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Ask HN: Could you help me improve my site?

5 points by giantfuzzypanda ↗ HN
http://debate-zone.com

Any design/UX or features tips would be great.

I just want to make sure there's no blatant bugs before my ad runs on reddit Thursday.

Some background: Built with Ruby on Rails 2.1 (upgraded to 2.3, I think), basically added small features over the course of 6 months, and I've tried to keep a minimalistic design.

Thanks.

26 comments

[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 79.3 ms ] thread
giantfuzzypanda
Quick question: should I remove the small Google ad so early-adopters aren't scared off, and then place it back in later?
josefresco
Keep the ad, you can't make money if the ads aren't showing. Once you have some traffic however, you'll need to integrate your advertising better, as your CTR will be very low in it's current state.
mike-cardwell
You can create anchor tags like this:

[debatezone](http://debate-zone.com) debatezone

You should make it add rel="nofollow" to the generated links otherwise spammers will post items in order to gain "link juice"

mike-cardwell
"The easiest way to debate online – argue with people and get points."

I would change that to just "The easiest way to debate online" The rest seems superfluous and poorly worded.

mike-cardwell
Where are the "Forgotten your username/password?" options?
giantfuzzypanda
Not there because I am too lazy. You're right though, and I will add them eventually.
mike-cardwell
Wont let me create a debate. It claims every debate title I try to use is already taken.
giantfuzzypanda
>.< There was an issue with .downcase! returning nil, fixed it.

Can you try again please?

mike-cardwell
I just created an oddly named debate and it seems to have broken things. I named it: <"'&>------

Can't even view it.

adamtmca
Isn't this how intense debate started?
mike-cardwell
XSS Proof of concept. I've injected javascript into this page:

http://debate-zone.com/zones/15

Escape your inputs properly or suffer cookie stealing and session hijacking XSS attacks.

mike-cardwell
I could have put something on that page to steal your cookie contents. Would I have been able to do anything interesting with this interesting looking page as an admin user?

http://debate-zone.com/admin

giantfuzzypanda
Thanks for testing this stuff out! That admin page is actually broken, I don't actually have a working admin page. As for the XSS stuff, I'm going to go fix that.
josefresco
This is purely design, but the site is lacking any sort of logo. In fact your page headline (and combining color scheme) almost makes the site look like one of those domain place-holder pages. I'd do up a quick logo, and then maybe hire someone to design you something better.
giantfuzzypanda
Yeah I pretty much ripped off Google in an attempt to make the site look clean. I don't know if I want to hire someone yet, but I'll make a few changes to the CSS in the next few minutes to see what happens. I have a nice logo that someone on Reddit made me, but I haven't put it up yet.

To anyone that views this site in the next 15 mins: come back later! mega css-reconstruction in progress.

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josefresco
On your FAQ page you should include a link to your preferred method of contact where you ask people to hire you.
Scott_MacGregor
It's comming up fine now on IE 7.0.5730.11 + FireFox 3.5.1 + Chrome 4.1.249.1045 all on XP Pro SP2 behind Zone-alarm with mobile code control off.

For development, you can see what browsers are in general use right now with this link: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Here is Evolt's browser archive for downloading older browser versions if you need any: http://browsers.evolt.org/

bosch
Keep in mind when looking at the W3 Schools stats that mostly web devs and techies go to that site so it would be best to view them as a sub-set of the general public's browser stats.
mediarosh
I could help you out with the design of your website if you want. My portfolio is at www.mediarosh.com

Email me at mediarosh@gmail.com