Ask HN: Please Review My New Site.

My attention was drawn to the tag cloud first, and that made me confused as to what the site was about. Only later I noticed there was a description on the left.

Personally I am also a bit skeptical of the usefulness of tag clouds. It seem to me they are mostly interesting to techie types who like to think about raw data. I would rather see some specific examples of recently hot drinking games from the site.

I would change the text: "If you do decide to drink, DO NOT Drive. Drink Safely." to simply "Always drink responsibly." and have that section of the text be a link to a new page with a paragraph about drinking and driving. You also might include some external links on that page (MADD, AA, etc).

It is more direct to use a command instead of a conditional and use a positive instead of a negative.

The "Drinking For.com" is only half visible in Safari. (Can only see top half of it).

I don't expect to make money off this site, but I do hope to make some headway as my first true website...

Let me know what you all think. Its a Drinking site which will one day bring all the drinking activities together hopefully.

Definitely an interesting idea. Here's a few things:

- Iterate on the design: I'd start on the color scheme, since it's easy to get right. Resources: http://www.wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html http://beta.dailycolorscheme.com/

- Random design tip: Please don't use a grey gradient on everything. It looks like everything has a layer of virtual dust on it. Try black or white, and then tweaking the transparency/opacity of the gradient down to 25-75%.

- Maybe I'm alone, but I never really thought tag clouds were a great data visualization. Regardless, I think another way to explore the games is worth pursuing. Example: http://www.extratasty.com/recipes

The layout seems like it's missing something to me. The tag cloud block is too short vertically maybe? I kept waiting for something to load under it, and it never did.

The other option is to put the tag cloud in a column on the right and make a center column where you can have a featured game or something? You know, to put some content on the front page.

Anyways, it seems like a cool idea - good luck!

"We are here to provide a source of entertainment for any sort of drinking game/activity. We wanted to provide the best place to find any activity for drinking so feel free to look around and add a game/activity or two."

This is not as concise as it should be. Cut it down to like 7-8 words.

i like the idea to get creative ideas :-) a few suggestions:

- i would not only display a tag-cloud on the homepage but also top games.

- why do you need people to log in / "register". wouldn't a captcha also do the job of avoiding spam and make the log-in/providing personal data optional. i think it makes it more likely people would contribute

- categories might could help people to navigate / provide contributers with suggestions how to classify their games. it also enables to "surf" the site.

- i don't dislike the design but i would make the navigation a bit more dominant and combine the two logos, combine the picture of the bottles and the title

I'd remove the need for a log-in to vote on games. Regardless of 'abuse', which should be relatively easy to monitor, if someone feels particularly passionate about up-voting, perhaps they should be able to express it.

Considering a large percentage of individuals who play such games are likely underage, who would want to log-in and, essentially, confess to their crime?

In my experience, sites like this which are 'cool content' driven depend heavily on equally 'cool' design. Perhaps consider design overhaul, find a friend good with web design?

When you click a tag and see a listing of activities, the headers ("equipment" and "rules") are inline with the text. Where it should read like:

  Equipment
    foo bar and baz
  Rules
    blah blah blah.

it looks like

  Equipment foo bar and baz Rules blah blah blah.

That is hard to read, and ugly.

Also, the colors aren't so pretty.

Neat site though. Clever premise.

It seems like a fun idea, but it doesn't feel fun. I think the tag cloud is detrimental. It makes drinking feel like work.

The logo doesn't appear in Safari, as was noted.

Beyond that, this feels like you could have much more than drinking games on the site. There aren't enough drinking games to make a directory seem worthwhile unless you're adding some other features to the site to make it seem big.

I can't say I'm too fond of the color scheme. However, I left the site feeling impressed, primarily because I'm quite fond of the site's purpose.

It might be beneficial to replace the tag cloud with something a bit less abstract and considerably more specific -- possibly even a "recommended games" or "top games" page. Though you could always use the tag cloud to supplement the interface.

It's nice to see a fellow asp.net website. It also looks like you're using the mvc beta. Though, the site could use a designer.

- Let users add photos/videos - Make design more fun, cheerful, drunken... - Maybe link to social networking sites

Nice man. Black text on blue is hard to read for me, though.

Typo from the About page: "If your still reading this..."

whats in the light blue box on the right? adverts?

remove it, make the content wider.

I appreciate the fact that there is a disclaimer about not drinking and driving. Perhaps one could further add a disclaimer that once one gets into the order of a dozen or more shots in a single night, one runs a risk of dying from alcohol poisoning, and that can happen with these kinds of "drinking games", so sort of a "proceed at your own risk" link might be appropriate and link to a medical article on the subject.

Very non-standard navigation up top, but not so bad, I actually like it since it is so simple.

The site looks nice. What would make sense is that the 1st page is the description up top, then tag clound. Every other page has the description on the side.

actual:)