Strikingly Creates Simple, Beautiful Web Sites in Minutes | Hacker News Reader

Strikingly Creates Simple, Beautiful Web Sites in Minutes

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75 pointsteng44 comments

Suggestion: Make it more obvious that your Terms[1] and Privacy Policy[2] texts are actually links. Or maybe you aren't expecting anyone to actually read that?

Probably a 'design' decision -- but then I clicked on them and they're just plain text files that aren't even formatted to be readable.

(Yes, I realize I'm being harsh here, but really. They're explicit .txt files. Come on.)

[1] http://www.strikingly.com/terms.txt

[2] http://www.strikingly.com/privacy.txt

Thanks for the suggestion! We'll certainly spruce this up soon!

I for one love this! More sites should make documents like this available in pure-text formats.

Granted, the jarring transition should be avoided, but I believe all documents should be available in an array of formats; html, json, txt.

Yeah me too. Being able to easily grab the documents is pretty good. Whenever I've had documents like that on any of my sites I save them as a .txt file but format them using markdown.

Someone mentioned the other day that "beautiful" is overused. I think I agree: the websites may look unique, but I'm not sure beautiful is the right term. I think polished may be better.

I want it to actually mean something, dammit.

http://www.strikingly.com/site22261-1363092318 it's beautiful

I was trying to scroll through the home page on my laptop, using the arrow keys, and it didn't work. When I pressed the down arrow, it scrolled me to the next section, but some sections were too tall and didn't fit on my screen.

Specifically, it's the Beautiful mobile pages section, that features a picture of a laptop and says "Our responsive templates look great on any device, automatically." Ha.

This is part of the design of our templates - the content of each section can certainly be taller than the height of the screen, but we still keep the arrow key controls so viewers can navigate quickly through the page.

My fault for not reading the fine print. Created my site and was ready to buy it but realized the site has to remain hosted on strikingly servers. Would love to pay a one-time fee to download the source code for site I created and upload it to my own server.

By the way this was the easiest, most beautiful web site I ever created. I do NOT have an eye for design and this really made me feel like I had a good looking site even though all I did was put my info in a template. So thank you :)

Thanks a lot for your support and kind words! We don't have a function for you to download the source code yet, but we might think about offering that function in the near future. Sorry that it wasn't clear to you. Definitely let me know if you have any other feedback!

I just want to register my interest for what nvr219 said above. Upon completion of the site if that was an option I would have bought it by now. If you introduce that feature for somewhere between $5-10$ and I'll buy the source code.

I would pay $10 easy -- considering the amount of time this could save me probably would go for $20 a pop (not sure if other people would pay that much though).

Most browsers have "save this webpage" functionality.

First, I don't appreciate having to give you my (fake) email address before I can see the pricing.

I would also suggest making it easy to replace images, especially the logo and the hero elements, with plain text boxes (textured/gradient/solid background). That might work better for boring businesses than stock photos.

Otherwise, nice little service, wish you best of luck with it!

I don't mean this specifically about your site, but most of the sites like these where the user is trying something new, don't put a barrier asking for an email and expecting him to register. Allow him to start using your tools right away and then if he deems it worthy he'll register anyway since he needs to save the damn thing.

Right now, all I did was go to 10minutemail.com and grab a temporary email. Look I get it you're a new service and you promise to never never ever spam me. But after being burnt a thousand times no sensible user in his sane mind would give you his email address that easily. Allowing one to try before registering may increase coding complexity, but it'll drastically lower the barrier.

"We won't ever spam you, but we will send you a pointless email about a minor change in our TOS or a new feature in 6-9 months' time, once you've completely forgotten who we are and that you ever signed up for us. This email will ding your phone at 4am if you live anywhere that isn't San Francisco."

If you have your email address set to trigger your phone at all times, why the hell would you give it to random websites?

That's exactly their point - they wont.

Is it safe to say it's a direct competition with Weebly?

We're both trying to make website building simpler for non-coders. Weebly is a powerful solution that allows people to build traditional desktop website. We take a different "mobile first, web second" approach. Our websites are simpler, and the key values we bring to users are cross platform optimization and fast set up.

Sorry maybe I didn't the concept of "mobile first, web second". From strikingly website, it looks like it's doing both mobile and web at the same time. So shouldn't it be "mobiel and web first" more precise instead?

What about businesses that aren't apps or "sexy?" Say an accounting firm or some other professional services. I always struggle to fill in the massive image requirements of the front page sliders of these kinds of templates for "boring" businesses. I don't think these businesses should be forgotten, though.

The editing interface is fantastic, nonetheless. Great job.

That's a great point. We actually have a lot of small businesses using Strikingly, including accounting and law firms. We realized that picking good images is a long and hard process, and we're building up an asset library with good images for people to choose from. Do you think this helps? Thanks a lot for the feedback!

I think providing large, quality images is above and beyond the call. Anything toward that is pure bonus IMO.

Awesome to hear that! It should be done soon.

I think the oversized image style is not always appropriate for "boring" professional services firms. Perhaps some themes with less dominant imagery on the front page?

That logo has some major (anti aliasing?) issues on the edges of its letters.

Thanks for pointing this out! There are some small issues with hi-res screens. We're fixing it now.

Will there be a mobile app to manage your site and view stats ?

Hey Mark, view stats is a great idea. We'll think about having an app to help manage the site as well. Will keep you updated. Thanks!

Blah, aren't there a million of these easy templating sites by now? Didn't onepagerapp steal the rest of the market?

I couldn't sign up since the reg form suggests my email is invalid! (You can see my email in my profile).

Hi, I can't see your email in your profile. Can you send an email to dafeng at strikingly.com? I will make sure this gets fixed.

User E-mail addresses are not shown by default; you have to put it in the "About" section (along with whatever other info you want to make public, aside from some site stats for your user name).

I always chuckle a little when a design-oriented company has a non-retina website.

Thanks for pointing it out, we're improving it now!

I bought my rMBP this week specifically to take note of how my site looks on high res displays. I'm shopping for photographers and surprisingly few have "retina support".

in the Pro plan, will I be able to connect 5 custom domains to my 5 sites?

Someone please answer this. If this is true you will have a pro sale within 15 minutes of me reading it.

I went ahead and got a Pro plan and it appears this is the case.

The answer appears to be yes.

Yes. You can connect 5 different custom domains to 5 different sites.

Is there an open source script witch scrolling page effect like in Strikingly?

..and can release the flying monkeys?

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