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Comment by BugsJustFindMe | Hacker News Reader

This could be an object lesson in how not to build a landing page. What is this? What is it for? I see a cartoon...but what the hell does any of it mean? Why am I signing up? What am I signing up for?

> Want all your applications on One Hostname?

Uh...no? Should I? I have no idea!

Oh look. Tiny, low contrast text at the very bottom of the page linking to an article that loses my interest before it gets to the point.

This could have been 24 point bold arial black on white: "We made a service called Fly to help you convert subdomains into load-balanced subdirectories to strengthen your brand and improve[0] your SEO. yada yada yada..."

[0] - citation needed, lol

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Aw, come on. Not everything posted to Hacker News needs to explain itself in a commonplace way. There's a place for the playfully obscure too. Reacting with rage seems like a parody of the angry spoilsport.

In the spectrum of HN consciousness there's a large chunk of rule-bound literalism. Part of the work of this community is for that to breathe a little and not need to impose itself everywhere. Then everything works better and life becomes more sparkly.

I found the page interesting and pretty, but had absolutely no clue what service it was offering. It's not so much that it needs to explain itself in a commonplace way, as ... explain itself at all!

It's fine to leave some things as an exercise to the reader. We readers can use the exercise.

Totally agree

> There's an honored place for the playfully obscure too.

I get enough of this from work, thanks. There's a fine line between decoding twee whimsy and billable hours that most of these submissions stomp past obliviously.

The first rule of writing is: respect your reader's time (or else they won't read you). I'm all for not taking things to seriously, but if I have to spend 5 minutes to work out if this is an entertaining flight of fancy that I might just learn something from, or an untargeted waste of marketing budget, then I'm going to Have Opinions that I want to Share Online.

The underlying expectation here seems to be that HN readers shouldn't have to work a little. But HN thrives when readers do occasionally have to work a little. So we welcome that. Sorry!

> The underlying expectation here seems to be that HN readers shouldn't have to work a little

That's not my point at all: I work in software, so I love to stare at some cryptic message and mutter and make notes. But when I uncover the answer is "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine", then I'll feel ripped off.

I keep seeing product announcements using this technique of dressing it up in twisty little language, as if they're afraid that what they're saying isn't interesting enough to stand on its own. They slap on the appearance of entertainment, without considering how well it fits with their message (prioritising form over function).

why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby is a fantastic example of how to do it right: the whimsy doesn't detract from the message, but helps frame it and gives the right context for the reader to build the mental model of programming that _why intended to convey.

Ok, I get your point now. But did I miss it or did you really not say this earlier?

We probably assigned this post to different buckets but I agree with you that both buckets exist.

I said:

> if I have to spend 5 minutes to work out if this is […] an untargeted waste of marketing budget, then I'm going to [write a comment about how I wish people would stop doing it]*

I'll try being clear next time.

Also, fuck poetry.

HI there! Duly noted! Annie here (I drew the comic). This is a little "gift" that people will come across when they start their journey toward using onehostname. Sorry for the confusion since it's out of context. And your feedback is really helpful!

I hope you enjoy the comic gift!

It's really great work. Are you attached to Fly.io or do you do work for other people?

I would suggest a 'skip the comic and go to the article' link at the top of the page (in the middle), not everyone is a visual learner.

I think you're probably not in the target audience for a comic like this. It's meant to be light and fun, and appeals to people who already want to put all their stuff on one hostname. All the normal "what do you do? why? how?" questions don't really apply here, that's more what our homepage is for.

Got the same first impression. How can a link like this get to the first page of HN?

Without any useful information without having to look on another page, wouldn't it just go into unnoticed?

It's zany! It's fun! It's not one of the two possible websites https://twitter.com/jongold/status/694591217523363840

Totally disagree. The landing page is nice, is pretty, it invites you to read and has two very useful links.

If it was a black on white page I would have read it, acknowledge it and close, perhaps add it to Pinboard for later use and never look at it again. The way it is now I've clicked the links and read the whole article, almost.

It's very pretty, and it tells you absolutely nothing.

Sorry. Correction. It tells you that you can sign up for...something.

I, and I suppose a lot of people, give between 3-5 seconds to tell me what it does. If I am not able to find a reference to anything within this time - I will close the tab. I have scrolled whole website looking for one headline or enlarged text with one sentence explanation of what this is.

Once I failed I turned in to HN comments.

UX on this website is awful, but it has a possibility to be an amazing one. Just a few small changes and people will link to this page as an example of UI. But for now is pretty bad.

Hehehe. This was a bit mean, but there's truth. I've adjusted the page based on the feedback here. Now it's "here's the article for more information" instead of "sign up for this mystery box". :)

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