Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project
I run a local aggregator website for things to eat, drink, and do in Los Angeles. I’m not a designer, so I opted for the Craigslist approach, but a little more polished. I went super minimal with it and it seems people are responding well to the design.<p>I didn’t use a style framework under the philosophy that everything on the web looks the same. I wanted the website to kinda shock people with how, uhh, handmade it looked. Like there was a real person behind it because there is.<p>I guess this is all to say you don’t always have to worry about design, UX, SEO, etc. Sometimes you want companies to look polished and professional, but sometimes you just want them to solve the problem for you as fast and efficient as possible.<p>Tangentially - the project got me excited about building “quiet” websites - mostly text based, no database, no comment section with people to moderate. Just unique information in a simple, accessible format. I don’t want people to be checking my website every day looking for emotionally charged SEO packed news to react to. I want people to check out my site and then go into the real world and have fun with the information they found.