I Built a Social Network for Food and Here’s How I Did it | Hacker News Reader

I Built a Social Network for Food and Here’s How I Did it

blog.yumhacker.com

159 points204NoContent70 comments

The most impressive thing I find about the creator of yumhacker is that she just does what she wants to, even if she doesn't know "how" to do it she eventually figures it out. From her 180 websites to 180 days challenge, to this.

That kind of "Just F*$king Do It" attitude is so rare to find.

Thank you! Getting over the fear of failure has been a huge lesson for me in the past year.

What are your thoughts on how to attract users to your projects?

That's the next thing I get to explore and I'll definitely be asking for plenty of advice. One thing I plan to do is go out and talk to people who love exploring new restaurants. Bloggers, critics, chefs and just people who generally love food. I'm also thinking about different features that could help provide value while the site is still small, such as custom lists. But mostly, I expect it will be a lot of trial and error.

Come out to https://next-step-growth.eventbrite.com

Literally the best place to chat with people about this topic.

Awesome! Thanks for the tip!

Check out meetup.com, which tends to have groups that like to get together in different towns for different culinary experiences. You know the users are ripe for using the web to discover new dining experiences.

You are right about review sites like Yelp, I really have never found a very useful restaurant review site, every restaurant seems to have great reviews and every one has bad reviews.

It's the one trait that I've found separates entrepreneurs from everyone else. People are naturally risk averse and prone to analysis paralysis, etc.

Just practice doing shtuff. Don't let people stop you.

I really, really enjoyed the 180 websites posts. I checked this site out earlier (this week I believe?) when you shared it to HN and thought it was pretty slick. It was great to get a sort of post game review of this particular app, detailing your battles in the trenches with Backbone, Places API etc.

Really inspring stuff for anyone sitting around with the itch to throw a side project together on a rainy day. Respect.

Thanks! I'll probably write more about my learning process as well as the technology in the future.

Ah, when I saw the title I imagined a homeless hacker who wrote code in exchange for food. That would've been a really interesting article :)

Since you are into making random websites I have one.

SkinProblem.com

Let users upload pictures of there insect bites, infections,... Make them categorize their problem by race/skin color, location, time of the picture since the bite, Source expert opinion on cause of problem List treatment options

I actually looked for this the other day, and even took pictures of this weird rash I had on my hand for when I found the right place to upload them. I never found that place, and I still have these weird photos on my phone.

Something like https://www.dermio.com/?

Woah.. is this like Rule 34 of startups? If an idea exists, there is a startup doing it (and has a .io domain name)?

"Best, Most Original Idea Man’s Ever Had Returns 114,000 Google Search Results"

http://www.theonion.com/articles/best-most-original-idea-man...

Wow that is pretty cool.

As an occasional hypochondriac, I really like this idea but I'm ridiculously squeamish when it comes to medical stuff. I'm afraid I'd keep passing out on my keyboard. :)

I think submitting your idea was a good idea. Maybe since she's proven she gets stuff done, she could crowdsource and crowdfund her next product.

Nice! Technical question:

I type "Elmhurst, NY" and it converted it to "Elmhurst, Queens, NY 11373, USA", how did you do that? I'm looking to do something similar!

Most geocoding APIs (Google: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/) will normalize an address and give you data back about it.

I use the Google Maps Javascript api for geolocation. It takes a string and returns an array of places that match. Each place object includes a formatted address which I put in the search bar in place of what was initially typed.

I'm not 100% certain but I think this is the code you are looking for https://github.com/jendewalt/yumhacker/blob/master/lib/geoco...

Interesting on a few levels. One, the learning curve by Jennifer is impressive, going from a site to change background color in the beginning to yumhacker. Yeah there is a ways to go in functionality, but that is a cool start. (of course Facebook probably sucks the air out of other social networks, but that's really not the point.) But what I really find more impressive is that yumhacker seems to have a good amount of initial users. I've found the easy part in launching a webapp is building it, but the getting of users is really the hard part. That is the testament to the power of a unique marketing idea (which probably did not start as marketing) of deciding to learn web design and throwing up a blog with a catchy title, ie, 180 websites in 180 days. Now that she has raised her profile a bit and has some eyeballs on her, she is able to make something a bit more worthwhile and attract users to it as well.

What I really like about this approach is that people don't review a location, like they do on sites like Yelp, and instead "endorse" places they really like.

What this effectively means is that while browsing, I no longer need to mentally balance the positives with the negatives of a place. Instead, I can quickly see which places have received more endorsements, which in my mind, loosely forms a hierarchy of best to worst.

Plus, I don't care what Cindy from the Mission says about a spot. If my buddies all like it, good enough for me to at least check it out.

Side note: If possible, I think a ratio of endorsements to check-ins would be hugely awesome.

That's a great thought on endorsements vs. check-ins. I'll have to think about including more metrics.

Wow. I and my friend have build a similar project (similar technology, not topic). I will announce it here in NH, I am just afraid the tiny server won't be able to handle the traffic.

It just took him two days to build it. But I realize that we don't have your "Redo search when map moved". I realize that it is annoying that we don't have this feature.

Great work.

this person is amazing! I remember the 180 websites in 180 days project and it's so encouraging to see how far she has come.

Thank you! Some days I can't believe it's been less than a year.

Great work Jen.

One question. How do I set my default location? I've signed in and it has my location as "Newcastle, New South Wales" but the homepage still goes to San Francisco, CA.

I see that I can share my location, but that only seems to run a single search query.

Once this issue is resolved I will suggest it to my friends, so you can get some more users down-under :)

It's great and congratulations for your accomplishment! 1 question though, are you planning to make money out of it? If so how? Because I too am a beginner developer, learnt and made a website all by myself www.gccfishing.com and I was looking for ideas on how to create income from it.

Thank you! My focus for YumHacker right now is for people to try it out and figure out how to make it better.

Well done.

Be careful, though, Yum Brands (trading symbol YUM) is a well known brand associated with... food? Well, maybe in other parts of the world they're associated with food but here, I'd say if this seriously takes off you might hear them come a'knocking due to trademark infringement.

Very nice. I love the idea of specific social networks where people can connect based on their interests.

I really like the UI as well. The top 10 represented on the map, it's so convenient. I hope you keep working on this.

I think you should include a link to github on the main website it might be a good endorsement?

@jenniferDewalt, can you describe your typical day of working on this project? For example, there are many threads about not being able to find time to get side projects off the ground, how did you do it? what did you have to give up to get it done? example of daily schedule? Thanks!

When I first decided I was going to learn to code, I saved some money and organized my life so that I could quit my job and tackle the challenge full time. I knew being fully immersed in learning would help me get through the rough patches and discouragement.

I spent about 8 hours a day, every day working on YumHacker, with the occasional day off or half day around the holidays. Things were kind of slow going at first because I was still doing a lot of learning and I wanted to get a better understanding of what I was doing. After I got the hang of things, the pace picked up and I started producing much faster.

The crazy schedule I've been keeping this past year has definitely cut into my social life. Weekends are my favorite days to work because the office is quiet and I get my best work done then. My friends have gotten used to me carrying a monitor around on trips.

The thing that works for me is to make a habit and do whatever it takes to stick to it. I bit the bullet and got a desk in a co-working space which means I eat more ramen noodles but allows me stay super focused and productive. I tend to stay up really late working but then I let myself sleep in so I can come back fully charged the next day. Finding a personal groove is crucial.

Wow, the title link actually links to the product home page, and not uselessly back to "blog.product.com"! Bravo! It's sad that I need to commend you on that. It's just a trend for product blogs to link back to the blog, and not to the product.

It seems that you learned backbone along the way but if you did make an educated decision btw that and angular I'd love to know why you picked backbone over Angular. Awesome job thanks for all the great responses below too cool to read

A lot of my friends use Backbone and I poked around at it during the 180 Websites project. Despite the somewhat high learning curve for me in the beginning, Backbone felt like a natural extension of how I was already thinking about JS and frontend dev. I haven't really worked with Angular but I'd like to play around with it (and Ember) at some point.

Awesome thanks for the feedback and shared it cleverly on my fb via two sisters.last_name("yum") :)

I like the idea...but I wish the site did more. What features are you adding next?

I'm going to add more advanced filters so you can sort by things like price, category, etc. I'm also going to make a mobile optimized front end so it will be easier to use on fly. Some other thoughts I've had are adding the ability to make custom lists (i.e. My Fav Taco Joints) and promoting people who are active on the site.

+1 for the lists. Looking forward to it.

@jenniferDewalt, Great job on the site, I also found your original 180 websites inspirational. I was wondering if you could speak to the technology stack you used to create your site frontend/backend?

If you actually read her post, she gives all the details there. Rails + Backbone + pg

Thanks! For the backend I use Rails as an api. Rails responds to the initial request with the assets and a barebones html doc with header, section and footer tags. From there, Rails responds to subsequent requests with JSON.

The restaurant search feature uses the Google Places api to get restaurant data (including things like hours and price) for places that aren't already in the database. YumHacker uses Postgres with PostGIS for the database and devise for authentication.

The frontend magic happens with Backbone.js. Backbone latches onto the skeleton html sent over by Rails to render the views. Whenever you request new data, it sends a request to Rails which sends back JSON. The learning curve for Backbone was kind of high but now that I've got the hang of it, it's pretty awesome.

I plan to write something more in depth about the technology in the near future.

Thanks for giving me a more in depth answer and not just telling me to go read your blog (which I should have done in more detail in the first place). Looking forward to seeing more good stuff from you and YumHacker.

I added some restaurants to the Miami, FL area. I can add a bunch more to the fort lauderdale area as well, but would be nice to get some sort of reward for participating :)

Thanks for adding restaurants! I've got a couple of ideas for rewarding active engagement. One thought I have is awarding people something like a 'Super Hackers' status and their endorsements and profiles promoted. Another idea I've been tossing around is giving people the ability to make special lists which could also be featured.

The massive accomplishment that this is aside; the website is elegantly minimalistic in a way I haven't seen since the early days of Google. Good job!

The website is wonderful, and is an inspiration for people like me who are new to webdev. Congratulations and thank you!

This is great!

As someone who is currently diving into Rails it's certainly really helpful and inspiring.

Extra kudos for the Github repo.

Just wonderful, congrats!

Thank you!

Why does it default to SF? This is really irksome :(

Sorry about that. Saving the search state is on my to do list right now.

This is so snappy! What a banging job you did :)

a) You are amazing and inspirational. Congratulations!

b) As a person struggling with procrastination, and goal setting/choosing, I would like to ask you some qs about the 1 site / day for 180 days, thing. It seems to me as an interesting "reach your goal, without setting hard (sub)goals in between"(?)

If I understand correctly, you set out to code one site per day, without specifying beforehand what you would do each day? Every day you said, "ok, today I'll do this"? Was it difficult to choose between possibilities, and how did you address that? Where there end conditions for the day's goal? Or you just went as far as you could? How did you manage to stay focused on the day's project, without branching off to various tangents? Were some days under- or overwhelming, in their difficulty?

..Sorry for the wall of text, but any experience/advice/insight, would be greatly appreciated. ..Congratulations, once more.

A cute site. What it lacks in functionality it makes up for by being made by a woman. Pro-beginner-tip: Don't make social networks.

Well, you seem like an asshole. Pro-commenting-tip: Don't shit on people's accomplishments.

Instead I'll just join with you all in never-ending self-congratulatory ecstasy. Why aren't we all in Paradise?

What's with the cynicism? Jennifer went from nothing to a web application using modern technologies. That's cool. I don't think she's aiming to be the end all of social networks for food.

You don't have to join "self-congratulatory ecstasy", but you also don't have to be a condescending dick.

Instead of making vague and shallow insults, you should try to politely explain what's wrong with OP's website.

In your 1-sentence insult, your main grudge seems to be that the website was made by a female. Your point might have been that women's work should receive equal praise (and criticism) as men's. But instead of discussing that (possibly valid) point, your sexist remark only feeds the fire (and makes you look like a dim-witted fool).

In a latter comment, your metaphor compares making social networks to gold rush. Again, possible valid point, burried behind a condescending sarcasm.

We shouldn't read between the lines to understand your point of view -- either make it POLITE and CLEAR or GTFO.

Oh cute. Condescension and sexism. The only thing this comment is missing is the classic HN trope "I almost built this, but didn't, but I'm just as accomplished as the person who did cause I almost did this."

Just curious, why do you say don't make social networks?

Is your comment supposed to be sarcastic mockery of HN or are you being serious?

People, please, don't feed the trolls

You are making me break my law about not saying a obscenity to anyone in HN, you been warned >.<.

Her accomplishments stand on their own.

This guy is easily the worst.

As a person who spent all his spare time the past few years to self-train his way to mere developer competency, I can genuinely say that I am continually blown away by Dewalt's accomplishments. Forget gender, she's plainly impressive, an exemplar for all the autodidacts out here.

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