steve-benjamins

Hi HN,

I’ve spent the last 3 months completely overhauling Site Builder Report. My goal was to make it an over-the-top helpful resource for choosing a website builder— so I even did things like pay for almost every website builder with my own credit card to test billing practices.

This is a classic "lifestyle" business (I hate that term...). I started it three years ago and reviewing website builders is now my full time job. My work is supported by earning an affiliate commission when readers choose a website builder based on my reviews.

I’d be curious to know what Hacker News thinks.

Thanks. Just bought the Great Stagnation off of your comment.

As Warren Buffet has said, the best strategies are “simple but hard.” This is YC advice at it’s best.

(I'm paraphrasing Buffet)

This is just a rant. I would expect more from a University president.

The evolution of his idea is fascinating:

"In the beginning, Stanton prized uniqueness above all else. He chose only the most flamboyant and oddball characters, especially the homeless and mentally ill, but also the elaborately fashionable and unmistakably foreign... But as time passed, Stanton developed a subtler taste in humans. His subjects came to look less like psychedelic superheroes, and more like the person next to you on the subway."

The evolution of his idea is fascinating:

"In the beginning, Stanton prized uniqueness above all else. He chose only the most flamboyant and oddball characters, especially the homeless and mentally ill, but also the elaborately fashionable and unmistakably foreign... But as time passed, Stanton developed a subtler taste in humans. His subjects came to look less like psychedelic superheroes, and more like the person next to you on the subway."

Squarespace is excellent as well— they are both (by far) the two best website builders.

Weebly is easier and less sophisticated. Squarespace has a steeper learning curve but is more sophisticated.

That being said, Carbon is clearly a play by Weebly at being more sophisticated, so we'll see!

Source: My job is reviewing website builders at sitebuilderreport.com. I've reviewed 50+.

Weebly is consistently one of the most thoughtful, polished products I've ever used.

I'm interested to get my hands on Carbon— if only to see how they put it all together (I can guarantee you, the experience will be thoughtfully crafted).

Heh, the scale of the people in the image is unfortunate: Smiling, small woman. Large imposing figure in a black jacket.

As soon as I tried "peeks" I understood 3d touch. It felt like a pretty dramatic UI improvement.

Awesome— thanks!

Recently I finally got to try VR— the Samsung Gear VR.

I was a bit disappointed (my expectations were ridiculously high going into it though). I was surprised to find (1) the resolution to be quite pixelated and (2) visible black strips of the hardware bordering my viewport.

After usage, both the resolution and the visible hardware were not issues. They "melted" away and I was "immersed".

But I'm curious: is the Rift expected to be higher quality than Gear in this regard?

I don't think that's publicly known. This was an article written around the time of the acquisition but it doesn't state any prices: http://www.businessinsider.com/virbcom-the-myspace-killer-th...

Did you read the article?

GoDaddy never set out to acquire Virb. It just happened to. This is more of a story about the messiness of acquisitions than any kind of dark, malicious intentions by GoDaddy.

I have read Dennett and he's a fine analytic philosopher. But it's important to note that any discussion between Dennett and Dreyfus is a very broad discussion of continental vs analytic ... which is not to discredit Dennett's argument (afterall it's Dreyfus who picked the fight in the first place)

"Our intelligence is just a manifestation of a physical system of neurons that follow the laws of physics. "

That's where I would disagree. But I'm not fit to give a full explanation here— thinkers such as Hubert Dreyfuss (What Computers Can't Do) do a much better job of explaining the critique (Dreyfuss is working off of Heidegger and other phenomenalist) .

Philosophically I think it's a mistake to believe there is any possibility of creating artificial human intelligence (and the mistake is in our assumptions of what human intelligence is— computers are not human beings and human beings are not computers) ... But I've got to hand it to Elon Musk— when he believes in something he commits to doing something about it.

EDIT - Saying I disagree that AI is a foregone conclusion on Hacker News is probably a bit trollish... Unfortunately I'm not smart enough to condense an explanation to this comment box— but my disagreement stems from philosophers such as Hubert Dreyfuss (What Computers Can't Do) who are working off of Heidegger and phenomenology.

EDIT 2 - I know how douchey it is to namedrop Heidegger, but I really believe in this case it's necessary ...

Click 'Use the Web App'

I'm a solo bootstrapped entrepreneur but I like working in offices with others— this is perfect for me. To me, this seems like more of a focussed co-working space abroad.

"For those who don't know, Derrida was a French postmodern intellectual charlatan with absolutely no redeeming qualities."

This is a ridiculously inaccurate way to explain Derrida to "those who don't know" him. Derrida is one of the most important continental philosophers of the 20th century.

You're missing the point.

The title is clear: this article is about creating a "Gorgeous UI." It's a good to visual aesthetics. It's not about "what makes a UI good or bad."

Did you watch the video? The fish is sustainably caught (only straight nets, single line).

10 of these bookmarked? I'd be surprised to see that there are 10 sites doing this already. I know of one other- but they do not get permission from the stock photo websites (which I do).

>> there was no need to come out to the press about it

Sure there was. Here's Cook on why it was worth caming out to the press about it:

"So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy."

Hey everyone! This is not just another free stock photo site. This is an aggregation and search engine of several free stock photo websites :)

I built it because I'm a big fan of stock photo sites like Unsplash, but am always bummed that they don't have search. Instead you have to browse through all their photos.

Stock Up fixes that by making Unsplash (and others) completely searchable :).

I launched this about two weeks ago. I built it with Kimono (which crawls the stock photo websites), Paperclip/Open URI (to download thumbnail of every photo), oDesk and me (for tagging each photo) and Algolia (for the instant search).

Naming the startup gave this article extra teeth for me.

No, that's incorrect. Weebly does not include that in their free plan. Check 'compare plans' on their homepage.

One minor thing:

"the only major one that's free to use with your own domain". Nearly every website builder lets you do this. Squarespace, Wix, Yola, Virb etc.

I've been writing about Weebly for a couple years now. They continue to impress me. I haven't had my hands on the iPad app yet, but my bet is that it'll be easy to use and thoughtfully made. They consistently ship excellent software.

What's funny to me is that Weebly generally flies under the radar of the tech press. And yet in terms of profitable YC companies, they have to be near the top. David Rusenko has even talked about going public with Weebly (not unprecedented for website builders: Wix did it earlier this year).

Weebly is a company worth taking a close look at.

Weebly isn't out to replace web developers.

Weebly is more likely replacing low-end web designers (ie: the web designers who do projects for less than $5,000). But they are also growing market share- Weebly is cheap enough to get people online who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford a website.

If you are interested, I wrote a blog post examining the ways software is (and isn't) eating web design. http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/blog/how-software-is-eating...