Show HN: My First Rails App (currentride.com)

[pruett]

I needed to get out of localhost:3000 land and ship a (somewhat functional) web app. Anyways, I built Current Ride as a place to put your bucket list items out in the open. The goal is really to inspire the community to do more things!

Building the app helped me understand Rails a lot better and allowed me to hack-break-fix bugs/features more effectively :)

Enjoy! http://www.currentride.com

[alex_g]

I think it's fantastic! Like others said, describe more about why a user should sign up and what the site is about.

I one problem that is annoying me is the little picture of yourself on the left hand side of the site. It is the only icon on the site, but it links to my profile, which I don't want to see. You should at least add a non-intruding top bar with a logo to find the main feed. I see now that there are buttons in the top right corner for 'everybody' and 'following', but those are difficult to find are not located conveniently, especially since there are not enough people on the site to make use of the following feature.

However, I love the idea and I'll be checking up on it to look for new ideas :) It reminds me of http://www.thefancy.com/ but more useful because you can get something out of looking at the posts.

Hopefully you can get more users, because I'd love to see this fill up with things browse through!

[pruett]

@alex_g, thanks for taking the time to provide a very useful critique of the site. i appreciate you signing up and playing around with it a bit. i wanted to put it out early (flaws and all) to get just this type of feedback. so thank you. would love to hear some more thoughts. i'll follow up with an email if that's ok with you!

[alex_g]

[e-mail]

[ZanderEarth32]

Cool, but the immediate warning dialog flashing in red is kind of a turn off. I haven't been on the site for more than 1 second and I already feel like I did something wrong or I am not wanted.

[pruett]

yup...agree 100%

[tzaman]

Protip: You should really explain on the front page what the app is all about. I don't want to go to hassle of registering when I see absolutely no benefits in me doing so.

[pruett]

@tzaman: you don't like super vague homepages? haha, no, you are completely right, thanks for checking it out...copy is something i neglected from the get-go

[DavidAbrams]

Pro tip: "pro tip" is two words.

[alex_g]

Working Link: http://www.currentride.com

[aviflombaum]

Great job Kevin!

[pruett]

muchas gracias :)