
- scottward 16y agoYeah, the sites are all free from text and human driven.
- losvedir 16y agoWow, very slick. Will keep this in mind next time I need to set up a quick website. One issue -- the "forgot your password" didn't work when I used my username, had to use my email address. Also, after I registered, my password was emailed to me in clear text which I generally don't like -- I get uncomfortable when I see my password (and who might be sitting next to me when I check my mail?). Although since the site doesn't use SSL I guess should be using a throwaway one anyway.
- thesunny 16y agoOn not using the username for lookup, will put this in as a bug. Will put a higher priority on not emailing the password as we had several people mention this. Sunny
- qixxiq 16y agoWell done, probably the best implementation of a simple site builder I've seen. Only issue I found was the template picker has body content "This is where your content will be.". Granted its quite an easy change but a repeated sentence like that doesn't quite show off what the template would look like with actual paragraph text (not all equally sized and spaced). Lorem ipsum does a fair bit better job at this, but since the text will be user facing I'd suggest writing up some decent sample text, perhaps a story about orbs.com?
- hdx 16y agoI'd be nice to have a little demo video.
- hkuo 16y agoI think many of the use cases you list on the front page are a bit of a stretch. The To Do list for example, there's already hundreds of different ways people keep their to do lists, and I can't see any advantage of keeping one here over my own way. You might want to consider distilling down the use cases to a handful if not one or two very strong use cases and focus on those. It's much harder to market to everyone rather than specific user types. If you try to speak to everyone, the message gets very watered down, but if you try to speak to one specific user type, i.e. Moms, the message is direct and relevant.
- greg_holsclaw 16y agoLooks like the freemium model for web hosting/construction. I have to agree with some other comments stating the staring templates are needed. People new to site construction will see the blank sites as too much, like when you give someone 25 choices to buy jams, they don't buy any. But if you give them 5 choices of jam, they are more likely to buy something. Guide their design process a bit and they will grow their Orbs enough for it to really take shape.
- markkanof 16y agoReally nice. I love the image tool. Super easy to use and looks great. The slider to resize the image is great. A lot of tools like this default to type in boxes for pixel dimensions. In most cases exact pixel sizing just doesn't matter. With your tool I can just drag the slider until it looks right. Any chance of getting some image library functionality so I can browse the images that I have previously uploaded. Not strictly necessary, I could just upload again, but it could be a nice feature. One small complaint. The behavior of the Add a Link, Add a Table, and Add an Image buttons seems inconsistant. They all have the little down arrow which to me indicates that a menu will drop down with some options. The Add a Table button performs exactly as I expected, but the Add a Link and Add an Image buttons cause a "dialog box" to popup. Using the dialog box is fine in general, but because of the down arrows I am expecting a menu and it is a little jarring.
- thesunny 16y agoThanks. The image does a real resize as well on the server although you probably already knew that. Thanks for the heads up on the "dialog box" popup. That's a bug that no one noticed. I'll add that to our list. Sunny
- bkj123 16y agoWell done! Incredibly intuitive. The image add/text alignment is great and html editing to boot. Can you tell if many users have added google analytics?
- scottward 16y agoActually, the editor strips out Javascript for safety reasons which unfortunately, makes it so users can't add GA. We're working out whether we should make exceptions when we do the strip or provide in-house stats.
- aquark 16y agoWhy not just accept the GA id in the settings page and inject the code at the right place yourselves? Though simple in-house page view stats would probably work better for 99% of your target audience than having to sign up for GA.
- bigiain 16y ago+1 - this'd be _way_ more compelling for me if it had some sort of analytics integration. Doesn't _need_ to be Google Analytics, but that's probably the easiest choice... (perhaps there's a business opportunity, do a deal with someone like getclicky.com - have a simple signup/installation of their tracking code in exchange for a revenue share...)
- jonp 16y agoI like it. One suggestion: on the "name your site" page tell people the rules for site names. I first tried a number and got told it had to start with a letter. Then after my second attempt I was told it had to be at least 6 letters. Third time lucky.
- johns 16y agoGreat domain name. How did you get it?
- shirai 16y agoI think I found it at greatdomains.com Sunny
- cemregr 16y agoI couldn't find a way to move the table of contents to the left side. Is that possible?
- scottward 16y agoNo, right now, it can only be on the right.
- dan_b 16y agoVery very slick.
- klbarry 16y agoCool site. I'm super experienced in CMS type things like this, having done work for local businesses in the past. Here's some competitors you might not know about: www.webstarts.com - They let you drag and drop to make designs, which is great, and have more features than anyone. They also try to bilk you horribly with worthless addons. Check these guys out for ideas, maybe make a free website. With design skills you can make an amazing website with this, most people don't though. www.sitekreator.com - An expensive ($10 monthly) site creator with many features.
- rene_sk 16y agositekreator is a little bit more expensive than that (http://sitekreator.com/sitekreator/pricing.html http://sitekreator.com/sitekreator/pricing.html) but it does offer a lot that most of the alternatives mentioned here do not - how about a CDN, full Google Apps integration and some of the most advanced Photo Gallery Visualizations in the industry, just to start? ;) And if you want more out of your designs, our Pro package gives you complete design freedom without having to write code. Rene SiteKreator Community Manager
- jordanlev 16y agoAlso check out Concrete5 ( http://concrete5.org http://concrete5.org ), which is an open source CMS you install on your own server -- has in-place editing with drag and drop (and tons of other user-friendly features as well, like bulk file uploading, configurable forms, videos, maps, search, etc). And if you're a developer it's WAY more straightforward to extend than most PHP CMS's.
- GavinB 16y agoI would love to be able to give this toolset to people in PR and Corporate Communications. The ability to edit a static, professional looking site as easily as updating a blog would be a huge benefit for them.
- lipnitsk 16y agoI would spell coordination (as in project coordination) without a dash.
- aquark 16y agoCool editor -- definitely consider making it licensable. A minor quibble: when I create a table it would be nice if 'tab' moved between cells as in Word/Excel rather than adding a tab within the cell.
- wmwong 16y agoGood catch. We had this working before but I guess it's a bug that slipped through. It's been logged. I don't know if you caught it, but there are some other table shortcuts like CTRL+Enter creates a new row below and CTRL+Shift+Enter creates a new row above.
- prawn 16y agoHow are you dealing with the potential of spammers? Watching and will worry about it when it happens? Or something else? Got an idea in a similar space but been wondering how I could effectively deal with bots, etc. I have a variety of techniques on forums/comment sites dealing with spam but none are perfect and some still gets through (usually manual operators rather than bots).
- scottward 16y agoI suppose we'll need to include a captcha if we start to see a lot of crap sites being created.
- jasonkester 16y agoYou'll need a lot more than that. Like right now, because they'll be headed your way as soon as you get any exposure. Here's what to do: http://expatsoftware.com/Articles/2010/03/care-and-feeding-of-happy-spammer.html http://expatsoftware.com/Articles/2010/03/care-and-feeding-o... Bake all of that into your site from the beginning and hopefully you'll stay off of Google's blacklist.
- kmort 16y agoThe site is blocked by my MegaCorp's proxy. (No reason given.) Accessing from my phone I really like the site, just thought you should be aware that you've made it to someone's blacklist.
- catch404 16y agoIs there a Twitter account to follow updates?
- wmwong 16y agoCheck @orbscom
- baltcode 16y agoThe edit on clicking doesnt work with Firefox 4 beta (I am on Windows 7). It works on the regular firefox 3.6.9 though.
- simonista 16y agoOne little thing, in the Design tab on the left it looks like all the closed arrows are open and the one open section is a closed arrow. (All the closed ones are pointing down and the open one is pointing right). Safari 5 on Snow Leopard.
- shirai 16y agoWoe, that is ridiculous. Surprised nobody spotted that including me. Will get this fixed.
- baltcode 16y agoI am looking for better support for right to left languages. I use Google's transliterate bookmarklets to enter text, which sort of works OK, but then somehow the text box flips the orientation and the punctuations go to the wrong side. This might be a low on your priority right now, but its something I'd be interested in.
- obiefernandez 16y agoWhat did you write it in?
- sdizier 16y agoWe wrote it in Ruby using an in-house framework. The db is http://www.mongodb.org http://www.mongodb.org which we have found to be awesome.
- obiefernandez 16y agoWTF why on earth did you limit usernames to between 6 and 12 characters??? My first impressions were super favorable, but when you prevented me from using either obie or obiefernandez (my preferred usernames) for no good reason it totally killed my enthusiasm. Stopped me dead in my tracks. :(
- admorphit 16y agoI agree with you, but there's a politer way to express your frustrations-
- obiefernandez 16y agoIndeed. Just wasn't feeling very polite last night. My bad.
- thesunny 16y agoDon't know if you'll read this but we will be setting the lower limit to three characters and we may raise the upper limit as well.
- dlevine 16y agoI worked on the Page Creator Team at Google (WYSIWYG website editor that launched 4 or 5 years ago, and was eventually subsumed into Sites). It's cool to see how much better the technology is than it was back then (we literally had to build a different editor for every browser, since contenteditable only existed in IE, and there was no such thing as Mootools or JQuery) Your site is pretty cool. The table of contents feature is nice (we had a lot of requests for that). I wouldn't worry about large sites, because you are going to have to optimize for some use case. One thing we found was that a lot of people didn't actually know what to put on their site. Templates are probably a good way to do this. Another possibility would be to have different entry pages for different use cases (bring people in when they search for "I want a way to do X"). If you want an example of a company that has been successful in this market, take a look at SquareSpace (they were profitable on their own, and just took a monster VC round).
- VMG 16y agoIt's a shame it isn't developed anymore
- jasonkester 16y agoMinor nitpick: I couldn't get out of editing a block of text. I'd hit cancel, it would pop up a confirm saying "save or cancel", I'd hit cancel. It would drop me back into the editor. That happened 3 times in a row and I was about to leave and never come back to your broken site. Then I noticed the tiny little "actually cancel" link down at the bottom of that confirmation box. So my suggestion is to fix your save/cancel confirm box to work like everybody else's. You'll confuse a lot less people. While you're at it, grey out the rest of the page while it's visible. It pops up down below the content you're editing, and it's easy to miss it and wonder why the first cancel button is not doing anything. And of course, it has the same button names on it, leading one to expect to be able to click the first cancel button a second time (since you're already hovering over it) to accomplish the same thing.
- eru 16y agoHow about: "Save", "Go back to editing", "Leave without saving". "Cancel" may just be too ambiguous.
- arsh 16y agocheck https://jottit.com/ https://jottit.com/
- bufordtwain 16y agoThis is exciting. If you can get groups of people to collaborate on topics of shared interest then you could build dedicated pages ("information hubs"?) for every conceivable topic, sort of like wikipedia, only better. Then advertising would pay the bills (and probably very well) because those hubs would be linked to often and come up frequently in searches. To build momentum you could crowd-source by offering users a cut of the advertising revenue depending on their level of contribution.
- thesunny 16y agoCertainly Orbs is a good replacement for a wiki. We are playing with an idea to allow for moderated wikis. In other words, you can take content from other people and choose which stuff you want to let in.