Autumn Show & Tell Contest
Winter is almost here and (if that alone is not enough motivation to finish your summer projects) we are giving away $150 in Home Depot gift cards to the DIY’ers who post the best projects on How I DIY!
To Enter:
- Select your best DIY project and start a project for it on How I DIY
- Add at least one entry to the project to describe and show pictures of your project
- All qualifying projects published after May 1, 2009 are automatically entered in the contest
Check out the complete contest rules for more information.
The contest only runs through November 15, 2009 so get started on a new project, finish an existing one, or share something you have already completed today!
Good Luck!
Add comment November 1, 2009
Site Search is Up and Running
You requested it, and here it is. For your browsing convenience we implemented site search!
We utilized Google’s search API, so the results should be fairly accurate and searching should be pretty snappy. There isn’t a huge archive of material to search through yet, but that will change in time and we are sure that the search functionality will quickly become invaluable.
For now search is extremely basic – it only includes projects and entries and all are jumbled together on the results page. In the coming weeks we’ll provide a way to sort results based on type and allow searches for users’ profile pages.
Hopefully this makes browsing the site easier. Let us know what you think, and how we can improve search for you.
Add comment October 4, 2009
Tour Page Redesign
The previous tour section wasn’t working.
Analytics reports showed that visitors to the three page tour would either:
- View the first page and exit the site
- Get to the second page and exit the site
- Or get to the second page, go back to the first, and then exit the site
The point being that no one was reaching the sign up form. Not cool.
In retrospect, I think there were four main problems with the tour:
1. No Page Title
Nothing shouted that these pages were a tour. This was especially bone-headed since new visitors coming to the site through our ads were sent directly to the tour.
2. No Page Numbers
Visitors couldn’t tell if the tour lasted two pages or twenty and there was no way to easily jump between pages. If a visitor had known there was only one page remaining, would they have clicked through? I bet most would.
3. No Obvious Sign Up Link
Huge mistake. If the point of your tour is to give visitors an overview of your site and (more importantly) entice them to sign up, you might want to have a prominent sign up link on every single page of that tour.
4. It was Boring
The first page was fine – in fact, the new “Share Your Projects” section is very similar to the old tour page #1 – but everything after that was horrible. I think it was a case of trying too hard to sell the site.
So, the redesign had to be easy to navigate, include sign up links, and (most importantly) be interesting.
The results:
I think he redesign addresses most problems we had with the old tour.
First, the tour is now a single page; which means there is no room for fluff, only the most important information remains, and there are fewer chances for visitors to get distracted.
To get our message through quickly we start with a brief description of the site and what it offers, then move into a more detailed description of how projects work. The graphic and descriptions were pulled directly from the first page of the old tour. They work well here.
Finally, we added two sign up links; one at the top of the page for anyone interested right off the bat, and another at the bottom for anyone who makes it that far.
The one downside I see is because of its brevity, the tour doesn’t detail all the site offers. But really, how interested would you be to learn that you could comment on things! or create a profile page! ? My guess is not very.
There’s still work to be done, like adding a more eye-catching graphic and some orange sign up buttons, but for now I hope you guys like the changes!
Add comment August 27, 2009
A Facebook Application for Your DIY Projects
Now you can show off your DIY projects on Facebook!
We just finished the Project Showcase Application – which pulls your three most recently updated projects from HowIDIY.com and displays them on your Facebook profile page.
To set up the application just…
- Head to the How I DIY Project Showcase Application
- Enter your HowIDIY.com username and password
- Click the add application button
That’s it! Now your projects are displayed on your profile page (or under the boxes tab) and are automatically updated whenever you add new projects or edit existing ones.
And, since each title links to a specific project page, your friends can click through to see your full projects anytime.
We’re still waiting to be accepted into Facebook’s application directory, so for now you can follow this link to get to the application or just click the Project Showcase logo off to the right. In the future you’ll be able to search for “How I DIY Project Showcase” to find the app… that is, if Facebook ever gets around to approving us.
Fingers crossed. We’ll keep you posted.
Update: The application is listed in the directory now. Thanks, Facebook.
Add comment August 24, 2009
Introducing How I DIY!
Welcome to the official blog (as if there were an unofficial blog) for HowIDIY.com! This post is about six months overdue, but better late than never.
First, I suppose an explanation of the site is in order. How I DIY is a free online community where do it yourself’ers can show off their home improvement, craft, and gardening projects. The site is organized around the concept of projects – with members creating a project pages and then adding updates (called entries) to the projects as their work progresses.
Check out the DIY Tour to see all the site offers.
Our reason for starting this blog is to keep you up to date on everything we are working on for HowIDIY – new features, redesigns, contests, etc – and to get your input and feedback on all this goodness. We have some very clear ideas for where we want to take the site, but ultimately we just want to build a great community where anyone can easily showcase their DIY projects.
Needless to say, we can’t do that without you! We want to hear any suggestions you have for improving the site. So if you have anything to say about how the site looks, works, or feels drop us a line at support@howidiy.com or click the contact button above to send us a message. Just don’t forget to tell us what we’re doing right too (we don’t want to change anything that you really like!).
Add comment August 23, 2009
