Review my website (http://boardlite.com)

[sarafsaurabh]

Boardlite http://boardlite.com is basically a lightweight bulletin board website very similar to stackoverflow.com. The difference being, the aim of Boardlite is to handle discussions instead of questions and answers. You can also see a list of FAQs on this page: http://boardlite.com/faq/

[tonystubblebine]

For some reason, and I'm probably projecting, I thought hey, I'll be able to create my own bulletin board. I think there's still room for a good solution there since Y! Groups seems lost, Google Groups seems a bit abandoned and a ton of other people are in the groups space but trying for something complicated (Ning).

Once I figured out what it wasn't, I had a hard time figuring out what it was. What sort of discussions is this for? StackOverflow isn't just for any sort of questions, it has a very clear purpose.

I forget who told me this, but someone once gave me design advice along the lines of figure out what the number one thing people want to do and make that thing twice as big as everything else. I often remind myself of that once I've finished building cool tech that could be used for anything and everything. I think that advice would be a good starting place for this site.

Aside from lack of purpose I can see a lot of potential in this sort of software as a platform.

I hope that's helpful. I'm hoping to post a "Review My Site" here next week and I'm already nervous about putting myself out there. But early feedback is good to get.

[gridspy]

The "only focus on one thing" advice you give is our strategy at GridSpy (http://gridspy.co.nz) too.

We can monitor solar systems, water levels, fuel levels, solar hot water performance, temperature, humidity, battery levels and yes AC power usage.

We can also do automation, controlling all sorts of stuff in all sorts of ways.

However, I'm focusing only on AC power monitoring on our site, at least for now. Anything else is hard to explain and install, and much more expensive to sell.

[sarafsaurabh]

Thanks Tony. The site is useful for creating discussions in variety of categories and not limited to a single subject like stackoverflow is. This might look like a difficult aim to achieve. I am willing to take the risk. Later on I plan to set preferences for individual users so they get to see topics relevant to their own liking.

[sarafsaurabh]

btw..here is your new profile just in case you din't notice yet :-) http://boardlite.com/user/tony/

[jcrocholl]

Clickable link: http://boardlite.com/

I like the look, it is clean and simple.

One small glitch: it seems that on the page http://boardlite.com/category/computers/list/ some vertical gray border is missing on the left side of "1 post" and "16 views", where the light blue headline becomes narrower and says "Tracking ID: 400000001" etc. Same problem on the FAQ page at http://boardlite.com/faq/ ...

Page load speed: instead of http://boardlite.com/media/js/lib/jquery/jquery-1.3.2.min.js you could use http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min..., see http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/ for details.

[sarafsaurabh]

Thanks. Can you tell me which browser are you using. I am so upset that I couldn't see it before the launch.

[sarafsaurabh]

oh yes. Now I know what you are referring to. I guess the problem is on all browsers. I'll do the needful soon.

[pedalpete]

There are a few comments about people liking the minimalist design, but for me, i find it a bit too pedestrian.

Also, on the homepage I get a 'welcome to boardlite', but I have to click on the message to find out what it's about.

Why not have a description on the homepage saying what boardlite is about. Also, why is the 'tracking ID' so prominent? Do you expect that to be something people will use?

[sarafsaurabh]

I have purposely kept the design pedestrian and thats what the website name signifies: board "LITE". Ever wondered why people prefer Gmail over Hotmail or Google over Yahoo, or for that matter Facebook over MySpace? Regarding the Welcome message, its just a starter topic. It will roll down when new topics are created. If your topics get lost and you are unable to find them, you can search for the IDs(if you remember of course) in the searchbar.

[proexploit]

As a minimalist designer, I like to see the idea put in practice, but your design could be improved upon. Without any differentiation between areas like post, comments, voting, and sidebar. Your design become more difficult to read an navigate. Also, when you're using a fluid design like this, you need to consider what it will look like to users of all screen sizes. Just being fluid and filling a bigger screen doesn't mean it looks good on one. Keep up the good work!

(constructive criticism only, because my compliments won't make it a better website).

[sarafsaurabh]

Hey thanks. I had initially tried on 960 grid. But somehow couldn't fit in the sidebar in the whole design. So thought of making it widescreen. But yes I'll definitely look into the use case again.

[revorad]

Hey Saurabh, that looks interesting.

Why don't you make a bulletin board on a topic which interests people here and link to that? Then you will get meaningful reviews because without any content, it's hard to see what's great about your site.

The minimal design is of course nice, but usability is no good without usefulness.

[sarafsaurabh]

Here we got one: http://boardlite.com/topic/how-can-one-manage-to-keep-the-go...

[sushi]

Dude, I must say that I am very impressed with its minimal design.

[shabda]

Built with Django, right?

[sarafsaurabh]

I knew this was coming. Not that difficult to guess :-)