Ask HN: Review My App - Alchitect
alchitect.com
alchitect.com
Why not make the first sentence on the front page something like this:
"Alchitect is a MVC web framework written in PHP that does [ whatever it is that makes Alchitect special]"
Technicality aside, for a framework to be popular, it's necessary (though not sufficient) to have lots and lots of documentation/tutorials.
It may not be good mvc, or even a good framework. Of course, whether it's MVC or not has nothing to do with the point I was making: that websites should tell the visitor clearly what the website is about.
My project is similar in premise. I admit I haven't installed your framework but here are my thoughts.
I think you either are a coder or you aren't. I don't think its beneficial to have a middle road. Things like dreamweaver are said to allow anyone to "make a website". The kicker is you need to learn how to work dreamweaver. All you are doing is trading one learning curve for another. It doesn't make sense to me. I'm not saying you are trying to be dreamweaver, the example is meant to illustrate the problem with targeting non-coders and telling them "hey you can make a website with my program".
The point of all this is that since my project involves the same premise, and after thinking long and hard about it, I realize that enabling non-coders to make websites is all about the UI. If you tell a guy that is just starting with code "hey you don't have to write any sql!!! Well he won't know what that means either way, so your proposed benefit flies right over his head.
I would say I am probably in your target userbase. I know how to code well enough to understand the benefits of your framework, but since I know how to code well enough to understand your benefits, that basically means I'm already comfortable writing sql and enlisting MVC to make things easier on me. (I use kohana). So as much as I appreciate all the work you've put into your framework to help me, I am extremely hesitant to abandon kohana and learn alchitect.
I guess my point is about marketing. Figure out exactly who you want to target, and make a product that fits their needs to the T.
In my case, my project targets non-coders. Therefore it must be 100% about the UI. Think of weebly.com That site is bleeding out of the nose with insane UI features.
I'm not saying in any way that this is your demographic, but rather to encourage you to pinpoint your customers!
Hope this helps.
Looking at your documentation on 'creating a page' 1) you say that a user entering a field in to a form must put the '_' character between words. If this is so simple, you should be doing that for the user. Don't let the user make a mistake, you're supposed to be taking care of them. 2) 'Now for the really interesting part' you say. Put this code in the form??? wait, if you're making this so easy for me, why do I need to know code? Plus this is now code that I would need to learn, so I am going to need to learn how you think it is best to implement.
Basically, similar to apsurd, I think you've gone middle of the road here. You've taken out some of the work for programmers who probably don't mind writing the code, and you haven't made it simple enough for non-coders, and you're forcing them to learn too much stuff.
I would also change the video you have highlighted on the front page - after watching it, I have a good idea how to install something, but I'm not 100% sure what I would have installed, or why I would have wanted to do that. Based on the description at the top, I think Alchitect is some kind of web framework, but I'm not clear on what makes it special, distinctive, or even what language/platform it's for.
As opposed to an install video, I'd make the main front-page video into something like one of the Rails videos - "Watch me go from nothing installed to a basic CRUD MySQL site in under two minutes" - and highlight along the way what makes your framework different from every other one.