Ask HN: Thoughts on side-project?
We both are huge reality TV fans, but we noticed there truly wasn't one major community or site that drives social discussion and news content for reality shows. We figured we could try and create one and give a unique experience. After looking at Wordpress and test-driving Drupal for a while, we decided to start from scratch and build our own custom system. The idea was to apply it to a niche subject that caters to both of our interests for a testing ground. The whole idea behind it was to try and create something new and original, learn a full technology stack, and just get to work and create it.
The major thing that sets apart our site from any other random social-news site is probably our live-commenting system. It's engineered to be single-threaded in order to handle incoming new comments properly. This allows a reader to not have to refresh the page in order to get the latest comments. The other goal of this also is to have seamless episode discussions as its being aired on TV. Also, at the moment we prefer to not have any ads.
There are a lot of features that are left to be developed down the road, but we wanted to get the basics complete. I'm not a professional web developer or freelancer, so this is truly my first website. If you have any questions about the technology stack or anything at all, let me know. Thanks for any thoughts or suggestions.
5 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] threadwe actually have not shown this to anyone just yet
Did you at least iterate this with people before going out to build it?
Feedback:
The site design could use improvements. I'm at a lost on what the site is about if I didn't actually read what you wrote here. That said, not only is the messaging not clear, it doesn't indicate to me why I would register an account (no visible discussion forums, etc) or what I can even do on the site.
And launching with potentially tacking multiple shows (assumption base on what is written above) is very scattered and unfocused. I would recommend focusing with a handful (maybe even one) show, and capturing the community with that and then expanding. There are fan sites (not exactly your angle) that do this and do extremely well.
EDIT: I noticed the dropdown only covers two shows for now but I strongly recommend starting with one.
I do agree it would play best if we go with one or a few shows initially and try and attract some of its currently existing communities. I definitely agree also that the site needs a better indication as to what its all about and why someone should register/login.
The dropdown on the main page is driven off of what topics exist for shows currently.
Thanks again for the feedback and gives a general direction on where to focus my efforts this next week. Cheers!
Overall, I realize its tough to gauge with no activity and a wealth of articles/comments to review. I plan to spend some time trying to gain interest in this from active communities as well as make the sites message, intent, and value clearer on the front page.
You're not a developer at all or you're not a web developer?