How I created and launched a website from the Internet café in Zimbabwe
munyukim.wordpress.com
munyukim.wordpress.com
Here a some ideas for improvements:
- It might be a good idea if you'd make subsections for different hiphop genres, for example one for zimbabwean hiphop (e.g. mixdem.com/zimbabwe). People can find you on Google this way if they can search for this hip hop from zimbabwe and you might become the go to place for this specific genre.
- Think about using more hiphop (ghetto) language.
- Make a logo. It helps for people to recognize/remember your site. It would already help if you just write the name of your site in a cool type face.
- It did not see a lot of comments on your site (none actually). This is very important for a community (look at Hacker News for example). Experiment with different ways to get more comments. For example you could put a text box on every page for people to leave a comment, even if they are not logged in. If they try to post a comment you could make them log in or register to post it.
- It might be better to embed the videos in the video section directly into your page instead of linking to a page which does. This way people stay on your site, instead of going elsewhere (same of the downloads if it is possible).
- Even though it's annoying, you could also put a frame on top of the page, when people click a link to another site. In this frame people could vote up the site or go back to your site to leave a comment.
- Maybe add a share on twitter / facebook for specific news items or videos, which people want to share with their friends.
- When I am on the page for a specific item I was expecting that clicking on the title would make me go to the site. It took me a second to see that there is actually a button "go to site".
I hope you find some of those suggestions useful. It is not meant as criticism.
"Thank you everyone ,i really appreciate all the positive responses .i never imagined my story would be on hacker news frontpage."
It would be better had you written:
"Thank you everyone, I really appreciate all the positive responses. I never imagined my story would be on hacker news frontpage."
Also, I grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa during the apartheid years. I was lucky enough to earn an internship at Honeywell in the USA during my graduate studies, and now I live and work and have a family in the USA. Keep going, keep working, keep creating! Anything and everything is possible, the code you write has the potential to set you free, to uplift your society, to uplift humanity. Just keep going!
Unfortunately, for many people in the world this, and as mentioned in the posting a reliable supply of electricity, is something that not everyone can afford or easily acquire.
There are many hundreds of bright young people (and older too) that I've met on my travels through small towns and villages in Asia and Africa. I far too often have thought that I wish I could give them a computer, internet, electricity, something to help them break out of their lives of unemployment, underemployment & poverty and engage in the wider world to make money to support themselves and their family. Even the seemingly basic solutions have far too many hurdles and levels of corruption to avoid.
Its usually best to go on personal travel, though obviously more expensive and usually without a support network & connections that work often provides. For work or relief organizations it can be better, but you also may not have the easy option of leaving when it gets a bit dangerous, as can happen in some regions on very short notice.
I lived in Harare from 1986-90, long before I'd heard the term "Internet". It's really great to see Zimbabweans making their mark on the net.
Best wishes and luck, mate!
Off-topic, but it really shouldn't be necessary to provide a continent when naming a country e.g. Japan, Asia.
Inspiring story!
I'm curious about the tech stack for mixdem. Was it forked from an example link aggregator, written from scratch, php or ...?