Show HN: Working on my wife's idea | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Working on my wife's idea

puppyshowdown.com

59 pointsIanDrake50 comments

Oh, if anyone cares: The site was built with jQuery and Knockoutjs with ASP.NET web service backend. The push updates come from a ASP.NET module I'm working on and will open source soon.

The design was done by a fantastic designer JR Harrell from Drawnn.

I'm curious - what made you go with ASP.NET over an open source alternative?

It's what I know from consulting. The bizspark program is great to get started and lasts for three years or 1mil of revenue, whichever comes first.

I would not start running ads right out of the gate. You could show something funny while the pics load instead of ads.

Good tip. It seems to be a common thread. I'm still make incremental improvements on the site just about every day.

I'm planning to replace the ads on the main page with incentive prompts to get people to add their own pics. Nothing mandatory, just something saying, "Hey - I bet your dog is cute too. It only takes 30 seconds to add them."

I agree with this. I waited 30 seconds just looking at ads while the page was 'loading'. After that I just left because I felt you were more interested in show me ads than content.

I totally agree. The ads that were showing should only have shown IF you'd worked through all the possible matches to vote on. The HN bump had almost instantly completed every match available and the system hadn't generated more yet.

It was configured to end a match after one dog got 5 votes and won by two, a process that normally takes hours. It took less than a second with the HN traffic. My bad.

Really like how easy it was to start voting. One thing I noticed was that it seems like your using pushState for every vote? I had to hit the back button 20 times to get back to HN.

Not intentionally. I'll have to check that out. Thanks.

I'm on a slow-ish Wifi connection at the airport. It's fast enough for YouTube streaming but not for your site. So far on your site I'm looking at an ad with two things that say "Loading..." underneath.

Using Chrome on MacBook.

What you're seeing is what happens when all the active matches have been voted on and are over. The client is basically waiting for more contests to be created.

Yeah, didn't expect front page of HN. The contests are typically first dog to get 5 votes wins, but there are like 500 people connected at once right now.

I just changed that to 50, so now each contest should last longer and solve the problem...I hope.

No, i have the same problem.

edit: i was able to vote now on a few dogs and i see nothing, not even a frame between the two horizontal dark loading-bars.

My wife was sitting beside me when I clicked on it. The site elicited instant "awwwws" and a quick memorization of the domain to submit our pup.

Texture overload!

Seriously though, I counted 11 different textures, and is the same league as too many font faces on screen at once. You could probably reduce that to a couple of either clearly contrasting or subtly different depending on the look you are going for.

I don't know much about UI design. Is the reasoning behind this because too many textures distracts from the content by making the dogs less prominent?

Visual confusion distracts from what you want people to do.

After getting a great design from the designer, I started running with the development. When it came time to "move this there, add that there, etc...", I did a great job of fouling it up (little by little).

Once I figure out what elements are crucial I'll have the designer take another look.

Cool idea. This took about 5 mins of my day; although if it were about cats, the tab would be open all day lol

http://puppywar.com/

And

http://kittenwar.com/

Yeah, the cat site is coming soon. We wanted to see if/how this was going to work first.

Love the idea. I see the initial challenge being that there are many different breeds and many dog-lovers just have very distinct taste.

For example, my ex absolutely adores the pugs/bulldogs family, but has a mysterious distaste for poodles. A comparison limited to the same breed will give you better ratings, but also makes it harder till you hit critical mass.

Yeah...This one is conflicting to me.

I love pit mixes, but I've noticed myself voting for other breeds too. The internal conflict almost makes it more interesting.

I also find that when it's a rottie vs rottie, it can be difficult to judge, since they both will look so much alike.

Awesome idea to help get dogs adopted. I hope it is a huge success.

Great idea, I think this will be a big success.

Personally I don't think you should let people vote within a certain breed, its more fun as a free-for-all. That being said, it would be cool to browse through the top ranked within a breed. Most people will be interested in voting non-stop, but some might just be looking for a specific breed to adopt.

And now that I think of it, in order to better categorize the dogs you may want to use tags. That way a dog that is mix of two different breeds would come up under both.

Another thought, it might be cool to get the users fill in certain "stats", kind of like they do on the puppybowl but being becareful not to get come across trying to be too "cute" (I-can-haz speak to a minimum, I don't know maybe that's just me).

Either way, sweet site! I plan to keep my eye on it!

Thanks! One of the things on my list is to normalize the breed information so I can do just that.

I'm also working on a widget with push updates so people can embed it on their blog and watch the voting live.

Love the feedback!

Oh also, after your finished with the cat version pls do a ferret one.

jk jk

I just added a blog post about getting to the front page of HN and some of the initial problems.

http://puppyshowdown.com/blog/2012/04/hacker-news-caught-me-...

Thank you everyone for the great feedback!

Just some feedback - it's something minor but it bugs me every time, I'm not sure about other people. Every new competition in addition to the type of competition dropping down (Best dressed, cutest etc) it also shakes from side to side.

I just find the shake unnecessary and a little distracting.

Over the top is my middle name. I'll have to tone it down. Thanks!

Looks great!

Except for that ascii arrow which looks out place. I would recommend filling that white space with a more pleasant design

> Add your first contest here --->

That's what happens when you take a great design and give it to a programmer. "Hey, I think I need an arrow here..."

It's on my list now. Thanks.

I love that most of the dogs seem to be adoptable. It's a great hook. I wonder if you could allow users who've logged in with Facebook to only see dogs near them.

That's a really good idea. I suppose I should add a box for zip code on the submit dog page and show it when the user provides an Adoption URL.

I guess I didn't think of that because most of my friends' dogs where adopted from all over the country.

Alternatively, have something like: "Think this one's cute? Adopt a dog just like it near you." Then, take a post code and link to a particular breed/colouring.

Nicely done! I've seen dozens of these side-by-side pic voting sites, but this is the slickest interface, by far. Very entertaining -- good job.

The back button is pretty broken after voting

You're right. I'll have to check that out. It wasn't intentional.

Great idea - people love their dogs and this is a great way to show them off to others. I'd get rid of the ads for now - they dilute the 'brand' (for lack of a better word), which should be your focus right now along with getting lots of users. You can always put ads in later.

Sorry if you guys were getting a message saying we were out of contests again. I think there's a bug in the component that creates the matches and I was on the road and couldn't fix it.

I quick reset fixed it, but suspect I missed a lock somewhere in that part of the code :(

WOW, what a great way to bootstrap submissions by using pictures of puppies available for adoption!

Thanks. Not just for bootstrap though. Our goal is to reach out to shelters, rescues, and charities to help them with adoption and fund raising.

Groups like the ASPCA have a million followers on Facebook. What I'm hoping to do is provide them with a way to monetize their audience with this site.

Soon I'll add a sort of affiliate system for these organizations. Then we'll do a revenue share based on the number of active users they referred.

Love the interface. Very similar to puppywar.com but with adoption hooks.

A filter by age would be good. When a puppy is put up against an older dog I almost always upvoted the pup.

Good point. Right now there are multiple categories for "Cutest [Puppy, Dog, Old-Timer]", but other categories like "Best Dressed" aren't segregated.

I think I'll need to simplify the categories and ask for the dog's age in the picture. Then do as you suggested.

Argh, I want to vote puppies but I see "loading" :-( Me want puppies!

I just voted on Sheldon vs Priya. "The Big Bang Theory" flashback ^^

So it's "Hot or Not" for puppies?

More like Facemash for puppies.

I'm on a relatively fast connection (16mb down) and it took a significant amount of time to load for me (Macbook Pro using Safari). Perhaps enabling caching on your server will help speed things up some.

The site looks good otherwise. Good luck!

Thanks. I've left the optimizing to later...oops.

Just out of curiosity, did you see the basic UI, then a "loading..." title with an ad rotating? If so, that was because the influx of votes made all the current matches pretty much end within 3 seconds. Yikes!

I'll probably use Amazon CloudFront at some point.

Yep. That was what I saw. Great work. Best of success to you both.

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