Hey, I’m Ifiok Ambrose, a 300-level Computer Science student at the University of Uyo and a programmer who enjoys building things.
Last year, I built a Telegram bot that lets community owners put paywalls on their groups. It handles access automatically, kicks users when their subscription expires, the whole thing. The product worked. Distribution killed it. I didn't have an audience to push it to, so it went nowhere.
That failure taught me something though.
While trying to figure out the next cool thing to build, I discovered that we don't really have a serious, modern discussion forum. No real equivalent of Reddit where people cluster around topics they actually care about. What exists either feels abandoned or looks like you're filing a tax return from 2006.
I wrote a critique on Nairaland here, and didn't stop there, but decided to go ahead and build something better.
Zyke will grow into something meaningful not just in Nigeria or Africa, but globally. Something that becomes part of internet culture in its own way. The same way platforms like Facebook started small and became part of everyday online life.
I'm currently populating posts across the site and trying to get my first users. You can join me too, as far you abide by the posting guidelines.
Navigating the site is a little hard at the moment. You see that line below the comment button? That made me think it's a different post entirely. Also, the comment button under a giant text area is kinda confusing. What are both for? It's unclear. The inconsistent relationship between icons and text on buttons is also off. The subscribe button has a text beside the bell, every other thing doesn't. I believe a lot of other people are also used to having to do all their image edits in a modal after it's been uploaded. Doing image uploads on my phone wasn't immediately obvious what I had to do. I was stuck for a few seconds. There should be a much better way of separating posts. I shouldn't have to guess where one ends and the other starts.
ifiokambrose
1 Comments
Navigating the site is a little hard at the moment. You see that line below the comment button? That made me think it's a different post entirely. Also, the comment button under a giant text area is kinda confusing. What are both for? It's unclear. The inconsistent relationship between icons and text on buttons is also off. The subscribe button has a text beside the bell, every other thing doesn't. I believe a lot of other people are also used to having to do all their image edits in a modal after it's been uploaded. Doing image uploads on my phone wasn't immediately obvious what I had to do. I was stuck for a few seconds. There should be a much better way of separating posts. I shouldn't have to guess where one ends and the other starts.
Noted. Will fix the navigation and declutter the site and make a post on how to play with uploaded images. Thanks for the observation.