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New: Hot or Not Designs  (View post)

franky [PersonRank 1]

Wednesday, August 16, 2006
17 years ago8,290 views

Please get rid of the annoying hoppin' continue link (and if possible even of the vote result page, it block my interest in voting on many designs).

But I do like the idea of the site ;)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Probably I should just replace this with a small countdown instead of an animation. The reason I included this was that I can say good-bye to my server if people click thru too fast. Thanks...

Pip [PersonRank 8]

17 years ago #

i'd like it better to vote on a one-on-one base. it's more intuitive. it's about 10 choices against 2 choices. most marketers know which is the better way to get a response...

Pip [PersonRank 8]

17 years ago #

as an example: I tend to choose "1" or "10" to express "like" or "dislike". since you can calculate the same average with a 1 to 10 or 1 and 10 scale it should be ok. I guess more than 50% of the responses are 1 or 10 for absolutely like or absolutly dislike. right?

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Pip, I agree that it would be easier to choose which site is best when given two choices (i.e. "one-on-one" as you call it) but I think you're incorrect to always use 1 or 10 to express "like" or "dislike" if 10 options are given.

For example, I like Google's design; I also like Digg's design; and I even like Yahoo's design. Does that mean they're all equal in my eyes? Not at all!

Surely you can like things on a variable scale and rank/rate them accordingly? No?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I changed the behavior of the continue buton.

Pip [PersonRank 8]

17 years ago #

I think the with an amount of testers big enough, the results should be iterating those of the 1-10 scale.

what I've regognized is that even though it's only milliseconds I find myself thinking like:

Ah, thats good. = 10 ..... no there might be better ones, it's an 8. but 8 is too bad, its 9.

that's not intuitive. the longer i think the more i'm biasing the results with my expectations of other users taste, fairness and useless stuff like that...

Kirby Witmer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

shouldn't it track whether you voted on a site already?? I got the same site up twice with in a few minutes of each other....

Chris Riley [PersonRank 3]

17 years ago #

I did a similar site a while back for Judging books / CDs / DVDs by their covers. It had rate a cover, like Phillip has done here, but it also has a "head to head" game. http://www.judgeabookbyitscover.co.uk

Its interesting that Phillip has done this for websites, as at one point I considered using the Alexa API to pull in the top 100 and have people vote on them.

I think where my site has gone wrong, and possibly Phillips has succeeded, is that you can submit URLs for rating, whereas I pulled in covers for rating from Amazon. Eventually users got bored of the same covers, couldn't contribute and went away.

Also Philip, I think the rating would benefit from this design pattern... http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/pattern.php?pattern=ratinganobject

Chris Riley [PersonRank 3]

17 years ago #

Phillip, I had the same issue Kirby has just described with Judge a Book (see previous post). I ended up storing the last 50 covers seen in a session variable to try and stop that happening, seemed to work, but I'm not sure it is the best solution server resource wise.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

<< shouldn't it track whether you voted on a site already?? >>

It does. However, it tells you *after* you've voted (and presumably doesn't include your 2nd vote in the results).

Sam Davyson [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Very nice site. I submitted my humble site be interesting to see how that does.

Why does it go from a big IFrame to a small IFrame when you submit your result? Why no have the voting in an IFrame so you always have the large IFrame of the first page?

Sankar Anand [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

kinda stumble upon concept ?

by the way a more navigation feature would be helpful

the numbers at the top seems simple replace them with radio buttons or someother...

Pip [PersonRank 8]

17 years ago #

uuuhhhh. someone has insertet gmail and it's killing the frame. someone but me saw that?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Yes, you can only vote once (based on IP). As soon as many more sites are submitted (I'm submittng dozens myself right now), the chances of getting "dupes" is decreasing.

The page with the small iframe looks much better on Internet Explorer I'm afraid – in IE, I can set the zoom so it will look like a thumbnail! Of course, there are services actually handing out thumbnails, but they're mostly not complete. I'm still wondering how I can bring a thumbail-feature to Firefox.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Thanks Pip, I removed Gmail!

pokemo [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

How do i know that my site has been approved? Thanks

Kirby Witmer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

wow.. philipp, you are going to have to improve your site.. :D

Hotness = 2.2/10
8 votes
blog.outer-court.com

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> How do i know that my site has
> been approved? Thanks

Pokemo, search for it at the bottom of the Hottest page:
http://www.hotornotdesigns.com/hot

If you find it you know it has been approved. If you don't find it, it is either in the approval queue or has been rejected...
Note I still need to approve a couple of sites...

zmarties [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

For me, a large part of whether a site is "hot" or not is whether it has a good fluid design, or at least one that makes good use of my screen estate. I can't make any judgements when all I'm given is a small fixed size frame, that doesn't even have a scroll bar on it.

Rather than using an iframe, I think you should go to a simple two frame view – a header across the top with the voting controls, and a main frame below to show the site. That way, we can get a much more realistic idea of how good the site design is, and judge accordingly.

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Pls digg

http://digg.com/design/Hot_or_Not

Niraj Sanghvi [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Example.com is in the list, and the page is showing an error instead of a thumbnail:

You have reached this web page by typing "example.com", "example.net", or "example.org" into your web browser.

These domain names are reserved for use in documentation and are not available for registration. See RFC 2606, Section 3.

Kirby Witmer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

<<Pls digg
digg.com/design/Hot_or_Not>>

hey.. i had already submitted it earlier.. :D

http://digg.com/design/Judge_a_web_site_s_design_Hot_or_not

Ryan [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Heh, niraj... that IS example.com's website. it's a reserved site.

Phillip.. i'm glad you did some auto testing.. I added a few "malicious" type entries just to see what would happen. like c: and http://localhost/

you've gotta admit, those would have been funny.

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Kirby : waaaaaaa..digg did not show the URL as a dup!!

oh ok.. my bad..I linked to phillpps entry, rather then the site itself :(-

Kirby Witmer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

<<<Kirby : waaaaaaa..digg did not show the URL as a dup!!

oh ok.. my bad..I linked to phillpps entry, rather then the site itself :(->>>>

no problem.. just thought i'd bug ya a little.. ;D even kevin himself does dupes...

Kirby Witmer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

now we need voting buttons to put on the websites, philipp... so that you could vote hot or not directly from the website, it could also display current hotness rating. :D

Pip [PersonRank 8]

17 years ago #

http://www.micropersuasion.com/ seems to hack the frame, too. :-/

Sam Davyson [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I am #3 on the design list. For ugly.

LOL!

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Micropersuasion has been removed, thanks Pip.

Sankar Anand [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

hey philip aprrove my site soon....

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

My GamesfortheBrain.com is a steady #8... in the ugliest top 20.

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

My fav sites from the list:

http://sarawhite.com/
http://alistapart.com/
http://nataliejost.com/
http://leliathomas.com/
http://www.odds-and-ends.net/photolog/

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Philipp, maybe you should cache the sites. Save the screenshots and show them instead of the actual sites. It's faster (you can even outsource image hosting to a free site).

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Does anyone know of a tool that converts a site into a screenshot?

franky [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Any chance on a <next> navigation?
A. I don't feel like voting for myself;
B. Sometimes pages are (temporarily) out.

Jake's View [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Philipp, try Browsercam. http://www.browsercam.com/

Kirby Witmer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

how are you ranking the top 20 ugly sites??

1. http://sethf.org/ avg. 1.0 with 8 votes
2. http://hotbot.com/ avg. 1.0 with 17 votes.
3. http://ducttapemarketing.com/ avg 1.0 with 11 votes.
  

i'm just trying to figure that out.. shouldn't hotbot be on top??

franky [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Girafa : http://www.girafa.com/product2.acr

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

This might be useful:
http://pearlcrescent.com/products/pagesaver/
(not free)

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Check this:
http://khtml2png.sourceforge.net/

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Also this:
http://www.hackdiary.com/archives/000055.html (for Python)

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

http://marginalhacks.com/Hacks/html2jpg/ (Perl)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Thanks Ionut!

Jake's View [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

My website's an 1.8 :-(...

Kirby Witmer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

>>> My website's an 1.8 :-(...

that's nothing.. mine is 1.5 :(

Sam Davyson [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Top of the Ugly!! Ha ha

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Does anyone knows why the AdSense ads are about travel?

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

know (sorry)

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

FYI – I just saw some for jewellery (and jewelry [sic]) as well as travel. No idea why though...

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

yeah , me is seeing Jewellery too...

waaaaaaa.. all them buggers.. voted my soo soo soo down!!

me is on 2.4 avg!!

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

The AdSense ads completely suck. I was figuring they might "balance" to something *relevant*, but not so. I'm also getting the jewellery. If I understand it right, the Google adbot takes a look not at the actual page (because it's the result of a POST request), but simply at hotornotdesigns.com. At least the homepage includes some text, like the word "design", but apparently that's not good enough for Google. I could start to exclude all the jewellery URLs but that seems to be a kind of endless work...

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I've added some vote and URL count stats to the About page.
http://www.hotornotdesigns.com/about

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Phillipp, is it possible to have two elements directly populated with real time stat's --is this possible ?? total designs and votes in reak time would be awsome..

"Currently, 528 designs are randomly rotating, and they've been voted on 6,020 times.)"

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Yes, the About page updates real-time... is that what you mean?

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

yeah ok.. kewl – thats nice..real time stat's.. I jus thought it was static

jsaltz [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Could be an abomination, or not.

Seth Finkelstein [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Hey, I think of my site as *functional* – "hot" is for style over substance :-)

By the way, it's http://sethf.com/ (.COM, not .ORG – the latter redirects)

Natalie [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

"I tend to choose "1" or "10" to express "like" or "dislike"."

So THAT's what happened with the CSS Reboot in May!

Tiago Serafim [PersonRank 4]

17 years ago #

Philipp, did you remember that, some years ago, you posted a link to an "service" from google that generates screenshots? If I´m not wrong, they used that to show how AdSense would like in an given site...
Maybe that "service" can be useful now...

btw, very nice idea!! Congrats!

alek [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

ThumbShots.org would be once resource for the screen shots for 'ya?

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Tiago: I immediately thought of that too. However, that "service" was hosted by another company who have since password protected it. I remember finding it here:

http://services.google.com/demo/adsense/start

When you entered your URL, it grabbed a screenshot using this:

http:// 204.176.81.80/Google/GetImage.aspx?url=

Shame it doesn't work any more... :-(

Pip [PersonRank 8]

17 years ago #

concerning adsense: why aren't you putting the google_adsection_start comment around some passages including words like webdesign. (ok, you have to add these first)

József Jároli [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Hi Philipp,

It's funny to see yet another hot-or-not site since I have recently developed a similar one, so I know it's not so easy to create an usable site. Maybe you can gather some ideas what to do, what not to do when further developing your site checking out this:

http://www.architectsjury.com/

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

The problem with these thumbshots services is they don't offer a screen for absolutely every website, and also, the images are rather small. I'll keep researching this...

Tiago, the tool you mention was really nice but Google has disabled it unfortunately.

Seth, changed the URL! My GamesfortheBrain.com surpassed you in the Not charts by now! Yay :)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> For me, a large part of whether a site is "hot" or not is
> whether it has a good fluid design, or at least one that
> makes good use of my screen estate.

Zmarties, the frame is now more fluid than before.

Tiago Serafim [PersonRank 4]

17 years ago #

Tony Ruscoe and Philipp: Too bad they disabled that =/

Ryan [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Philip, Alexa has a way you can get a screenshot of a site from their database.

It's a free API (unlike browsercam) I use that for various things.

Nancy [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

About how long does it take for a site to be either accepted or rejected?

I submitted my site 5 or 6 days ago, but it doesn't seem like a decision's been made yet. Will it be a matter of days, weeks...? Just curious.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Nancy, it really depends, it can be quickly or take days as I approve a couple of dozen pages (almost) every day. There are currently around 200 in the pipeline.

Nancy [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Thanks. :)

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