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Ask HN: Can I Help You with Anything?

65 points by donuts ↗ HN
Hi HN!

(Regular HN-lurker, but I never really had anything helpful to say!)--This is my first personal web project and I'd like to see the feedback from the community that I've learned most of my web/start-up/tough-times-in-life stuff from =).

willworkforamac.com

Thanks =)!

41 comments

[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 89.3 ms ] thread
arkitaip
Keep an eye out for PayPal shenanigans; lots of donation drives have had problems with them lately.

Oh, I will donate $10 when the html is 100% valid :) http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwillworkforam...

donuts
Hi! Aw, thanks for your support =)

I hear some mean things about PayPal sometimes too! Unfortunately it was the simplest donation process I knew how to implement (I was checking out Stripe but there was a lot of API/developer stuff I didn't understand--my friend had to help me install my Mixpanel trackers because I didn't really understand Javascript either), and it seemed like a convenient way for people to donate.

I just checked/validated my site on w3.org after googling what you might have meant by valid html, haha. (What a neat tool!) 31 errors .. ! Uhoh. Will get working on those, thanks for your review =)!

zacharycohn
Check out www.wepay.com. Full disclosure, I use them and they're awesome.
megamark16
Came here to say this, I used wepay.com to raise money from family and friends to buy my brother-in-law a birthday present. They are super easy to use, and super easy to get ahold of a real person if you run into problems.
donuts
Just put up a WePay button. =) Thanks everyone!
yesimahuman
I seriously wouldn't worry about HTML validation. Not sure what prompted him to even check. It's a waste of your time. One of the biggest things I've learned from startups is that you shouldn't take every suggestion and spend time on it or assume your product sucks.

In that spirit, here's a suggestion: if you have some examples of things you've done to put in each box, I think that would help. I might be contacting you!

Good luck!

mrkmcknz
If I was you I would check out http://i.crowdfunded.it/

Might be related to what you're doing :)

donuts
Thanks for the suggestion =)

I've donated on similar cause-funding platforms like kickstarter.com before, but I decided to make my own website because I wanted to get some hands-on experience in building my own site, marketing my site, and understanding my user feedback and analytics--things that I'm interested in doing professionally in the web industry. So the project is a challenge for myself to validate and improve on my marketing/copy skills, and also a kind of social experiment because I'm generally curious how the whole thing will turn out =)!

ltamake
Interesting idea for donations. I'll give it a try once my PayPal account stops hating me.

Maybe add some alternate payment gateway support (e.g. WePay, Google Checkout, etc.)? :)

spiralganglion
Stripe?

I'm going to donate $5, just because the thought of someone being stuck using anything other than a Mac is more bothersome than not having another latte. Maybe I'm too big a Mac fan. Maybe I still have a functioning Mac Plus on my desk.

donuts
=P Thank you, Ivan!

If you're ever in the bay area, shoot me an e-mail! Hopefully I'll have a Mac by then, and I'll take you out for some local coffee =)

& ltamake, zacharycohn: thanks for the payment suggestions, currently setting up an account!

PaulHoule
i just remember the time some homeless dude came up to me near union square in san fran and tried to trade me a stolen macbook for a box of doughnuts.

it's like "what the hell is wrong with ya man? i've already got a pro in my backpack..."

DanBC
A box of donuts, and the opportunity to return someone's computer seems like a good deal. I guess you're just feeding the steal-macs-for-donuts outbreak though.

At least donuts are kind f food and can't be translated to drugs or alcohol.

steve8918
Not to be over-critical, but your "starting ideas" transition too quickly, so that I can't read the full page to figure out what you actually can do to help me. I would slow it down a lot more.
dcrankshaw
I would suggest a minor tweak to your site. To me, the "How can I earn your support" part of the page is the most interesting, especially because you are asking for money. But the panels switch too quickly for (at least me) to read an entire one. You should either slow down the switch frequency or let users switch between them manually.

Interesting site idea though. And your copy is engaging. I noticed the issue because I was engrossed in reading your ideas.

Edit: It appears steve8918 beat me to the punch as I was writing this.

donuts
& Steve8918 - Thank you for letting me know!

Sorry for that usability peeve! I originally set the slider to pause whenever the mouse is hovering over a slide, but I didn't forsee that the short timeout session would be bothersome in case the cursor was elsewhere (like on the actual buttons, oops!)

I've just quadrupled the timeout time, so viewers will have more time reading a more stationary slide.

squish101
This reminds me of fancyhands.com. Keep doing what you're doing and on top of that, maybe you can drop Ted Roden a mail and ask if you can be a part of his team. This way you may get to own a Mac in double quick time. Good luck!
thaumaturgy
So, I'd like to not criticize anything at all, and just say that this is a neat idea, it's presented beautifully, you've written it in a way which got me to actually stop and read it (and visit it a second time), and I dig your sense of design, which seems to do a great job of balancing humanism with engineering.
donuts
Thanks Rob! Your compliments are encouraging =)
chromedude
Very cool idea! Would love to hear how quickly you are able to get one ;). I definitely would give you some money myself, but I actually have the same goal and am tight on money as I am trying to start a startup myself.
vessenes
Hi Francine, nice site! Did you design it? If so, you should put web design as a 'willing to help with'.
donuts
Hi there, and thanks!

I bought a theme (from themeforest.net) to make quick changes off of, and my friend gave me some CSS that I used to format the top. Here's the theme I purchased: http://tanshcreative.com/symple-lp-preview/symple_v1/index.h...

I'm not a developer and I'm pretty inefficient at marking up webpages (it took me hours of trial and error for parts that I feel like a normal web designer would take half an hour to do), so it's not something I'd advertise--and that's for your benefit rather than mine =P. But I am definitely willing to help as much as I can, with what I can of it =)

DanielRibeiro
Very nice design. Direct link:

http://willworkforamac.com

Suggestion: put design as 1 instead of 4. Also, putting your email in the same line as "talk to me at:", or aligned, would convey the information better.

pchivers
I agree with the last suggestion. The "Talk to me at: (email address)" part looks strange.
cedlimed
Love the design too. While you're at it, you may want to change the link for your email to "mailto:francine@willworkforamac.com" instead.

It's currently linking to "http://willworkforamac.com/francine@willworkforamac.com

donuts
Thank you for spotting that! The link's been changed to the mailto.

And it's aligned on the same line and centered now, with an e-mail icon instead. Icons are cute!

Jun8
Fantastic design, amazing for a first project! You definitely want to add the amount people have donated so far, it would be a nice motivation.
donuts
Yeah! I wanted to have a thanking board or some sort of real-time donation tracker (a la humble bundle), but I'm not a developer/didn't know how to implement such a thing that linked to my PayPal/WePay =(
Jun8
Well, it doesn't have to be real time, could be daily. Just check the donation figure and update your page manually.
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porterhaney
Donuts - did you do the entire front end code work?
kleiba
I'd be interested to know the percentage of date requests (mildly put) donuts will receive through her site. Hope this won't end in a stalking disaster.
PLejeck
Thank god she didn't put her home address on that site.
PLejeck
Very nice site, I'd donate if I weren't saving to buy my own MacBook (probably would also help if I had a PayPal account)

I know exactly how it is to lack a mac. I've been a Windows user up until about a month ago, when I finally threw my hands up and said "screw this, I'm getting Ubuntu" (surprisingly, Photoshop works on Linux quite painlessly)

Best of luck in getting a Mac and I hope it serves you well!

donuts
& chromedude,

thanks, thanks! =) my trusty Dell has been good to me. but i'm curious about the other side! Good luck to both of you in getting a mac =)!

allanscu
Great job! Looking forward to hearing the end result. Never quit!

-A

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[dead] h4n3sh
yeah,but not now.I think you've completed your project. Any way,good luck with that.
chris_dcosta
Funny, I was dreading re-writing the "about" and "help" copy on my project, for exactly the reasons you suggest. I'll be in touch.