29
49 Comments

The new IH?

The new Indie Hackers looks very good!

  1. 62

    I honestly hate it, it's just not relevant to me.

    Podcasts section: don't care, I only listen to podcasts through my iPhone using the podcasts app.

    Meetsups: don't care.

    What's in the store? don't care.

    Remote jobs: don't care. I'm a founder.

    Partner up: don't care.

    So I used Adblock and removed all those elements.

    Here's how it currently looks: https://i.imgur.com/Pob8IyT.png

    1. 5

      This is brutal @FarouqAldori haha. Not all indiehackers are founders though. Some people here will get jobs, partner up or even find meetups near them. I agree with you on podcasts though.

    2. 3

      Deffo agree. The old layouts were already quite overwhelming for someone who just joined IH. I suggested it to a lot of friends and everyone had an entirely different experience. Now it's even more complicated.

      My banner blindness helped me when the new layout first arrived but after a while, it started to get to me. Switching to the adblocked version as well.

      Having options is good. But, constantly having to make a decision is not. I realize it's challenging to promote new sections you're excited about without slamming it at people's faces but still, it makes it a little more difficult to use it.

    3. 2

      Did the same thing haha except I removed the top stories section too, I don't care about that: https://i.imgur.com/zwIyKHO.png

    4. 1

      Thanks, just did the same.

    5. 1

      I came back to IH after some time and didn't notice any of the changes. My eyes basically saw only what is in your screenshot... 😂

    6. 1

      Thanks for the recommendation. Finally a cleaner UI. 😅

    7. 1

      Me too. Adblocked everything except the news section.

    8. 1

      Oh that's pretty cool. You just gave me the idea to customize all the websites I'm using daily with Brave's "Block element" feature.

      1. 1

        how did you make it stack horizontally?

        1. 1

          I used CSS Flexbox

    9. 25

      This comment was deleted a year ago.

  2. 14

    I hear all the feedback. All of it makes a lot of sense. The homepage is still a work in progress and was released in MVP form — I'll be adding new things and making changes in the coming weeks.

    I agree there could be more useful things, and there will be. In particular, I have plans to feature both groups and products on the homepage in a more useful way than before, and also add a helpful daily poll. I added notifications today.

    I disagree with complaints about clutter. IH is a community with different ways to provide value. Different visitors are drawn to different subsets of functionality, and I can test and see what people engage with vs what they don't. Not everyone is just here for the forum. In fact, most aren't! My goal is to showcase as much of the community as possible, not to make a slick streamlined landing page that drives everyone through a single flow to a single CTA. That is not a universally good design, and it wouldn't be smart for IH.

    If you're someone who only cares about the community forum, that's fine. I kept it as easy to find and read as ever. The additional sidebar doesn't get in the way. I made each side section collapsible today for those who are truly annoyed by them, but imo that'll always be a very small (if vocal) minority.

    I do appreciate the feedback as always, and am listening! So please do keep making these threads with your thoughts 👍

    cc @FarouqAldori @Primer @satvikpendem @orliesaurus @mkrunic @CharlieFerrer @richardchu

  3. 6

    It's a Courtland's right to decide what and how to implement. I don't care much about new sections as for me the main source of the interesting information was and is the feed.

    But I think there is the main problem of IH: there are new posts and "popular" which are selected from the newest manually. So, instead of giving all posts the same probability to be seen, some of them are selected to become "popular". I think it's not fair and I saw many good posts have not been seen by many people just because they have not been seen by Courtland or whoever select them.

    I think it is the main and only real problem of IH. Everything else is nice and welcomed.

    1. 2

      the Popular tab is based on a popularity algorithm, not manual selection. the algorithm considers things like upvote count, comment count, how long ago the post was submitted, how many points the author has, etc.

      of course, mods have tools for manipulating post ranking, but we don't spend much time doing that.

      the Top Stories section is where we manually curate posts.

      1. 1

        I saw some posts are considered as "popular" even not having any votes or comments. How does your algorithm select them in this case?

        1. 1

          The post's author probably has a lot of points on the forum.

    2. 1

      How does selecting posts manually to come to the popular tab work? And is it confirmed or speculation? Really curious.

      1. 1

        the Popular tab is based on a popularity algorithm, not manual selection. the Top Stories section is based on manual selection by the indie hackers team.

  4. 5

    Looks to me like I'm the only one missing the milestones tab!

    As for the whole redoing of the layout, I'm not sure how to feel. It will take some getting used to, but I'm not sure if I'll explore meetups, podcasts, remote jobs, and partner-up tabs.

    Stories and discussions are still what I come here for.

    1. 1

      You are not the only one missing the Milestone tab.

      @csallen Milestone is a good initiative to motivate people to submit daily/weekly progress updates, in order to share their stories with others, and get some tiny exposure.

      You shouldn't definitely bury it.

      1. 1

        I'm bringing milestones back to the homepage, just a matter of time. I want to put them in a place where they get more attention, though. I might just mix the top milestones for the day into the main homepage feed of posts 🤔

        1. 1

          That is an interesting idea. Mixing top milestones with homepage posts, might work.

          Or at least putting a widget on left/right sidebar. Something like above Meetups or Partner ups.

  5. 4

    I have joined IH only less than a year ago. Back then the content was so good, i was addicted. I couldn’t stop checking IH. I started listening to all the podcast episodes, checked the community a few times daily for a couple of weeks. In the last few months i feel that something has changed. Now there is a lot of people who are not even trying to be IndieHackers but just trying to promote stuff.

    It is rare now to find the really interesting & motivating stuff in my opinion. It‘s either self-promotion or some kind of „fishing for compliments“ in the comments.
    Whatever happened to all the great & inspiring stories with many insights?

    I feel that these website changes reflect this shift of focus of where IH wants to go.
    So bloated with stuff that shouldn‘t be the focus.

    Or maybe it is just me, already having read so much interesting stuff on here in the beginning. I mean i was so amazed accidentally finding this site.
    All of a sudden I knew what I was doing is called, IndieHacking. I felt like i am not „alone“ on this journey.
    But now most people i see here i feel are people having regular jobs or companies or people who are marketers who don‘t even bother to think about what „IH“ means.

    Sorry for this kind of rant, i am just afraid of IH going in a new direction and me ending up losing interest completely.

    Still super, super grateful to @csallen and everyone here who created what I fell in love with. Thank you.

    1. 3

      The answer is actually that it's just you. Well, almost. This happens to many many people — the feeling that IH was amazing back when they joined but has gone down hill. The reality is actually that you've changed!

      I know this because I do analysis on the types and quality of posts being made over time, and it's fairly consistent. In addition, the are people saying similar things at all points in time, and there's have been for 4 years. The site can't always be getting worse.

      All that said, this is still my problem to deal with at IH. I don't want the site to become dull and repetitive to 80% of people once they've been here 6 months and learned the basics. I want there to always be new ideas and trends to discuss, as well as high-level thoughts.

      The "top stories" section is an attempt to facilitate that, as is the huge increase in AMAs we began doing 6 months ago. Other ideas are welcome, too.

      What posts, specifically, do you find interesting nowadays?

  6. 4

    It does, but (gripe) I wish it didn't feed into hit-making/power law posts so hard. 'Popular' and 'Top Stories' feel kinda redundant together.

    Also, did the small interest groups go away?

    1. 2

      True. The 'popular' & 'top stories' was a miss. Can't seem to find the small interest groups either.

      1. 1

        If you hit Following it'll show in the sidebar apparently

  7. 3

    I like the new layout. I'm interested in all of the things that are now brought to the forefront of the landing page. I didn't know these parts of the app even existed.
    It is possible that since I'm new to IH that my perspective is different than those that have been on the site longer. I'm not used to anything in particular so there was little adjustment needed.
    I see a number of people don't find the different sections relevant to them now. I'm now wondering what parts of the app they do find relevant. Maybe there is more I should explore.

  8. 2

    I absolutely love the new design! You have increased discoverability as well as ease of access to the different great things available on IH. It doesn't diminish the stuff we all already love.

    Perhaps I'm in the minority with my favorable feedback but I know for sure that people frequently don't like change (even if it's good). Negative feedback can be in response to change and cloud the ability to see improvement. Just saying.

    And I think that new people would benefit from seeing the different ways that IH provides value.

    Anyway, that's my vote. Love it!

  9. 2

    The mobile UX suffers with top stories being a block - try paging through newest and you’ll see there is no anchor to the top of the list of posts. Apart from that inconvenience it’s a reasonable update. Cc: @csallen

  10. 2

    Been here since the beginning and as a fellow product person I feel your pain @csallen @channingallen

    1. 2

      That said, the one big thing that I think lowers quality is all the folks just trying to promote and backlink their content somewhere else. A more clear focus on IH exclusive content would help, but I don’t claim to know how to build that into product.

  11. 2

    I tweeted the same feeling the exact moment I saw the new layout, heck I even made a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhDN-j_pqSo

    I think the main issue is: Logged-out experience vs Logged-in experience.

    As a logged-in user I obviously have much more interest in seeing only the latest and most important information that I PERSONALLY CARE about.
    However to an outsider, who isn't logged in - and might have never heard of IH this could totally be different: they might be interested in browsing around the podcasts, meetups and community before realizing the best part is the community (LOL)

    However after talking to Courtland, I am super positive he's going to take all of our angry feedback into consideration to make IH the good old place we're all used to.

  12. 2

    Not a big fan. It feels very cluttered, and most of the sections are irrelevant to the majority of people.

    Like, how often are you going to be on Indie Hackers looking for remote jobs? Probably <1% of your time. Same with partnering up. These are niche things that would only be useful to a small segment of people during a short period of time, and definitely do not deserve a place on the home page.

    It feels like they're trying to increase engagement with podcasts/meetups/partnering up/jobs/etc. by making them so prominent, instead of actually having a well-designed page. In reality, these things would likely be better off as separate, dedicated pages that people can visit when they want to.

    Also, where are the milestones? With each update, they've been de-emphasizing it more and more, and now it's completely gone. I know a lot of people never look at them, but sometimes they are interesting to read, and you can discover cool products that way. Now it feels like even if you accomplish something meaningful, no one on IH will ever know about it, and it makes me less likely to share my journey here.

    And if the intent is to prevent people from posting meaningless milestones with no real content: well, it doesn't work. People will just make a post instead. For example, this is literally on the front page right now: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/reached-9000-followers-for-go-related-golangch-a62aeff2f2 (don't mean to bash on this person, they're definitely not the only one).

    Honestly, even Facebook feels less cluttered than Indie Hackers now, and that's not a compliment 😬

    I sincerely hope they reconsider the design change.

  13. 2

    Dislike it a lot! Way too crowded + most of the stuff offers zero value to me.

  14. 1

    I'd love a way to favorite and categorize those favorites. There's a lot of great content on here but no way to save and organize things that I want to recall later.

  15. 1

    2 columns are more than enough for me. Now my screen is too crowded when I open IH on the computer. All content from left side could be removed IMHO

  16. 1

    I find it very busy, almost prefer the more minimalist approach. I's say the top 3rd is just a little too heavy, for me at least. But the intention is good, especially the job section.

  17. 1

    Context:
    I'm fairly new to IndieHackers. Before joining in, I only accessed it twice a month to read insights and stories.

    However, after I've signed up I found there are something that could be improved:

    • The 1st impresssion is the homepage felt too crowded. Too many contents that I need to grasp
    • Instead of giving more content on remote jobs, I would prefer giving more on "top stories" because reading job list in right side on narrow space is pretty challenging.
  18. 1

    Very cluttered, I just removed everything via adblocker (use uBlock Origin, everyone!) except the main feed, looks like this now

    It's honestly quite interesting to see the response, looks like a case study in understanding user pains. People even went so far as to adblock elements, like me, and another commenter even made a video griping about the new site. If it looks like people are trying to fix a problem themselves, there's clearly a pain point there.

    Same with startups, I recently made a post about it in fact but neat to see it in action here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/three-factors-to-startup-success-6bff70e9d2

  19. 1

    All of these new additions, but still no way to favorite a post?

  20. 1

    Why the hate? Relax! :)

    You can't make everyone happy, and you should know this.

    1. 1

      Not really hate but more about listening to your users. I'm sure Courtland had good intentions with the new site but looks like people don't like it, me included.

      1. 1

        Ok, but people need to give it a chance. Some features might not be relevant to users, but it will help down the line.

        The only change they need to do is move Podcasts and Meetups to the right sidebar. A two-column view is better than three.

        1. 2

          How will it "help down the line?" If people don't like it today I'm not sure why they'd like it later.

          1. 0

            An indie hacker might want a remote job? A founder might have a new idea and wants to partner up?

            It might not be relevant to most users now, but it will be in the future.

  21. 2

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 28 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 14 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments