HN always likes new communities. But don't do this:
New account registrations are currently either closed or very limited
If you do that, the psychology goes like this: "I wonder what this is?" (click) "Ooh, a new social community! I like those!" (reads further) "What do you mean, new accounts are closed or very limited? What if I want to join? Why are you gatekeeping me? Damn you!"... except with words stronger than 'damn'.
Once you're ready to let anyone sign up, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll help you out.
Thank you, the registrations are now open but each signup incurs a cost (for the SMS) and the budget is currently limited hence the notice. I'll get in touch asap.
A few hundred people with US numbers should be able to sign up, but sending SMS overseas is much more expensive. For example, sending to Switzerland: $0.069 per SMS.
I have experience with building a very large community where registration was based on e-mail alone. Racism & general hate don't even begin to describe the things that came along with anonymity and disposable e-mail...
- the site refers to a "20-Things Mascot", but I see none
- when logged in, my user name isn't displayed to remind me of who I am; sad to say this is useful for me nowadays
- in the "about" section, it says, "...specifically designed with our users limited free time in mind." I'd have preferred "... users' limited free time ...".
- er, that's it, with thanks and encouragement :-)
Thank you, much appreciated! There is a mascot, but I did not use it anywhere on the site just yet, I will modify the wording for now. The rest makes sense as well, I will get right on it and thank you for the encouragement! :)
That can't be right though. The box is fairly strong :) I believe that CF may have a new IP range which accesses origins, and I white-listed their known ranges a few months ago. Perhaps this calls for an update to that whitelist.
Thank you for your advice, I appreciate it. I did examine everything that came to mind and the only thing at this point that may be happening is cloudflare -> origin connectivity for some users. I am using a keyword based monitoring since day one and so far no issues with reachability have been detected. This could be related to CF Geo firewall (disabled, but perhaps caching on CF side need to expire?). The only way I can verify CF<->Origin connectivity is by paying for CF a Pro account with Origin health check feature. If you have any ideas/suggestions how to troubleshoot this, I would be happy to hear them. Thanks!
Odd. The GEO FW rule was disabled, but I don't know how long it may take for CF to react. Are you able to connect through a proxy/vpn from another country? I'm fairly sure you've lost interest at this point, but if you got time to kill, I'd love to "debug" this and see what's up.
New account registrations are currently either closed or very limited
If you do that, the psychology goes like this: "I wonder what this is?" (click) "Ooh, a new social community! I like those!" (reads further) "What do you mean, new accounts are closed or very limited? What if I want to join? Why are you gatekeeping me? Damn you!"... except with words stronger than 'damn'.
Once you're ready to let anyone sign up, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll help you out.