When I asked for a little feedback about how we can make Barn Finds better, you guys responded with an overwhelming amount of great suggestions. I really appreciate everyone being so open because some amazing ideas emerged from our discussion. There are many areas in which we could improve, but here are the big ones that I gleaned from everyone’s comments:
- More finds – every single day!
- More commenting options.
- More updates on past features.
- Fewer spelling/grammatical errors.
- More of the same.
Our huge discussion (over 100 comments!) would have been a waste of time unless I actually implement some of your suggestions. So, here is the plan:
More Finds
This was a big one. Josh and I have both been guilty of writing a bunch of posts and then taking a few days off! That can be frustrating for those of you who return to the site everyday to get your old car fix. So, I am going to commit to publishing at least one article every single day of the year from now on. To combat writer’s block and actually make this goal achievable, I may need some help from all of you. I know there are some gifted writers amongst us, so please start sending in your submissions!
More Options
There were a lot of comments about the comments themselves. Features like the ability to edit comments, upload images, or add a photo next to your name are easy to implement, but one concern has held me back. Right now anyone can comment on the site without logging in, but if I were to add these features, it would most likely require everyone to create an account before they could leave a comment. Is it worth the hassle to you?
More Updates
Many of you mentioned that you would like to be able to see what the cars ended up selling for. Well, obviously we can’t do that for every car featured, but we can record it for most of the eBay listings. Josh and I will try to keep up on that, but please feel free to leave the results in the comments if you see that we missed one or haven’t gotten to it yet.
Fewer Errors
This is a hard one. I do proofread all of Josh’s posts and I always reread mine a couple of times, but it easy to miss an error when you are trying to get a good find out as fast as possible. I am going to write up some guidelines for us to follow which should help. Please let us know if you notice a mistake though. Leave a comment or shoot us an email and we will correct it promptly.
More of the Same
Many of you expressed how you like the site just the way it is! I really appreciate all the kind words and understand that we should never make huge changes too quickly. We don’t ever want to lose the vibe we have going! Even so, we don’t want to stop evolving either so we will continue to make small incremental improvements as we follow the advice of Sir Henry Royce, “Accept nothing nearly right or good enough“.
Thanks again for all your suggestions guys! There are many other ideas I would like to implement down the road, but these seem like the best areas to focus on first. I have said it before and I will say it again, Barn Finds would not be what it is without all of you. Your comments are far more informative than anything I could ever come up with and the fact that we have a whole army of hunters sending in tips means that we can find better cars than any one person ever could. Please keep the suggestions coming and we will keep trying to make this site a place worth visiting again and again!
First grammar test – “fewer” not “less”; as in the cows left fewer piles of less bulls___!
None-the-less – good, and amazingly quick, response to all us cats vicariously enjoying the threads, etc.
By the way – close counts (in horseshoes and grenades); you are amazingly close with the focus(es) and direction you are taking Barn Finds. If it is too polished we may think you’ve sold-out to the biggies!
Don
Haha, you got me Don!
I love what you do and have never seeeeeem a spealing errorrrr. Go Figure!
Hey guys! You are bombarded with so many emails. No way that you can read them all and have time to dedicate to the actual website. Simple is better. I agree, your website is easy now. Your right about small changes at a time so everything don’t get to complicated. The more that your readers can submit about things to help with legwork can make your job easier as long as we don’t make everything we submit to lengthy in nature. Good luck and if i can help, i will, have a great day!
I think it would be helpful to allow users to sort cars covered in your posts by model, make and year. It would be great to be able to look at all Delahayes in one sort.
I will see what we can do when we rework the categorization Will. The navigation is one area that was mentioned a lot in our discussion too so I will make sure it gets added to the todo list. Thanks!
I also think it would be nice if you could sort by the ones for sale.
I apologize for the double post. The browser closed out of my edit.
Another nice thing to have would be safe tips for finding cars and tips to look for if you are debating on making an offer for the car for a project.
I think it’s a good idea to require registration to post, that way you can implement an email verification and then know that someone can’t jump in, impersonate someone else, start a flame war and all of that. Registration could take a few minutes, but to give more options like editing, would be totally worth it.
I’m not at all concerned with spelling or grammatical errors.
I can see how you would need some sorting capability if you posted dozens of cars per day. But until that happens, maybe an easy way to search through the old posts by make, year, model, etc. would appease those who want to focus on specific cars while they peruse the site. I like it all!
And maybe submitting text for a car or story can be via an online template that formats it for posting, so all you have to do is read it, ok it, and then you guys can post it. Maybe something similar for uploading photos.
Cutting and pasting text out of an email, and working with all sorts of image formats can be a big pain in the butt.
Great site, thanks for listening to our feedback and implementing!
George
You are a better writer (and speller)than I !!!! Im in charge of run on sentences
failed spelling, grammar and english class but give me a hammer and i can adjust anything! would love to see 100+ comments on the cars/trucks that get posted.
A very enjoyable site……let’s not pick it apart as perfection is not the issue. The issue is the enjoyment of the car hobby.
You guys are doing a great job and this is a truly unique site.
Jesse,
If you use Disqus, rather than the built-in WordPress functionality for comments, you can add all of the user features people were asking for with very little effort on your part. Registered Disqus users can edit their posts, use a profile photo, post pictures and embedded video etc., whilst still leaving the option for unregistered users to comment as guests without the additional capabilities. You can also set up a filter system which will require posts of, let us say, ‘dubious’ content to be passed to you for approval.
It is a simple matter to add it as a plug-in and as it is the most popular comments system on the web, chances are that at least some people here already have an account (I do, for example). Also, by effectively outsourcing the comments to another system, any hassle with lost passwords, account hacking and all the usual stuff that comes with a registered user base, is offloaded to them rather than taking up your time.
https://disqus.com/admin/wordpress/
Thanks for the update and the fast work, Jesse. About the errors, I re-read my own blog many times and my wife still picks up errors. Never the end of the world.
Barry Thomas’ “Wheel to Wheel” blog
Great website, and i’m deeply impressed that you have asked for feedback.
even more impressed that it looks like it will make a difference.
So whats the ‘killer’ update you need?
Perhaps the ability for readers to upload their own stories, with pictures, instead of slabs of slightly related text in the comments. Probably registered users only get this privilege. & the section might best be called the reader equivalent of “caveat emptor”. Is that caveat lector? what is caveat ‘driver’? Any latin speakers out there??
Otherwise, ID whats holding things back besides lack of fresh news every day (yep, I drop by and flick on if there’s no new news, and no, we dont need smileys :-)) and adress that.
2c, DaveB