HN Explorer

This is ridiculous.

1 points by LewisOC ↗ HN
No matter what, we just can't get the word out. We're not asking for one single dollar. We just want to get some minimal attention. It's been a full month since the launch with nothing but Googlebot chewing away pages all day. That's almost literally true. Lots of people and sites/businesses would <i>love</i> this service (plainboards.com) if only they knew about it -- I'm 100% sure about that. What do you do when you've tried everything and nobody listens? Nobody can like something they don't know exists. Press releases have been sent, news tips, an advertisement was attempted on HARO, Twitter, etc. Nobody noticed it, as evident from the traffic stats. There aren't words to describe the frustration of not having one single thing left to try (except for posting this) yet knowing that you're onto something grand.

14 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 32.4 ms ] thread
traxtech
People still create new forums nowadays ???
LewisOC
What's that supposed to mean?
pilot_pirx
It means, that there is already a large amount of this kind of projects not to mention plugins for any programming language or framework you can think of. and many of them look far better than yours.
tzaman
I hate to be the one to bring it to you guys, but your landing page just sucks. Doesn't convince me one bit - in fact I didn't even bother to find out what it sells or what problem it solves for me as a potential customer.

So instead of bitching about it, go and do your homework on landing pages, user interfaces and general usability.

read_wharf
I lean a little more toward liking the landing page than not. It's not great, but I like the simplicity. Maybe a bigger default font size would be good for me personally, but that's a small problem that I can easily solve.
tzaman
There is a big difference between simplicity that is properly planned (and tested) and simplicity that comes as a result of lack of design skills.

Compare the two: http://basecamp.com/ and http://plainboards.com/

The amount of text is approximately the same and you might guess which of the two is a successfull product :)

DanBC
The brown background is, and there's no nice way to say this, particularly unpleasant. Please make that a much lighter colour.

Change E2CA98 to F2EAC8, at least.

PythonDeveloper
I agree.. the page is hideous. I personally would never consider using this service. Two things I would recommend..

a) visit themeforest.net and buy a theme, apply it, and add lots of screenshots. Here's one I like from MojoThemes (not affiliate link, no affiliation at all) : http://www.mojo-themes.com/item/magnolia-a-responsive-html5-...

b) make it exclusive. People will pay more money to get into something if they think they can't.

You can accomplish this if you limit the number of users by a certain date, or close it altogether, just like Google did with GMail. If you require an invite code, AND the site and offer are compelling, within hours of doing this you will see forum posts indexed in Google where people are asking for invites.

Finally, post some invite codes on this site, and see what the uptake is.

Good luck, I hope it works out for you!

benelsen
I fully agree with the title you chose.
DanBC
Why would I want to run an anonymous registration-free forum?

How do you solve these three problems?

1) trolling / griefing / flame-bating;

2) spam;

3) lack of community;

read_wharf
Your ten minutes are up.

I just tried to use your site. I created a board, claimed it (and created an account).

The response page to claiming the board said "Success: The claim has been filed. It will normally be processed within 24 hours (probably much sooner)." I'm not going to wait much longer than five minutes to try something new, yet you put up this roadblock that would seem to depend on human action. That's not going to scale.

I think this might be the eventual URL for the board:

https://plainboards.com/!Plainboards query on Hacker News/

I created it to see if we at HN could briefly eat your dog food; since it's a discussion site, I thought it might be interesting for HN to carry on part of the discussion/critique of your site on your site.

But when I posted the first thread, I got this response:

"Success: Your thread submission has been successfully added to the system and will be checked (and hopefully accepted) as soon as possible, often within hours or the same hour. You can see its status at any time and (possibly depending on preferences) you will be notified via a PM."

You're inadvertently right: this is ridiculous.

If I'm going to use any forum-like site, I want to create a "board," and possibly an account if absolutely necessary, and then I want the site itself to get out of the way.

In general, if I can't use a site instantly, then it's instantly forgotten.

My opinion is that you have some serious re-thinking to do.

Posted with the sincere desire to be helpful.

P.S. After about 20 minutes of stumbling around on your site, I see this on my account page: "You currently don't own any boards."

Dude.

Edit: Just checked the PM message area (I think), where I think I'm supposed to be notified when the board or messages are "approved."

"Your private conversations (globally)

Nothing here. Nice and tidy."

30 minutes.

yamilg
Lewis the site looks fuggly (90's style) besides I'm not sure if the people is still using that kind of services, if so, I think is actually decreasing...
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