Digidorm live again - Took all of your advice

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1044134

by jamesvito • 17 years ago

4 11 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

About 8 weeks ago I submitted questions for a critique of my business www.digidorm.com. I took the advice of many responders - made it much easier to register, much clearer in the header of the site what it is to be used for, and redesigned the GUI a bit to clarify hi-level content. I'm now resubmitting for further feedback. I added a scholarship contest to try and generate more traffic to the site (details at www.digidorm.com/contest) - perhaps you can feedback on that as well? Thanks. The feedback was very valuable last time and I look forward to your responses again..James

systemtrigger• 17 years ago

Clickable: http://digidorm.com

I remember that thread, James. It looks like you've made decent progress and have heeded the advice from commenters here.

It is always a process to build that visual argument on a homepage to sell visitors on the concept. If I could change one thing, it would probably be to whittle down your pitch into one sentence and blow up that text up so it's extremely prominent. (e.g. "Digidorm: blog with us about your university and win a $1k scholarship.") Way to iterate and ask for feedback.

rabidsnail• 17 years ago

I know this sounds insignificant, but the first thing that jumped out at me was the JPEG artifacting in the logo. You'd do well to replace the logo with a PNG and replace that orange text-in-an-image with actual text.

arfrank• 17 years ago

I agree. Will immediately look much more professional.

Also you have CC link at the bottom, but not to what license and not what bit of all the content is licensed that way.

Also take out the tag cloud on the main page. It probably slows down things for both you serverside and the user's computer and is so far down the page no one will ever see it.

Overall I would just say to cut down greatly on clutter. It detracts/confuses from the overall point of creating a conversation around the community of each school.

mobius• 17 years ago

Great idea on the contest - many students are facing beaucoup financial hardship, and this gives them hope. Honestly, a few students are working mostly on contests as classes start. And if digidorm can resist the decline in quality like hacker news, that is good news. We very badly need real world tools for students as they try and hack their way to a degree, so please keep thefocus on using digidorm to give students the tools and contexts to understand Higher Ed so that they might transform it....And the point below about whittling down your pitch is spot on.

mgrobins• 17 years ago

I visited this site and found it to be very easy to register and get going. The site is a great idea overall. I think the scholarship contest is not only a clever idea but one that represents the site well. Digidorm is definitely worth checking out...Matt

tuggah• 17 years ago

i like the improvements; good work. also like the scholarship contest idea.

jamesvito3• 17 years ago

As with last time, amazing feedback. I LOVE the new mission statement - I was just too close to the entire project to come up with something so brief and clear (and believe me, I slaved over what is there for a while). And the GUI edits - I'm already talking to my GD about implementing some of them. Thanks Ycombinators - you all are an inspiration! Peace...James

zackfu• 17 years ago

For what it's worth, I like the idea for the site....particularly the prospects of getting really specific info about schools that is neither university-funded PR, or the crap that passes for 'Rate My Professor' dot com. I think the format could prove to be a little more inviting than Facebook (in this regard), as a I find the latter to be better for person-to-person communication as opposed to a place to find out decent info on specific topics (such as a college or university). Just my two cents.

b42boyer• 17 years ago

I liked the book scholarship idea.

I would like to suggest that to make finding colleges easier you make it so you can jump to the first letters of the school instead of numbers of the page.

jamesvito3• 17 years ago

thanks everyone. ill talk to my developer about the possibility of having a better search device. please, keep it coming. ill do my best to incorporate the best ideas. we've already begun working in a test environment to implement a new header statement and graphics.

jamesvito3• 17 years ago

Alright - check it out, I had the explanation at the top of the site edited to reflect the suggestion made here by systemtrigger. and we made the content not part of the image and made the logo a PNG. what do you think?

Digidorm live again - Took all of your advice

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