Ask HN: Review my site - devcheatsheet.com | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review my site - devcheatsheet.com

devcheatsheet.com

186 pointstim_church90 comments

You have a couple of cheat sheets of mine in your directory, which I appreciate. However, you directly link to the PDFs. It would be nice if you included a link to my site that lists the sheets I've made. Maybe on the source page for my name?

No problem. There is currently a link to your blog from the source page. Would you like me to change this link to your cheat sheet list? Or are you talking about a separate link?

In general, I try to avoid direct links to PDFs except when it is unavoidable or confusing for the user. If there were separate landing pages for each cheat sheet, I could remove the direct PDF link and link to those instead.

Oh I didn't realize my name was linked to my blog. That works for me!

I like it. Clean layout, easy to find what I was looking for (even searched for Clojure).

But is this merely an aggregation of cheat-sheets off of the web? Is there any review process involved before a cheat-sheet shows up on your list? I guess what I am getting at is how is this different from me just searching google for "emacs cheatsheets"?

Yes, this is a cheatsheet aggregator/directory from cheatsheets around the web. Each cheatsheet is manually reviewed to make sure that it is useful and relevant. I think it is important to maintain a high quality level in the directory or else it defeats the purpose. In the future, I hope to add sorting by popularity to make it even easier to find the top results.

So why is this different than a google search? Well, in my experience, Google does not return the best results for cheatsheets. This may be partially due to the fact that many are downloads in PDF or other formats, so the relevant content may not help with SEO ranking. Another advantage is that devcheatsheet.com provides a preview before you click through and download. Finally, it is also easier to navigate between related topics such as Javascript and JQuery.

"Each cheatsheet is manually reviewed to make sure that it is useful and relevant. "

And accurate? Do you have people experienced in all those languages?

No, right now I am the only one who approves new content, even in languages that I am not familiar with. Reviewing every command in every cheatsheet would be a very difficult and time-consuming process.

In general, I have not noticed many inaccuracies in the cheatsheets other than typos or small errors. If there are errors, then hopefully users will contact the author and he will update it or issue a new version.

As I've mentioned in other comments, I also hope to add either community voting or popularity indicators to help identifiy the best (and presumably most accurate) cheatsheets for each language/tag.

Great! Thanks for the response. I really like the site, and I agree with you that Google does not always lead to a good answer each time.

I wonder if a "Was this useful for you?" feature might be a good idea. I say this in response to your "sorting by popularity" comment. I guess you could use a voting system too.

Great job though. Bookmarked.

I've had pretty good success with Google when using the term "quick reference" rather than "cheat sheet".

Great job, thank you for sharing this resource with us.

Please add this cheat sheet for Xcode: http://cocoasamurai.blogspot.com/2009/08/xcode-shortcuts-upd...

It's not mine but I have found it useful.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will add it to the directory now.

I loved your site when I first saw it... So much I submitted it myself:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1052937

Thanks! Not sure how I missed this one...

There seems to be no understanding of 'version' by the search algorithm. For instance with Python:

http://devcheatsheet.com/tag/python/

Version 2.4 is near the top. Even if that was the most popular cheat sheet, there should be some way to have references for newer versions at the top. I know it's a tough problem that Google hasn't cracked even, but it would be nice to have addressed even with a workaround like a version keyword for each cheat sheet and then a list of versions on the right side.

I agree that there needs to be a way to easily distinguish between versions. I am planning to add version keywords but haven't gotten to it yet. Also, I hope to add more sorting options too, such as date created, which might also help.

Some user voting might be nice. This would likely create a canonical cheat sheet for each section.

For instance, here http://devcheatsheet.com/tag/ruby/ the first cheat sheet isn't even ruby specific, and I think this is a lose.

Otherwise, a great site I'll likely be using it in the future.

I agree. My next big task is figuring out the best way to rank the most relevant results for each tag. I am looking into several options including voting and an aggregation of other popularity factors (# clicks, # bookmarks on delicious, # links, etc).

I second voting. Being new to a lot of these languages, I would not in the slightest figure out which one of these reviews is the best to look at.

Glad to hear that it is on your radar!

If you are looking to evolve the site here are some suggestions: Create an online editor in javascript or flash that lets your users create and edit cheat sheets online. Leverage a CC license so your users can print and spread the created cheat sheets (free advertising). Sell prints (photos), mousepads, booklets etc. While offering free products or a monetary reward to the authors (threadless style). Also let the author give their reward to a related organization (like the python software foundation for a python cheat sheet). Keep user participation high and the site organized with tagging and ranking features.

Very interesting ideas. I had never considered these before. Thanks!

There is no need to offer authors money. You just need to formulate something clever around reputation/kudos.

Yes, money is just type of incentive. You want to experiment and measure what works best, maybe even let authors choose what they want.

Goddamn that's slick. That goes straight in my bookmarks.

Any chance you could get an XNA section?

Sure. Any particular XNA cheatsheets you can suggest?

Sadly, no. I was hoping to use this tool to track some down.

Great implementation!

Most of your visitors will be coming because they want to learn a language from a cheat sheet or have a quick reference. This seems like a great target audience for Amazon links. If you had 2-3 books you recommended in the right sidebar for each category, I think that might fare better than Google Ads. Could be worth A/B testing.

Definitely, you know what your users are looking for. Amazon Associates could work for monetization.

The Google Ads are just a placeholder. I think Amazon books would be very relevant, and I am going to look into some other affiliate programs such as thinkgeek.com.

Like it. There's a lot of content and it's well organized.

It would be nice if there was more information on each cheat sheet before I clicked it. Maybe a list of things that are in it (Class Functions, String Functions, Regex Expressions for example). Or add more tags to each cheatsheet.

Keep up the good work.

Thanks for the input, Vindexus. I have considered adding a short description to each cheatsheet, and I intend on adding additional tags as well. However, I am trying to be cautious and maintain the clean look without overwhelming the user with information. It is always a balancing act.

Of course, that makes sense. How about a "Preview" link that uses Lightbox or Fancybox to bring up a cropped screenshot of the cheatsheet? Just so I can get a look at some possible things they'll cover and the format of it. Not a huge deal, and probably a bit of work just to get the sceenshots.

I like it. Though I feel that some of these guides don't really qualify as cheat sheets. I consider a cheat sheet to be a quick reference with helpful commands, syntax, examples etc. Some of these documents are just condensed howto guides. For instance, most of the SEO ones. Something to think about anyway.

Nice site. Have you considered incorporating any interaction with the site, such as a way to rate the cheat sheets or give comments? Also, it (might) be cool if there was the ability to create user/community driven cheat sheets that could be modified wiki-style or something.

Good job on making a nice and clean design! One thing I found slightly confusing was that some images of cheatsheets links to an intermediate page, instead of the cheatsheet itself.

Examples:

ANSI C Reference Card v2.2 on http://devcheatsheet.com/tag/c/

STL Quick Reference on http://devcheatsheet.com/tag/cpp/

I'm gussing it is because these have different formats. One suggestion would be to pick one of them (e.g. PDF) for the image, and create links on the different formats (e.g. "Formats: DVI, PDF, TeX") for alternative formats.

I can see how that could be confusing. Linking directly from the list of formats might work. I'll look into it. Thanks.

Any chance of getting a MongoDB cheat sheet?

I'll start looking for some MongoDB cheat sheets. If you know of any, feel free to suggest them.

I've been searching far and wide. I'm working with a mongoDB and Ruby app right now, we may write one in the process

Hi there Tim Church. Nice clean site.

It looks like this is a well-named niche bookmark browsing site. I looked for more detailed About, but could only find the rather terse text mentioned at the bottom of each page. Do you personally do the maintenance and curation?

I don't mind at all if you (Tim Church) do it, its just important to know whos opinion forms the content and how well any broken links or tech advances will be catered for.

Good work BTW, no matter who has the keys to Djangos Admin Interface!

Yes, I personally run the whole site from design to development to content. I am still in the process of adding features and more cheatsheets.

Very useful, but the :: separators are distracting. I think that most first-time visitors are looking to scan your collection for a particular technology (that's what I did).

This view [http://devcheatsheet.com/?view=tag] is more readable. How about using the 'tag' view layout, but add categories to make browsing easier.

Another suggestion: add 3 or 4 'similar cheat sheets' to each cheat sheet to facilitate browsing and reduce bounce rates.

What I'd like is being able to type in a big search textbox sth like:

"java try catch syntax"

and it would automatically (without me hitting enter) fetch the sample code and display it in a nice syntax-highlighted manner. It should also offer auto-completion like Google (eg. after I typed "java try"...).

Or:

"php class syntax" "svn ignore files" "diff show side by side" "c++ template function" etc.

It'd be a lot of work but it seems doable and it'd be a killer destination site for programmers.

That does sound like a great idea, but it is a little beyond the scope of this site.

Have you seen the Ruby "cheat" gem?

http://cheat.errtheblog.com/

It outputs cheat sheets to the command line, and allows people to edit them through a wiki. Might be a good source of cheat sheets for your site?

Also a command line tool to pull in cheat sheets from your site would be useful, although automatically converting them to ascii might be tricky.

You could do some work to make the directory easier to read. Some inspiration: http://www.net-a-porter.com/Shop/AZDesigners http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/git/checkout/Io/docs/IoReferen...

Thanks for the input. The examples you mentioned are more similar to the tags view (http://devcheatsheet.com/?view=tag), which is not currently the default.

Good job pulling together all these cheatsheets and a nice site too!

Next step would be for something like a cheat sheet wiki where the information has a clear time stamp and has the possibility of being kept accurate.

This is a problem with these pdf cheat sheets.

I agree that can be a problem with the outdated cheatsheets. The wiki could be an interesting idea. Thanks.

This is an excellent resource and done very professionally. I like the clean site look and nothing is more than two clicks away. Surely it will be a winner with developers.

Let us know when your new year's resolution traffic is on target! Nice blog too:)

Thanks yannis! If all the HN'ers boomark the site then that should be a good start on my traffic target :)

Within minutes of discovering this on HN I needed a cheatsheet for RoboCopy. Didn't find one on your site. For what it's worth here's a pretty good one I dug up http://ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html

Thanks. I will add it now.

This is really convenient, very well done. Is there any way we could network a text editor such as TextMate, to pull context help depending on the file/language you're currently using? So you press F1 and it would send you to the appropriate PDF...?

I'd like to see the date the actual cheatsheet was created...not just added to the site. A javascript cheatsheet from 2001 is likely to be much different than one from 2007. Other than that I love the site!

Adding the date created is on my todo list. This information might not be available for every one, but it would be useful for the ones that do have it.

Some of the Javascript material is very old, and refers to Netscape as a going concern. Sometimes old is interesting but perhaps there could be some markers to warn people.

http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial...

Is in the "vi" section but not the "Vim" one.

Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out.

(Nitpick: It's Tcl, not TCL)

Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out. (might take a few minutes to update due to caching)

Any chance for a QT entry in the Libraries & Frameworks section? That's defiantly a framework worth noting, but I'm not sure how much cheatsheets are out there for it. They are kind of hard to find.

Sure. I will look into QT cheatsheets to add. Any suggestions?

I switch languages a lot in the course of a week, this will be very useful to me.

It seems really well polished - I like the look, and I was able to find everything I wanted to find. Well done!

Thanks for the encouragement!

Seems that you are currently hotlinking the cheatsheets from other sites. imho it would be nicer to host the files yourself, to prevent link rot and to not "steal" other peoples bandwidth.

Whenever possible I try to link to a download page instead of directly to a PDF or image file. However, in some cases I do hotlink directly to a file download. One advantage of this is that if the author updates the file (to fix an error) the user downloads the newest version.

What do other HN'ers think? Should I host the PDF files directly? What is the proper netiquette in this case?

With proper attribution I don't mind hotlinking of my sheets. If you start hosting them I couldn't track downloads if I wanted.

Maybe you could do it Google-style, where you feature the hotlink but also offer a cached version of it. Or, alternatively, you can hotlink to Google's cache of it (since they almost certainly have one!).

Thank you HN! I really appreciate all of the positive feedback and creative suggestions. Your comments have given me lots of ideas and the encouragement to keep improving the site.

You should add a button that says "Report broken link". For example the My UNIX cheatsheet under ssh is broken. What do you think?

I think it is a good idea to enable users to give some feedback. I will look into ways to report broken links. Thanks for pointing that out.

Nice, it's bookmarked now. Good organization, looks pretty complete.

(Why are so many cheat sheets needed for SQL injection?)

Very handy, good job! Bookmarked. Thanks.

I like your site. However, I did a search on 'transactions' and it came up with nothing. Cool idea though.

excellent work, just bookmarked it. The only thing I'll recommend you is to improve that adsense there or look for a new revenue model, you won't earn much from it at the place it is, maybe sell ebooks later: kind of the "devcheatsheet book".

Nice, clean & beautiful design, so the overview great :)

Already bookmarked!

Simple Interface..

Some of the links to stanford seems to be broken..

Thanks for letting me know. It might be good to add a way to report broken links through the site.

Excellent work. I'm telling all my friends about this great resource.

Very cool Tim!

I will be using this for a ruby reference for sure.

Funny, I read "Life Cheat Sheet" instead of "Lift Cheat Sheet".

Nice collection ! Community moderation/features would be nice.

I've debated adding community features like voting or comments on the cheatsheets, but I haven't decided yet. I may experiment with some of these features in the future.

There is currently the option for anyone to suggest a cheatsheet that is not currently in the directory. (So if anyone sees a missing cheatsheet, let me know!)

Browsers would be nice. Best organization I've seen!

Very clean UI. Like the collection of cheatsheets.

Very nice! Already useful for me, thanks!

Awww, no Groovy?

I'm happy to add it. Do you know of any good Groovy cheatsheets?

the dzone refcardz has been the best I've found thus far.

great. bookmarked.

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