FaqMe? FaqYou | Hacker News Reader

FaqMe? FaqYou

faqme.com

38 pointsjerrya38 comments

I really need a scenario walk-through with screenshots seeing how this service looks to my users and maybe to a lesser extend, admin controls that I'll be using.

UPDATE: Ok so I walked over to their FAQ page[1] and don't see anything that would make me want to offload my content to a site I have no idea how long it will be in service.

Don't mean to crap on the team, but much like almightygod said, I don't see the value proposition here.

[1] http://www.faqme.com/faqme

I don't really understand this either. It seems to me that this is just putting a page that you could trivially host on your own website, but on another website with a completely different look and feel to your own.

It seems like it's just an extra point of failure that's also jarring to a user of your website, not to mention that the URL could be interpreted incorrectly. 'FAQ' on it's own is just another TLA (three letter acronym), but coupled with 'Me' makes it feel a little too close to "fuck me" which seems pretty unprofessional.

On the other hand, my adult website client loves it.

Nearly every good ad campaign, and many successful brand names are somehow controversial. I think the name is just brilliant. :)

You're going to need to provide some evidence for those assertions. "Nearly every" is a lot? I can't think of any controversial brand names off-hand.

Coke?

Also, it seems to not work without JavaScript! Are you kidding me? It drives me crazy when there is extremely simple functionality that could have been done with HTML 1.0 that some genius web developer implemented in a way that requires JavaScript.

Hey there, this is the developer (and HN mostly-lurker-sometimes-poster). Thanks for checking out FaqMe.

I built FaqMe because I wanted a simple content management system to manage all my FAQs for my various projects. Then I decided to go insane with the UI and stats n stuff & make it more awesome than I would have if I were just banging out an FAQ.

Yes, you could code a FAQ yourself, just like you could code a blog yourself without Wordpress. But hopefully this makes it easier for some folks (much like Wordpress makes it easier to blog).

(also it does more than just FAQs -- there's also a 'contact us' thing that routes customer service emails through a FaqMe inbox in a deceptively simple way, and supports replying & threads n stuff. i know this description doesn't make sense. i should make a faq about it;)

Ps- I never know whether to write "a FAQ" or "an FAQ" ('fack' vs 'eff aye cue')

The wordpress vs blog analogy isn't really the same. If you have a FAQ page then it is very likely you already have a website. Adding one more page with some google analytics shouldn't be too much work.

On the other hand if I start with nothing, then the wordpress option would be considerably easier then writing my own blog.

It seems that the itch your scratching is multiple sites with multiple FAQs. You may want to focus on that niche and tout this as a core feature on your homepage.

It's possible you are right and I will be the only person using FaqMe. It wouldn't be the first time I was my own biggest customer. :-)

I have certainly seen plenty of poor faqs, outdated faqs, faqs lacking what I think are needed answers.

While others point to how "easy" it is to code up a faq, there are plenty of websites that are easily able to code up a faq, and still cannot, and plenty of websites filled with great stuff, that serve a group that cannot and do not, code anything.

I actually think this is a pretty nice service to offer.

I knew this site smelled of Pud as soon as I saw it. Is this another cold fusion operation?

Indeed. Though it seems that these days, regardless of what the stack is, the bulk of one's time is spent writing Javascript.

Feel that. Well, nice work and even better marketing.

Thanks for starting f*company back in the day. It provided ample entertainment while I was in college!

A FAQ page has to be one of the least technical parts of a web page. The addition of stats isn't very compelling either. It would be easier to setup event tracking in my analytic software then it would be to configure in a whole FAQ page.

Skeptical of the demand for something like this.

Spammers will probably abuse it for back links, that's about all I see it being used for.

If the questions are so frequently asked, shouldn't they be answered within the copy of a website, or the usual workflow of an app?

The web design community has spent years campaigning against separate FAQ pages and this will be seen as a step in the wrong direction.

Providing a way for users to seek or offer help is great but that's what support apps like GetSatisfaction or TenderSupport are for.

I find the domain name clever and funny but a joke is not a business and there's no way any of the brands we work with would want to associate themselves with it.

Tips: change the name, drop all references to "FAQ" and ensure it's obvious how your app can be used by web professionals with content strategy experience (e.g. to provide user support or collect questions that need to be answered within the content of a website or an app).

What's this design or trend in fonts called that this page is using?

You know, the one that makes them look great on OS X but terrible on Windows. And I'm not talking about font rendering in general, but specifically whatever trend this and other pages have been doing.

It's the fact that Windows basically requires well-hinted fonts in order to render well, since Windows has always tried to render fonts to match up with pixel boundaries.

OSX, on the other hand, anti-aliases fonts perfectly, and thus has no need of hinting at all. It's a philosophical difference as to which looks better.

BUT, the recent trend is in starting to use non-system fonts in web design, now that the Google Fonts project has taken off (together with widespread browser support for custom fonts).

The problem is that freely available fonts generally either have no hinting, or "automated" hinting -- because well-done hinting is incredibly time-consuming and, in the age of "retina displays", slowly losing its usefulness.

So, all these web fonts that render beautifully on OSX look like crap in Internet Explorer, since they have no hinting. (It actually bothers me so much that I run GDI++ on my Windows computer at work -- it renders all fonts Mac-style without hinting, instead of Windows-style.)

Looks fine on my Windows 7 machine in all browsers but IE9. Although the yellow selection background with white text color is an odd choice.

Win7 in Firefox: http://i.imgur.com/VlBMb.png

OS X: http://i.imgur.com/UKeZv.png

If yours looks like mine in Win7, I wouldn't call that fine...

Thanks for the images, I was wondering what you were seeing. Near as I can tell Chrome/Win7 renders the same as OS X.

Usually for me fonts in Chrome/Win7 look worse than they do on FF5/Win7. But in this case, they both render the text as in the OSX screenshot above.

the main reason i'd want this - right now I have 2 options:

1. build an faq scaffold with drag and drop 2. have a simple html page and be bothered everytime the business/product team wants to make a change to the faq

neither is difficult, but faqme seems easier then both options

I wish I had linked to where I found this. That's

http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/25/faqd

Linking there is probably best in terms of attribution, and it answers some of the questions others might have, including who is responsible for FaqMe?

Which is not me, I have no involvement whatsoever, I just liked the name...

TechCrunch says:

Blippy and FuckedCompany.com founder Philip “Pud” Kaplan is at it again with his whimsical and sometimes useful ADHD Labs experiments, this time launching FaqMe, a FAQing free service that helps people build snazzier FAQ and Contact Us pages. “Many websites have sucky (or non-existent) help pages and customer service,” says Kaplan, who aim to make the whole FAQing experience more FAQing frictionless.

You know, all up, I like the site.

I think the MOST obvious use is for Mobile App designers that don't want to deal with web hosting in the short term.

I really like the simple prettiness of the stats page. Isn't recognising AtomicWeb or Safari from the Ipad though.

I've been trying it out: (warning shameless promotion) http://faqme.com/howto http://faqme.com/earthshout

Thanks for putting the site out there Pud and I am happy to write your FAQME FAQ's...

PS: "an FAQ". You write it like you would say it out loud. Also, first post.... not sure about this news editor....

Just some feedback.

1. The signup form has a checkbox that is opt-out and after the submit button. As someone who "tabs" through forms I don't want to go through a few extra steps so that I don't get unsolicited email (since it is opt-out)

2. faqme.com/faqme, the FAQ page doesn't work with JS disabled. I really don't see a need for JS (although I admit I'm in probably a terrible minority to disable JS by default on all pages). At least it must gracefully degrade if JS is disabled.

This is the perfect example of a clever and disastrous brand name.

But an excellently named HN post. I immediately clicked.

Yes, makes for good linkbait too.

I'd suggest allowing users to embed this on their own sites using <script>. My current employer has trouble with FAQs because we have to manually create them in fckeditor, but there is no way in hell we'd link out to your site. We'd want it to simply be embedded on our own pages.

Looks very similar to http://helpjuice.com/ by @hajrice.

Sadly helpjuice is all kinds of broken right now. Tried to implement it on my site yesterday & today to no avail.

Pud, my dev team did a backflip when I crossed this off the todo list. Link at the bottom of our page and done. I look forward to using FaqMe.

We already use Help Scout for managing support emails, so it would be nice to have the option to forward the contact form requests to an email address instead.

Hey, I was working on something similar as a side project. I was even using a similar name for it.

The approach is different though. Well, FAQ it, I think I'll keep on working on it.

Sine you were downvoted for saying the same thing I about said, I'll comment here. I wanted to make a similar site a while ago, but the following stopped me: 1) why would I put my FAQ page on someone else's site? 2) if I did it via JavaScript, then it wouldn't be easily indexable - less true now that google indexes JavaScript.

Anyway, I wish you both the best!

Should those thumbs be clickable? (Firefox 5/XP)

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