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We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

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Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#131

Post by drinchev »

lumpypua wrote: post #40
Partyfists wrote: post #37

Hey! I just want to say, this is awesome and I wish you the best of luck. I am a Developer and I noticed a few really concerning things in your CSS: 1. I believe you're committing the greatest CSS Sin: Emulating the DOM structure using nesting. Here is one example: "#site-header.newheader nav>ul>li>a.buttonGreen" That CSS Selector should not exist like that. You shouldn't be using ids (first) and second this should b…

I believe you're committing the greatest CSS Sin: Emulating the DOM structure using nesting. Here is one example: "#site-header.newheader nav>ul>li>a.buttonGreen" ... If you'd like more advice on how to fix this I have written many talks. I didn't know this was an issue until recently and now I'm slowly fixing it on my main project. I'd love your additional advice/pointers!

Actually there are a couple of rules that I managed to pick up from the frontend community about CSS rules.

1) Don't use tag names in css

    div.something should be .something
2) Don't use id's

3) Isolate elements into logical components and name part of those components in the css.

Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#132

Post by saraid216 »

stormen wrote: post #113
saraid216 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, a good site is supposed to grow, right? Why, precisely?

Hmm... Because if it's "good", it's of some use to people - and you would think they would start spreading word about the site and its benefits?

I wouldn't think that. But that's because over ten years of listening to people talk about how companies, markets, and entrepreneurship function have drilled it into me that that's not how reality works.

1. Who is "people"? Who comes to your site? Where do they come from? Why are they here? How many came because a friend told them it was useful?

2. How many "visitors" become "users"? How do you define that? How many of your users find your site useful? How can you tell?

3. How many of those people are telling their friends? How much success are they having? How many of those friends actually become users?

Answering these questions, and improving the answers over time, is called "marketing". Most successful web companies have marketers. In your case, what you probably want is a high Net Promoter Score [1]. You should know what yours is. You shouldn't be asking HN for advice; you should be asking your customers what it would take to make them spread the word. (This is essentially what gwintrob's comment above is suggesting. You should do that.)

Do you need to give them better features? Do you need to make it less buggy? Do you need to streamline the workflow? Do you need to give them help in explaining it to others? Do you need to suggest ways they can promote you?

Maybe what you need is a better site. That's possible. But you need to know.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter

Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#133

Post by poopsintub »

notduncansmith wrote: post #91
poopsintub wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can definitely get that amount for freelancing PHP in the states.

Either you're joking, or I've wasted my career.

I'm not joking. In the right cities, the high cost of living will pull you that amount.

Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#135

Post by korzun »

stormen wrote: post #27
rschmitty wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would also love to know where the money went specifically. Seems insane (also do you need another website built for 200k?)

Already answered this, but I'll comment because you bothered to. Sure :) We're basicly two founders that have done most of the design and project management of the site. In addition, we've outsourced some design and all of the programming to Ukraine, including the mobile version. The outsourced development itself runs into the 100k's over the stretch of 1.5 years, and in addition, we've done some marketing (40-50k) a…

Even with moderate padding; that price tag and time frame is a bit too high, especially if you outsourced this to a team of multiple developers.

Just a general observation, I don't know much about your architecture.

Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#136

Post by Partyfists »

stormen wrote: post #117
Partyfists wrote: post #37

Hey! I just want to say, this is awesome and I wish you the best of luck. I am a Developer and I noticed a few really concerning things in your CSS: 1. I believe you're committing the greatest CSS Sin: Emulating the DOM structure using nesting. Here is one example: "#site-header.newheader nav>ul>li>a.buttonGreen" That CSS Selector should not exist like that. You shouldn't be using ids (first) and second this should b…

Hey Partyfists, thank you very much for your answer. You put a lot of effort into it, so I wanted to reply in the same manner :) The CSS stuff was done by Jesper, one of the founders, that unfortunately left the company. I'll tell him about the CSS issues you address. As for issues 3-10, I'm noting down all of them in our todo list and I'll address them individually. Thank you for great input! :)

Of course, feel free to reach out with any questions you have. I'm on twitter @partyfists let me know!

Best of luck to you guys.

Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#137

Post by korzun »

f18m wrote: post #99
stormen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Already answered this, but I'll comment because you bothered to. Sure :) We're basicly two founders that have done most of the design and project management of the site. In addition, we've outsourced some design and all of the programming to Ukraine, including the mobile version. The outsourced development itself runs into the 100k's over the stretch of 1.5 years, and in addition, we've done some marketing (40-50k) a…

It's funny to see many people giving their "expert" opinion about how expensive your web site was, just by looking the design. It is very easy to say when: 1. You are not the one developing the site, thus You have no commitment. 2. You ignore all the other project requirements (already mentioned above) just by looking to the presentation layer. If the project was too expensive, blame also the founders , which may hav…

Sure, but from the looks of things this is a pretty generic web site. If you have been doing development for a while that figure would be an instant red flag. Not blaming either party.

The 'additional' requirements that were listed to justify this such as administration area, caching layer, feeds, etc are really basic items.

So unless they wrote their own web server I don't see any issues with flagging this.

For all you know that figure could have been made up.

Re: We put $200k into a site that sucks. Please destroy us with your criticism

#138

Post by poopsintub »

stormen wrote: post #111
leoh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Development doesn't work like this. You are assuming they knew exactly what they wanted in a fair amount of detail up-front.

Exactly.

You wasted a lot of time and money...
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