Make Indie Hackers Great Again
I've been a member of indie hackers for years. I used to engage multiple times daily and the place was vibrant and full of buzz. People actually chatting about the problems they faced trying to achieve profitability and running a business.
I disappeared for a while as the change in tone of the place alongside the fact that my own business had grown over the few years from making my very first $7 sale (documented here on IH) to being a very busy and time consuming entity in its own right, and I just don't have time for procrastinating on forums anymore.
I've tried to come back recently and well... in a nutshell, tonight, out of the top 40 posts, 36 have zero comments.
Rather than just having a moan, I wanted to offer some feedback as to why this might be. I've not been here really in any capacity for a long time and when I am, it's fleeting.
Tonight, I wanted to spend some time here, however I genuinely could not work out how to get past the front page.
The "community" link from the hamburger menu didn't take me anywhere and I really had to scout the page meticulously to find something that would take me to a list of posts and not just the handful that are selected for the (very very busy) homepage. I seriously had to put some effort in to find a way to get the list of posts. most folk won't put in this kind of effort which I think is evidenced by the volume of posts with zero engagement.
Would it be an idea to make access to the list of posts more prominent?
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I agree with you, I lost my motivation to explore IH couple weeks ago.
The reason I was so intrigued by indiehackers in the first palce in the early days were the interviews. It was so inspiring to see so many people earning money by doing the most diverse stuff, from writing fiction books (I found eliot peper through his indiehackers interview and I love his books), an online solitaire game to a rails job queue framework (sidekiq).
Right now I really struggle to find these interviews on this site. For me it was the heart of indiehackers and the forum was a nice add-on. I am not sure if they have not actually deleted the interviews ...
Furthermore, I feel like the content and target group has changed a lot since the early days. A lot of posts are from people trying to build audiences or trying to build something else targeting other indiehackers.
Me personally, I am super tired of this. I would love to see more discussion around actual products for people other than indiehackers. But this is my personal opinion and I do not judge anyone for doing what they do.
This is so needed, I really struggle to understand how to navigate IndieHackers most of the time and feel like I'm missing out on 80% of the site because I just look at the main page and click the top N articles.
I love IH and it's community.
I will agree on the one point though that navigating beyond the front page is difficult. I don't really know how to find the subforums, just the main page, which I'll refresh daily to see if theres anything new.
Also - Courtland! Podcast! Where you been? I love that podcast, this is my formal request for more!
I absolutely agree! as someone who recently joined IH, I haven't been able to build that connection that I was hoping for on here. There is no way to go see the groups that IH has and the community tab is absolutely useless. It seems very curated and not organic at all. I wish they'd make it a little more community driven.
I agree. They definitely took a few steps back with the recent update. It's a nightmare trying to navigate IH. It was bad already, now it's even worse.
Thanks goodness, glad i found you guys.
I 100% agree with this, have been a member for years but found the platform has gone in the wrong direction recently.
Yes, was just thinking about tagging @channingallen on twitter about this!
@csallen @channingallen
A lot of valuable feedback in here.
Just trying to be helpful, guys.
I definitely agree that the new front page is confusing in a couple of important ways. For one, I at least was puzzled about the differences among the three main sections (left, center, right). I also couldn't figure out where the 'unfiltered' post stream was. I found it, yes, but even then I kept thinking, 'what does it mean that the list link is practically the smallest thing on the page?' But I don't know if that's why there is so little genuine interaction--I think it's more that so many people are posting things that are almost exclusively driven by their desire to market their businesses. There are still good things to be gotten here, but it would be great to see more stuff that wasn't 'how I reach $X MRR'
What you have described is a very real function of "social media"/forum kinds or sites.
The initial buzz is great. After that, they devolve into a time-sync.
I would welcome a place -- much like the hackerdojo in san jose CA/pst. That would be geared towards actually "meeting"/hanging out as you solve issues, ask/answer questions, get things done.
discord channels are ok for some things, stackoverflow/quora might answer issues after awhile...
thoughts/comments.
ps. I was actually expecting msft/github to spin something out for bringing software dev to this kind of process/structure..