Please 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.
Actually, 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/
late 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!
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.
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.
In 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.
Hmm... 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.
Thank you! I have played with it and it's really awesome...I have been planning to use weebly for a couple wiki but it's so hard to use for fast changes. Orbs fits the bill perfectly.
Some things I would love to see:
1. colors in text
2. security (can I store a bank account number or passowrd in a private orb)
3. renaming the home paeg
4. image linking to a web url instead of just allowed to upload
5. embedding stuff (photo slideshows, youtube videos etc..)
We were a little afraid of letting people choose arbitrary colors for text. One of our goals was to make it difficult to make a page ugly and easy to make it look good. We were considering that you could choose a highlight color though. The color would be part of your custom site design. Would this suit your purpose.
Currently, you can access the site through https: but that is not the default and it is not enforced. We might consider making an option to force the site to https:
Renaming the home page. Something I'm thinking about. Actually was thinking of removing the "home" part of the tree and just making the first real page the home page by default.
Image linking. I'll put that in a recommendation.
Embedding Stuff. This is in our plans already. We have a really cool implementation idea for this. :)
Thanks. After asking around, it looks like we have done Safari testing on OSX but we haven't fully tested Firefox on OSX. We assumed if Firefox worked in Win/Linux that it would work in OSX but that seems like a wrong assumption. Our testers will go through and test Firefox on OSX now though
I 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.
REALLY 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?
My 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).
Quick 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.
I think in this market the only way to survive is to go the Ning route and make something just that much better, which yours might be and make it all premium, with a free 30 day trial.
Unless 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.
Nice 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.
Thanks, that's a great idea and something we are considering as well. It would be nice if we could make money off of premium features but the ad-sharing would let us at least pay the bandwidth costs.
I agree more with nl who posted above. Run ads on all sites by default, no rev split then charge users to remove ads.
A former company of mine did this. Many users hate ads on their personal sites and will gladly pay a reasonable amount to have them removed. Many also have no interest in making money off their sites. Besides doing a rev share complicates things a lot more.
I 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.
The 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.
Thanks 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.
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.
It 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.
Meh -- who would want their email address displayed? That's not a safe default. You'd just be punishing the users who don't manage to find the setting.
The password is probably encrypted, but reversibly so. That's still a potential security hole, but an attacker would need both the database (with its encrypted passwords) and the key.
Yes, that is correct. But we probably shouldn't email the password to the user. Just let them change it. Might consider a one-way hash instead of a two-way one though.
I 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.
I'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.
This 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?
- 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. :-)
I 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.
Golden. Imagine every startup company that will sign up for a free site, then they get a bit more successful and want more than three pages or whatnot.
Same with the people who go from casual blogging to putting out a ton of posts.
154 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 207 ms ] threadIt'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.
I don't like how it's sending my password back to me in plaintext when I register, though.
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.
Your tagline is wrapping in a way you probably don't want (osx/firefox):
http://imgur.com/PKOyC.png
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
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.
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
Any possibility for private pages/orbs ? especially for a couple to share information.
Some things I would love to see: 1. colors in text 2. security (can I store a bank account number or passowrd in a private orb) 3. renaming the home paeg 4. image linking to a web url instead of just allowed to upload 5. embedding stuff (photo slideshows, youtube videos etc..)
Currently, you can access the site through https: but that is not the default and it is not enforced. We might consider making an option to force the site to https:
Renaming the home page. Something I'm thinking about. Actually was thinking of removing the "home" part of the tree and just making the first real page the home page by default.
Image linking. I'll put that in a recommendation.
Embedding Stuff. This is in our plans already. We have a really cool implementation idea for this. :)
Sunny
Again thanks.
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.
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?
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
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?
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.
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.
Would you mind giving us some examples of sites where you like how they collect feedback?
Sunny
http://honeymoon.orbs.com/ http://hrteam.orbs.com/ http://ultimate.orbs.com/ http://teacher.orbs.com/ http://mominvancouver.com http://foodies.orbs.com/ http://mominvancouver.com/
Sunny
You might also consider licensing the technology to other sites etc...
Sunny
A former company of mine did this. Many users hate ads on their personal sites and will gladly pay a reasonable amount to have them removed. Many also have no interest in making money off their sites. Besides doing a rev share complicates things a lot more.
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.
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.
Sunny
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.
For the rest it's a really awesome website.
I get that you don't actually have to sign up, but pressing a big green button is a commitment of sorts.
I refused to sign up just to see what they looked like.
- 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. :-)
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.
Golden. Imagine every startup company that will sign up for a free site, then they get a bit more successful and want more than three pages or whatnot.
Same with the people who go from casual blogging to putting out a ton of posts.