Ask HN: Review My Site - Studylance.com

[pixpox3]

Hello all,

I submitted my site a few days ago for feedback but didn't get too much response, so I thought I'd try one more time...

If anyone has any feedback its much appreciated, both from a design/usability standpoint and a coding standpoint too.

Is it clear what you have to do as a student/tutor?

Many thanks!

The site url is:

www.studylance.com

[csomar]

This is extremelly useful for math and physics students who generally can't make an income through the web unlike IT students.

I believe it can succeed, one thing to watch: Keep your site SPAM free, Ban the people asking for very hard and long questions and giving few money for it. Also ban users who bid on every question and they are unable to reply.

If your site continue with high-quality, it'll attract a lot of other people, high-quality also (smart)

Good Luck with it!

(Edit: you forgot the about page)

[caffeine]

Your "about us" page is full of lorem ipsum. Doesn't inspire much confidence in the company...

[mechanical_fish]

Worse, the lorem ipsum isn't aligned with the rest of the elements on the page. ;) It isn't even doing its job!

Also: your teachers have areas of "expetise". Normally I strive not to flame people's spelling, but when you're building a site to sell expertise to people...

[jerryji]

Same with the "News" page.

[slance]

Good point...

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Clickable: http://www.studylance.com

[pixpox3]

Thanks

[kevinherron]

It doesn't like my password, but I have no idea why. All it will tell me is "Enter correct Password. ". Maybe some hint on why my password doesn't meet your password constraints?

Edit: Apparently I can't have an exclamation point in my password. That's absurd.

[mgrouchy]

Honestly, I think the idea is pretty neat. The website looks pretty good and for general answers I think this model may work. That being said, if a university student posted an assignment question on here and then answered that question exactly as on an assignment, that is tantamount to cheating. I know when I was in university(which wasn't too long ago) my professors were on top of plagiarism and such, and tend to watch for these type of things.

With a site like this, it doesn't stay a students best kept secret for long and once the cat is out of the bag its only going to cause trouble for students using it.

That being said, its a pretty good idea, I'd be interested to see how this pans out.

[rksprst]

Your UI focus is wrong. For instance, on the question page the main things are category, post date, number of bids. These elements take up as much height space as the question itself. The question is also in a textbox which I have to scroll to read. The focus should be on the question (which should just be in a div). Right now it looks like an accessory instead of the focus.

BTW, out of curiosity... was this built with asp.net mvc?

[hwijaya]

I think design/usability are acceptable. At least i can understand it after playing with it for less than 1 minute.

The only thing that you need to be careful of is probably a market-risk. This type of site is platform model and usually run into chicken-and-egg problems, therefore, takes longer than you imagined to take-off.

Overall, the idea is great. It certainly has potentials. Keep it going! ;)

[ashleyw]

You should probably do it in US dollars rather than British sterling.

Firstly because more people know dollars, but also because it's a higher number, which I'd think would attract more answers; £10 vs $16…only to Britons would they seem the same amount.

[ianbishop]

Nice site, I will definitely be giving it a try.

My only design complaint so far is the green on blue buttons at the bottom of a question ('Ask Student a Question', etc.).

[justlearning]

i like the logical separation of the page using light colors. I think, although you may be tempted to add more rows to the "top tutors", it looks good as is at the moment - may be couple of rows more. The pound sign beside the top-tutors is very 'diggy'. may be small image size? may be you should think those rows in terms of reddit-like than digg.

..and could you share your web-framework/db/architecture details?

[quizbiz]

Why use this when I can type my question into Google and get ranked answers from answers.com?

But I do like the design and interface, a lot.

[mechanical_fish]

Heh. Because the answers that come back from answers.com won't be the answers to your specific homework problems. ;)

Or has Google gotten that good, while I wasn't looking?

[attempts to cut and paste equation from a question into Google to see what comes back]

Um, is there a reason why I can't select the text of a question on this site we're reviewing? Is this a bug, or is it some sort of "feature" that just happens to drive me right up the wall?

Anyway, the answer is: there really are a hell of a lot of pre-solved equations out there in the Google database. So maybe you're right. But I suspect that, even if the answer is out there in Google, there's still value in the service of locating that answer and presenting it to the questioner on a doily.

[known]

Can you name studylance.com competitors?

[karanbhangui]

Are you Felix.f on the site?

[pixpox3]

No that's someone else...

[empone]

is that a bookworm holding a cigar?

[pixpox3]

Well spotted, you passed the studylance test.