Welcome To The All New ArcticStartup!
It's been quite sometime in the making, but it is finally time to launch the new site with some neat features that enable us to make ArcticStartup so much more it used to be. Let me explain what we've developed and why.
The new ArcticStartup has been designed to give more tools to the community. We wanted to reach out to the community and give you more ways to initiate discussions and share material (news, links, press releases, etc.) on our site. Our article sections is still there, but we wanted to add more ways for the community to discover new, interesting and most of all relevant content.
More ways to communicate and find content
The totally new part of the site is the discussion part. This is where you can share links, stories and news worthy items from your company or items for other community members in general (that you believe are interesting). However, please have a look through our guidelines and suggestions for sharing items in the discussion area.
We've also implemented a very simple karma system to show the most active participants in the community. Your karma is shown at the end of your username as well as on your profile page. You get one karma point for each new story you write as well as a vote on your story. So, if you write one great story and 10 people vote on it, you get 11 karma points.
Regarding the usernames and login credentials - you're able to sign in to ArcticStartup with your ArcticIndex login details. If you can't remember these, please use the forgotten password -feature.
We don't want to stop here
Finally, in the future we also intend to include more social features to the service as well as integrate the currently known ArcticIndex with its company and person profiles. These won't be done immediately, but are definitely on the todo list for the future. We want to create one single place for Nordic and Baltic entrepreneurs to hang out, share knowledge, inform of interesting events and job opportunities (or entrepreneurial opportunities in the form of co-founder positions, etc).
Needless to say, as with all new things, there might be some hiccups that are unraveled with large amount of users. Therefore, if you encounter something that you think shouldn't be there or have an idea regarding the way we've done things - don't hesitate to drop us a line at feedback@arcticstartup.com. Also, we're eager to hear general feedback regarding the site as well.
To conclude, we're very thrilled to open the new ArcticStartup to the public today. Why not start, by signing in (or registering) and opening an interesting discussion item or participating in the already exising items?
We hope you enjoy using the new ArcticStartup!
Good stuff guys, very impressive.
Zee, coming from you - thank you very much.
Thanks Zee! I also like your new design, especially the logo.
Nice, big step forward!
Like the new design :)
Btw, I am using Google Reader and have noticed your feeds are just the titles now.. before I could read the full story without leaving my RSS reader..
Was it on purpose?
Anyway, congrats on the new launch!
Thanks Tair!
The feed thing, it was not on purpose, and it should be fixed after you refresh the feed.
great stuff guys =) congrats
@Henriette & @jussi: Thank you! :)
Nice job guys! I have a suggestion to show the number of comments also for top story in front page. That's ehat atrsctd people :)
Nice work! Looking forward for active discussions and start-ups to communicate about their innovations. The channel is here now.
@Vytautas: Good point, thanks for the comment :)
@Jarkko: Cheers!
Couple of suggestions for further improvements:
There isn't any visible link to ArticIndex anymore, I'd like to highlight that section quite a lot in the layout. "Companies" link at the top navigation, maybe? (and of course, to harmonize the layout between the two sites).
I personally think that dropping the ability to post anonymous/not-registration-required comments will limit the flow of comments. Casual commenters -- who are bound to become regular ones if they get "hooked" -- are very hesitant to create "yet another" registration.
And if the decision not to allow anon comments wont be changed, add a possibility to use FB and/or OpenID credentials to log in. I.e. lower the bar for comments.
"Discussion" implies a some kind of a discussion forum structure. Now, for a first look, it looks like a list of articles that have gathered comments -- you need to actually browse it through a little bit before you notice that yes, you actually can post "not related to any URL" posts too.
Search box is in obvious place, but I'd make it a bit larger and make it somehow say that it is, in deed, a search box, rather than assuming everybody "gets it".
Search feature doesn't search material from ArcticIndex, which is a pity. If I'm searching for a specific company, I'd prefer to have the ArcticIndex link to be the first search result, followed by the news items, discussions, etc.
Furthermore, for news comments, I'd like to see the time when the comment was posted, not just the date.
On sidebar's "recent comments", you have to hover to the link to see which news article the person has commented on - very annoying. And the sidebar's recent comments box should also show either the date/time when the comment was posted or something like "2 hours ago". And please, add a AJAX that would load 10 more recent comments - or just link to a page that lists NN latest comments in chronological order.
And I think in "Web2.0" area, you are "required" to have Twitter and/or FB links for profiles, not just the website link. And to show "t" and/or "FB" below the commenter's nickname to have a quick link to their Twitter or FB pages.
And by clicking commenter's name, I'd like to have an ability to list all of their most recent comments/posts to the site - to sorta get the "background" info on person, what they do comment on, etc.
Just my €0.02.. Well, maybe bit more than that, apologies for a long rant -- don't get me wrong, I actually love the new layout and structure, but wanted to give feedback on things that - IMO - could be improved next :-)
dRD, thanks for your detailed feedback. I think you nailed most of the problems that I also have on my list :)
We're planning to integrate ArcticIndex to this site
We had some discussion about anonymous commenting but didn't allow it at least for now, but Facebook login is on the way
Discussion should be a bit clearer for how to use it
Search box styling is not finalized
I agree on you on the comments
I'm not that sure if we _need_ separate links for twitter/facebook (maybe)
Displaying the user's comments and submits is something I want to do as well
Looks very promising!
Just out of curiosity, what CMS are you using? Wordpress?
Patrik, WP is still used on admin side, but everything else is handcrafted using Rails 3.
I am reading Arctic Startup through RSS from the very beginning. For 2 weeks I was waiting your articles, yesterday I thought that is the moment to check your site if it is not dead and it is not - great!:) But, you have changed RSS URL and forget to announce people about that.
Anyway, congratulations and you are doing good job
Vladislav, I think you're in the minority that still subscribed to the Wordpress RSS before we moved to Feedburner. Please upgrade (and any others out there) your RSS to http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArcticStartup
This way you won't have to worry about this anymore :)