Please review my recent launched site Crosstips.org

by peterbe • 17 years ago

33 50 17 years ago

Is it obvious what it does? Does it work? Does it help?

mikeyur• 17 years ago

I like the idea, but I would make it a bit more clear what the site actually does.

I'd also recommend making the boxes quite a bit larger since there's so much white space. Done right, overly-large boxes work - like at tumblr ( http://www.tumblr.com/register )

peterbe15• 17 years ago

Ok. I'll certainly consider that.

guywithabike• 17 years ago

Was it really necessary to rip off Readernaut's HTML and CSS wholesale?

I mean, Jesus, it's a simple web app. It shouldn't take you more than a few hours to come up with your own design and code.

peterbe15• 17 years ago

Yes it was necessary. I don't know how to do design and CSS and there's no money made or invested into it. I tried putting together a design but it looked shit and never worked very well.

ryanwaggoner6• 17 years ago

You could have at least used a free template...

http://www.oswd.org/

patio11• 17 years ago

Convenient to you and necessary are not synonyms. There is an Internet full of free (beer and/or speech, your call), legal, pretty designs that you can use to your heart's content.

I recommend anything by Styleshout (great web 2.0y designs), MultiFlex (more traditional, a little boring by default but clean and fits just about anything), and several of the designs on oswd.org for projects which don't have the budget for a custom design. I actually ran a profitable business off of an OSWD template for almost two years:

http://www.oswd.org/design/preview/id/2583

Strip out the giant sunflower, add in a header, and bam, its a B2C software sales site.

alaskamiller• 17 years ago

As of 1355 Sunday it's popping up 502 error.

amr• 17 years ago

I get a "502 Bad Gateway" when trying to access the provided link.

peterbe15• 17 years ago

I crashed! I'll need to review the setup and support that with proper stress tests that tests the actual search as well as the static media.

matt1• 17 years ago

You really need to explain what this is for.

peterbe15• 17 years ago

Damn it! That's what I hoped I wouldn't have to. Especially the example under the form.

ryanwaggoner6• 17 years ago

Even a simple sentence at the top explaining who the site is for and what it does would be a HUGE improvement.

"Crosstips helps you finish that crossword you're stuck on."

"Need help with your crossword?"

"Can't solve a tough crossword? We're here to help..."

These aren't very good, but at least I know what the site is for now...having a description will also help with SEO.

stuntgoat• 17 years ago

Well, Google does not explain what their search is for; why should you have to? Considering it is a niche market for folks that want to solve crossword puzzles, and you had enough people talk about it with each other, you could keep the front page non-descriptive. It is a destination site that people will visit when they know about what it does.

I wouldn't want to see a slogan every time I visited the site, anyways.

Change the tip word daily to mix it up a bit.

baddox2• 17 years ago

No you don't. It's quite obvious.

JoelSutherland• 17 years ago

It would be even more obvious if you put the favicon next to the "Crosstips" header.

ryanwaggoner6• 17 years ago

Judging by the number of comments saying that it needs to be more explicit, it's quite obviously not obvious to everyone.

herval• 17 years ago

It was definitely NOT obvious for me...

petercooper• 17 years ago

Agreed. I took a look for about 30 seconds, then came here to say the same thing.

EVERY site should have a single sentence (at the least) with a concise, non-jargony explanation of what it is. You can't just assume.

When I saw someone mention the Favicon I went back and got it :) I think the problem I really had was that I read your "example" but it made no sense since I couldn't see any of the character boxes until I typed in the number of characters.

peterbe15• 17 years ago

I've added a tagline now. I didn't have one before because before I launched it on a domain name I had a much more obvious name for the site which would need a tagline much less.

acangiano• 17 years ago

It became obvious to me after glancing at the favico. It's one of those tiny details that ends up being important.

peterbe15• 17 years ago

I've made some improvements now thanks to Nicholas Woodham. There is now a tag line and the first time you visit it it writes the tag line in full.

geuis2• 17 years ago

@peterbe if you add http:// to your blog link in your profile, it becomes clickable.

peterbe15• 17 years ago

Thanks for the tip!

thorax• 17 years ago

I think this is broken-- it's been a while since I saw clickable links in profiles.

geuis2• 17 years ago

Get rid of the About page. Move that content to the left column of the front page.

peterbe15• 17 years ago

That would add noise I think. Plus don't people expect an About link/page? Kinda similar to how people expect to find a link to the home page near the upper left corner.

codeinthehole• 17 years ago

It would help if you provided definitions for the returned words to aid matching an answer to the clue. Nice idea though.

peterbe15• 17 years ago

That could definitely go into a version 2. I thought about it but decided I'll just this one released first.

peterbe15• 17 years ago

For all HTTP optimization junkies, check out the headers on all the static stuff. Pretty good caching, eh?

ryanwaggoner6• 17 years ago

Why would I use this? Isn't the fun of a crossword struggling through stuff like this without help?

peterbe15• 17 years ago

Excellent question. I made the site for the same reason a crossword solver solves a crossword: to see if I can pull it off.

ryanwaggoner6• 17 years ago

I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but if you did it just as an exercise to see if you could, why are you soliciting feedback?

raptrex• 17 years ago

on your suggestions, feedback, tips at the bottom, you might want to add some captcha or your gonna get spammed :P

markessien• 17 years ago

Yikes, I had absolutely no idea what this was for. I thought it was some type of word generator. After finding the very tiny link at the bottom, I saw the magic word: crosswords.

Most people don't do crosswords. Add that word to your page, or a lot of people will be completely lost.

tdonia• 17 years ago

"length" is a strange way to begin the conversation with your audience. i get it, length is critical to finding the right word, but that doesn't make sense until you understand what it does. i would think about this from a user experience perspective and see if maybe there's a better way to get this information from your User.

peterbe15• 17 years ago

Good point. Perhaps "Number of letters:" is better. Yeah, it does sound better.

suhail• 17 years ago

How about a "Crosstips helps you figure out the answers to crossword puzzles, provide in a letter length and a few letters to get started."

ryanwaggoner6• 17 years ago

I think you'd be far better off to swap the "About" page text for the statistics on the front page. I doubt the average visitor to your site cares how many searches have been run in the last 30 days (especially since they all seem to be zero), but judging by the comments on this page, the average new visitor probably would like to see something explaining what this is.

adrianwaj• 17 years ago

groovy feedback form, more sites should have something that easy.

cabalamat• 17 years ago

Some suggestions:

- add options for UK/US English

- add an option so that you can solve anagrams and find scrabble words

peterbe15• 17 years ago

I automatically assumes British English if you're located (by GEO IP) in the United Kingdom and likewise for American English. For people in France for example they can chose between "English (GB)" and "English (US)".

jfarmer• 17 years ago

What is this for and why do you break my browser back button?

garply• 17 years ago

I don't get it.

m_eiman• 17 years ago

Add some javascript to skip next input box automatically when entering text.

Please review my recent launched site Crosstips.org

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