Ask HN: Review my site - readit.me | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review my site - readit.me

readit.me

14 pointskungfooey19 comments

First of all, when I arrive, I have no idea What the app is for, how it helps me, etc. I suggest you add a paragraph or two explaining what it does and how to get started. But overall it's a pretty cool site. Good luck!

I guess that's what the "about" link in the top right-hand corner is there for. I suppose it needs to be more obvious?

Edit: probably need some sort of boilerplate on the front page to explain it succinctly. Thanks for the pointer.

For reference, stackoverflow.com and reddit.com give a banner on the top of the screen that is sort of a faq for first time visitors.

It seems like a reasonable thing to add to this site - tell people who've never been to your site about it, while not mucking things up for repeat visitors.

yeah....a landing page of sorts.

also, i'd lvoe there to be different lists. not just recently, more recommendations within a genre. i'm constantly looking for science fiction rec's (and even then, i only like certain kinds of scifi...the not fantasy kind; magic realism is ok, though, bc often well written and brief...)

When someone visits the site and isn't logged in, they should get a different front page - specifically, with a prominent, brief explanation of what they can do with the site.

I started out with Java, but I've worked in PHP for a few years now. I dabbled with Django, but this is my first attempt to build anything useful in Rails. It uses the Amazon API to gather book data, and obviously authlogic + facebooker for Facebook Connect.

Why would I use this over Readernaut: http://readernaut.com/

I tried readernaut but felt it did too much. I just wanted a minimal way to keep up with what I've read, not add reviews (that's what Amazon is for), add friends (we all use Facebook, right?), or create lists.

There's also http://goodreads.com/ and http://www.librarything.com/

Is this just a way for me to log what books I've read? I'm not really getting the point, I'm sorry to say.

You got it. Just a minimalist reading diary - there are other sites that handle reading + networking (goodreads, readernaut, etc) but I find them all too cluttered. The 'about' page tells more about what I was aiming for.

Phonetically, readit could easily be mistaken for the immensely popular reddit. This seems rather important from a branding perspective.

I assume its meant to be "read" sounding like "reed," not "read" sounding like "red".. but it's easy to see how this could cause confusion.

Actually, given that it's a log of what you have read, I'm going to assume it is pronounced red-it.

Originally it was going to be "Who Read It?" but then I realized that the domain name could be creatively interpreted. Hence, just Read It. When I say it myself, I pronounce it "reed", probably due to the similarity to reddit (which I don't find to be particularly bothersome).

Is this just a side project .. or can you share your vision and plan for this?

I like it, but I have to say that I've been using Shelfari for a while and it appears to pretty much do the same thing.

It's just a side project (mainly to become familiar with the Rails dev environment and tools).

cool, all the best to you. The founder of crazy-profitable http://www.plentyoffish.com/ started the site to learn how to program.

Cool idea! Could be something there. Props for getting it out there.

Could be a facebook app?

Hey that is really nice. Will it show me recommendations in some way?

Thanks! Nope, no recommendations yet. I'd either have to build in recommendations or (preferably) somehow yank that data from Amazon. Might be something I try to do next, since I've had a couple of users ask me about it.

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