We Made It Through The First Week! How Can We Improve?

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Holy crap, it’s Friday, which means the Autopian has officially survived its first full week! I’m not going to lie: I’m exhausted, and I know David is too, and I’m pretty sure both of our diets have been the sort that would make a nutritionist slap us, hard, and with genuine rage. That said, we’re grateful you’re here reading this site, and we’re thrilled to work with incredibly talented contributors. David and I still can’t believe all of this is real.

Speaking of contributors, let’s shout them out by name, why not, because they deserve it. We got our fellow car-obsessive Thomas Hundal, cranking out the content; there’s Mark Tucker, giving us our daily serving of shitboxes, hot and fresh every morning; we have our incredible design twins, The Secret One and Adrian Clarke; our engineering-mistake confessor Huibert Mees; Rex Bennett, our man inside the Lane; the Navy’s finest pants-shitter, Bobby Mackay; small-town gearhead anthropologist David Wilson; the GOAT himself, Murilee Martin; our China-car savant, Tycho de Feijter; and our fantastic extra topshot artist, Syd.

How did we manage to pull together such a fantastic team?

We know we have a long way to go to make everything the way we — and you — want it to be. There are still changes we want to make to the design, the commenting system, the pace of our writing — pretty much everything. We probably should get our asses in gear and sell a few ads, too. (Until then, who wants to buy T-shirts in bulk?)

Most importantly, we want to know what you, our fantastic readers, think! We started this site because we want to produce stories and videos and whatever you want to read, watch, listen, and enjoy! If there’s something you don’t like, or want more of, or less of, or whatever, let us know, right here in the comments, and we’ll do our best to make things better. We’re constantly striving to improve, and we’re very open to new ideas.

Thank you all for reading. I really mean that, and I know David and Beau mean it, too. We’ve been busy, but we’ve been having a great time; it’s all been a reminder of why we wanted to do this in the first place: because we love cars, and we love the way cars bring people together.

Except maybe for a couple of jerks on Reddit. But you know, that’s the internet.

 

(image: Skoda Classic)

244 thoughts on “We Made It Through The First Week! How Can We Improve?

  1. Can we get notifications like others have said for comment replies? Also, a way to embed pictures would be awesome, even if they need to be hosted on Imgur or something; having images in the comments tends to foster better involvement and commentary IMO!

  2. Technical / Usability:
    – Thank you for providing an RSS feed. That seems to be a dying format, but it remains my preferred method of reading articles online. It works great showing the entire article in my RSS reader.
    – The site is nice and fast with good reliability. No complaints there at all.
    – The comment section is easy enough to use, but it’d be nice to have comments nested a little more clearly to see who is replying to whom. Notifications when someone “likes” or replies to your comment would be nice as well to encourage dialogue.

    Content:
    It’s hard not to compare with that “other” site.
    – The focus on technical details is outstanding. It’s exactly what I loved about David’s writing in the past but expanded. Keep those sorts of articles coming, and I’ll keep reading.
    – The “Morning Shift” replacement is a fine roundup of news of the day, though I’ve missed it occasionally because I wasn’t particularly interested in the top headline, so some identifier showing what it is might be helpful.
    – I’m not interested in beaters, so the daily “Showdown” does nothing for me. I realize that you can’t completely rip off NPorND, but this is clearly your equivalent to that feature. It might be nice to have some variety there when it comes to asking price of the vehicles being compared — sometimes show the super cheap ones, sometimes show average priced cars, and sometimes show more extravagant dream cars to mix it up.
    – Everybody seems to be “pivoting to video” and I’m not interested in that at all. Give me text and quality photos, and I’ll be happy.
    – Speaking of photos, high-quality photos are always appreciated. Don’t just use your phone. Provide high enough resolution that the good hero shots can be used for a computer desktop wallpaper.

    My biggest piece of advice: Stay positive! Negativity seems to rule the day on the internet, and it was VERY prevalent on that “other” site. Jason and David: You were my favorite remaining writers over there because of your positivity (other good ones were Andrew Collins, Stef Schraeder, of course Doug DeMuro, and probably some others who I can’t remember off the top of my head). I don’t want to read somebody grumbling about how terrible everything is; I want to read about inspiring things. Set yourselves apart from the crowd by finding joy in unexpected places and share that joy and your enthusiasm with your readers!

  3. First off, awesome content no issues there, however…..
    Send this to the technical team please:
    Put the damn reply at the top of the page so my fingers dont bleed … from scrolling
    Test the pages in all the browsers, I am using Brave, I am pretty sure many other people do too, the main page loads blazingly fast, while the second is clearly having some identity problems until finally it decides ti actualy show up …

    I think what would make this much better than Jalopnik, is to maybe try to allow users with too much time in their hands to write some articles.

  4. I am late to this, but echoing a complaint about the color scheme. Red links in black body text are almost impossible for some people to see. The links should be at least underlined, or else change the link color to something more distinct.

    Other than that and fairly slow page response times, going well.

  5. Jason and David together again for the first time… Love it! Both of your articles, humor, knowledge and interests have always been favorites, you know, “before.” Keep this fine and fun Autopian place going and I hope it continues to be rewarding for you both – it certainly will be for your readers!

  6. I would say everything’s great content-wise. My only suggestion is the font/appearance of the articles on the page. Everything seems very dense and ‘packed’ onto the page which makes it a strain on my eyes.

    Perhaps section headers on the articles? Maybe bolded sub-headers? Not quite sure what, but it’s just difficult for me layout-wise.

    Otherwise, great work and exceptional writing.

  7. My one complaint about the site I’ve already addressed with David and he says it is in the works (notification/alerts when replies are posted to your comment)

    My one thought is, maybe start to explore a little bit outside of automotive worlds? It got a little overblown in the last place, but that doesn’t mean its a bad idea. Just, maybe keep it to stuff that has a motor on it? I like cycling as much as the next guy, but I don’t need to read about it on a car site.
    For instance, here’s a boat I restored before, and during the pandemic. https://imgur.com/gallery/DFHKxt1

    Old motors, clean lines, I could see David and Torch getting a little excited about the journey from flower planter to running vessel.

  8. As soon as the goodbye posts went up on the other site I added this to my morning bookmarks and have been refreshing religiously since then. I’m really excited for this site and this week has been awesome. I hope, as others before me have said, that y’all can do 2 things:
    1. Take my money without pissing me off. I think the former refugees from the Herb who started up Defector did it right. I’ve given them my money since before they even launched, paid extra to be able to comment, and have given gift subs to folks I know who would enjoy the site. Based on their state-of-the-site posts that’s worked out. I recognize this is a lot more niche, but I’d gladly shell out $100/yr to enjoy great content and, honestly, the paywall for commenting does do a good job of keeping out the absolute assholes.
    2. Improve the diversity of voices. Everyone before me who has said Mercedes Streeter or Fancy Kristen or any of the golden age Jalop krewe is spot on, but just in general, I want to hear about our stupid love of stupid things from not just Torch and David but from a range of voices who don’t look and live like me. I get the most value from good writing that gives me the opportunity to see my world from a different perspective. As an example, the old, shit site has been basically recycling old content and posted a bit from current Ru Paul Drag Race season contestant Lady Camden doing a video of how to change a tire. Just the comments alone from when the post originally went up made it really obvious that it was old since they were inclusive and supportive and generally along the lines of “yeah, we need to make this a waaaaay bigger tent”. I need more of that in my life these days, not less. So, hire a diverse group to contribute and then take my fucking money.

    Keep up the awesome!

  9. The site looks good, what I exactly what I expected from Jason and David. None of those slideshows, or videos that automatically start. The obscure information we all need to see.
    The only issue I have found is I log in, then open another page and it shows I’m logged out, I select login then it puts me on My Profile page, I go back to the original page and it’s an endless circle. If I get on a page where I am finally logged in and can respond, if I use the arrow at the bottom of the article to get to the next article then I can reply to that, so there is some issue.
    Other than that keep up the content!

  10. You only have an IPv4 address. That means you are locking out the 3 people in the world that only have access to IPv6 sites.

    Seriously, though: it’s probably a good idea to support IPv6.

  11. I’ve loved the content so far, guys. Y’all have built an interesting team around you. And Jason + David, you are really the two writers who kept me coming to Jalopnik.
    One suggestion as you change the site structure — would you consider moving the reply box up above the other images?

  12. So far, so good! A few comments, though:

    1) Would love to have a way to view articles in chronological order.
    2) Column width of text is too wide. Web/print design has some fairly well established rules-of-thumb regarding width of text columns for readability. That’s one of the things your old employer does well. Besides, when you do sell some ads you’ll need a place to put them, so you might as well free up some right margin!
    3) Comment section is pretty rudimentary, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing — rudimentary comment systems seem to reduce incidence of flame wars.

  13. The content is outstanding! My only suggestion would be to add more features to the commenting section — for instance, it would be nice to know when someone comments on or replies to one of my comments.

    Also, I know they were a bit controversial at the other site, but I would totally buy Autopian stickers.

  14. The site is amazing so far. I’m blown away how much content you’ve managed to crank out. I love that the main page has a list of articles, with maybe some highlights up top instead of 5 different links to the same article spread throughout a smattering of categories like a some other, inferior site has diminished to. Also, huge props to the lack of painful slideshows!

    My one request at this point, is to allow shipping of your merch to Canada (and other countries). This Canuck want’s an Autopian shirt! (and also wants to support this site).

  15. Great from a content perspective!

    From a profile management perspective, it would be helpful to define what your display name is. Whether I am logged in or not (or using an incognito window) I would see my comments as my name instead of my username – but it didn’t appear that this was the case for other users. I ended up changing my name, to anonymize, but being able to clearly see what others will see would be helpful.

  16. Keeping this short and sweet: So far, so good.
    Your content is interesting and on topic.
    The site is user friendly.
    Keep it up, and I’ll keep spreading the word.

  17. I think you’ll work out all the kinks in the website over time. It’s way too early for people to be complaining. The only thing I really want is for David to drop an electric crate motor and a big battery into one of his old Jeeps. Please…!?!

  18. Happy to be here and looking forward to a cool community.

    Always loved your guys articles at Jalopnik but was never able to comment on anything due to Kinja being weird in Oz.

    Hooray!

  19. I love the oddball stuff, that’s why I came in the first place!

    Have you considered doing a ‘Readers Rides’ kind of thing? I’d wager the users of this site have some pretty interesting stuff at home and probably some interesting cars too.

  20. I’m loving the content so far. I’d love to see it stay weird with all of the oddball content we love. Are y’all thinking about trying to emphasize the YouTube channel at all? I always felt like Jalop could’ve been similar to Donut with the right focus. Don’t get me wrong, I want Autopian to be this first. I just always thought YouTube was underutilized by Jalop.

  21. You know who has good content? Hagerty. Their magazine is an enjoyable read as are their online articles. Might look into cross publishing them and get an advertising deal in the process.
    Don’t know if this link will hold but this is an example:
    https://www.hagerty.com/media/advice/a-few-things-to-know-before-you-steal-my-914/?utm_source=SFMC&utm_medium=email&utm_content=MED_UN_NA_EML_UN_SaturdayRoadTrip&hashed_email=fa7902669d464f8b967f547f85d9d3f5f0eafc4554b029b832eeea12276e29a8&fbclid=IwAR0QzdZSuih34IxhkJE4GXTclQlA5NHfTkUfeEKT-fVRR7miHMO3PFmKM3Q

  22. 3 items:

    1. Loads very slow as others have noted (ran in chrome normally)
    2. Some type of notification system would help when replied to in comments
    3. When you choose to login when already viewing an article, it sends you to your profile instead of back to the article. I have to login, go back to the article, still won’t show logged in, refresh, and then finally will be able to comment. Played with my cookie settings to no avail. Makes it very annoying when trying to comment to start the day.

    1. Agreed to all, especially number 3. Having it redirect back to the article you were viewing after logging in makes more sense than going to your profile.
      Great work though Autopian, this is some of the most interesting automotive content I’ve seen in years.

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