Feedback:<p>Have no idea what Treehouse is, clicked the site, took 300ms to look at the 3 giant buttons.<p>Clicked "web design" (the site looks very nice BTW)<p>... and started learning about web design.<p>Watched the first video, hit the only button "Let's Go" and found a collection of other videos to get me further down the path of web design, letting me skip directly to my problems areas instead of grinding through things I know.<p>Conclusion: Without <i>ever</i> knowing what you guys do, what the site is or how to use it "correctly" I was able to start learning in what was less than probably 3 seconds of thinking.<p>I still don't know what you guys do or what the plan here is (heading back to read more) but your flow is <i>perfect</i>.<p>Like abnormally simple and wonderful... really nice job.
One thing I forgot to mention: Wordpress/Automattic, Living Social, and BankSimple are going to be interviewing Treehouse members who are looking for work and have unlocked certain badges. We'll contact Members who qualify.
Any chance of launching an Android Development course? Treehouse seems to be exactly what I was looking for, but the topic that I am really interested in at this moment is not there.<p>Congrats for the product, the site is amazing and I enjoyed the free videos a lot.
Looks like you use the video tag, but only support MP4, not WebM. You also don't have any fallback indicating the problem, just a big black region where a video should appear. And, attempting to dig out the URL for the MP4 video and access it directly produces an "access denied".
This is great. I've been watching things like codecademy get tons of buzz and quietly thought: has no one been over to Think Vitamin Membership? I think this rebranding is a great idea and the new design is wonderful. Now add in some of that fancy interactive-in-browser-coding/learning and you'd be unstoppable (not that the more in-depth stuff should be done this way, but it's a really compelling and addictive hook).
"Watch videos and take tests"<p>Am I missing something? That's your learning method? Nothing interactive? No coding? Videos may be a fine way of understanding a process but it's not good for something as in-depth as coding. You don't learn code by watching videos of others doing it, you learn by coding.<p>The site design is nice but you'd need to offer a lot more than videos to get me to sign up.
This looks amazing, and I'll be signing up immediately when I arrive home from work today. Really great job, and congrats on launching.<p>My only question thus far: Is there an easy way for me to be informed when new badges/topics/videos are available? Either a digest email or some sort of RSS feed that I could customize based on personal interests would be fantastic.
Site looks amazing...however the fonts on Windows are hard to read and are jagged, especially in the testimonials section. I'm sure they look great on my MacBook but don't forget the Windows crowd when designing (Test case: Vista with Chrome and FF).<p>Good luck with the venture. I am a firm believer that online education in software development is going to be big in the coming years. Get recruiters to start using your service to weed out recruits ;)!
Consider adding a feature to view the videos at higher playback speeds.<p>Even someone who is only comfortable at 1.1x (not hard) could save hours of their time if they like your site.<p>(I watch TV at 2x generally, huge time saver.)
I really like the simple UX, although I believe others have already provided some good suggestions for improvement.<p>I'm among the group of visitors who wants to know more before I click any of the big 3 icons. I'm also interested in improving (and adding to) my novice HTML/CSS skills, so I immediately saw value after reading the home page. It came as quite a shock you wanted $50/month to access your full content!<p>You may want to take this chance to consider a different $ model. Sure, you have plenty of competition- including big name universities- charging way more for effectively the same training. But free substitutes abound. The internet is flooded with tutorials, etc. about how to make stuff for the internet. No matter how much "better" quality you provide, I think prospects will balk at your rates and turn to free resources instead.<p>But you might still make a lot of money from providing your content "for free". If you only granted access to registered subscribers, you have a great tool for building a strong email list. The demographic has already identified itself: these are people interested in learning more about web & iOS development. There's a lot of cash to be had marketing software tools, templates and all sorts of tertiary materials to this same demo. Imagine the affiliate commission on 1 copy of Adobe CS5.<p>Also, I found it annoying the "Sign your team up" button on the <a href="http://teamtreehouse.com/groups" rel="nofollow">http://teamtreehouse.com/groups</a> page simply looped back to the main 'Plans' page. Seemed like a mistake when I first clicked; only realized it was intentional after scouring the Plans page to find out "you can easily add other users at a discount". But what are the multi-seat rates?
Given that APIs, especially for iOS and Android, are evolving so quickly that your videos are already out of date, what is your plan for shooting new videos when content changes? Won't it be difficult to maintain the same professional editing and keep up with the changes for the given platform?<p>For example, the big players in iOS education (Big Nerd Ranch, Pragmatic) have been teaching iOS 5 since it was in beta; but you guys are on iOS 4.
This site gives me the impression that after successfully completing the course I will be able to be hired as a developer. Assuming that I pick up the concepts and can apply them - is this reasonable? My gut tells me no, but I'm not in the business.<p>At night (and in the early mornings and sometimes at lunch...) I have been teaching myself to program Rails apps. I use books to learn concepts (and RailsCasts too) and I rely on Google and Stack Overflow for problem solving when I get stuck.<p>I have learned a ton, not only about the language but also about good programming practices. For the latter, I tend to first learn the concept from a book, but only internalize it after having suffered some pain which could have been avoided if I had been using that particular practice. So far I would include orthogonality, version control, testing and asynchronously running processes which I don't control to this list. Behavior Driven Development is also now starting seem like a real benefit and not just overhead so I will try that with my next feature addition.<p>I guess my question is, how far down the road does one have to go before they could be considered as a potential employee?
Feedback number deux:<p>1. From first glance this is an education website<p>2. No free tier, so you can't actually take any of the quizes without paying at least $25.<p>3. This is when I closed the tab
I haven't watched any of the videos (as I'm at work) but I love that there are lists of the subtopics:
<a href="http://teamtreehouse.com/library/design-foundations/html/text" rel="nofollow">http://teamtreehouse.com/library/design-foundations/html/tex...</a><p>I'm always looking for tutorials to send to colleagues/friends who need an easy-entry into the basics, and it helps to know what topics are covered and how you've decided to organize/separate them. My main suggestion would be to include the subtopics on this page, or at least have a button that reveals them all:
<a href="http://teamtreehouse.com/library/design-foundations/html" rel="nofollow">http://teamtreehouse.com/library/design-foundations/html</a><p>The page is already a long scroll...having the list of subtopics, IMO, would be more helpful than detrimental.
Congrats on the (re)launch! I used ThinkVitamin a little bit earlier this year, and it's great to see you guys moving forward. It wasn't for me at the time, but may be in the future. I don't know if it was just the timing (I was really busy) or the format (video isn't for everyone), but I was impressed with the product regardless.<p>One thing to note on the new site: clicking "Sign your team up" on this page: <a href="http://teamtreehouse.com/groups" rel="nofollow">http://teamtreehouse.com/groups</a> just takes you back to this page: <a href="https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans" rel="nofollow">https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans</a>, where clicking on "Sign up" takes you to a page with no indication of how to sign up for a group plan.
I just subscribed and...<p>I feel so wary if you aren't asking for my CVV or Billing credentials. Why do banks even allow you to bill without those details using only CC# and Expiry Date? It feels more than a little suspect and weird (though I know that this isn't the case here for you).
The site looks great and very user friendly, but as others have pointed out, the paid-tier-only seems too restrictive. Specially given the motto of treehouse is <i>"Millions of people can't afford a quality technical education, or if they can, it's out of date immediately when they graduate. We aim to change that." </i><p>How can this compare to MIT (and other) Open Course Work and hundreds if not thousands of good free tutorials on the internet Vs $25/$49 a month?<p>FWIW, I learned basics of web development/design totally free, just took a bit of searching to find good resources, and once I was confortable with basics, the further education came through just googling-on-demand, videos only helped in the beginning.
Im not a IT pro but im following Hackernews for a while.
I think this is something i searched for the weekends and evenings to learn some new things on web development and basic programming.
Great website i really appreciate it.
You say "Companies like these trust Treehouse" Does that mean those companies (citrix, BBC, Virgin) are using Treehouse, or companies similar to them are using Treehouse.
Hi Ryan, I'm really interested in this but are there courses/badges aimed at intermediate and advanced users? If so do these become unlocked? It wasn't clear to me how much depth a certain topic gets covered. For example it would be great if you showed what's 'coming soon' or what you intend to cover at <a href="http://teamtreehouse.com/library" rel="nofollow">http://teamtreehouse.com/library</a>
Feedback: The "Treehouse Profile URL" field on the sign up page is very unclear. I assumed you wanted a URL of my site to put in my profile, when it looks like you want a username to put in the url to my profile.<p>Also, when I select PayPal as a payment method, you should hide the credit card fields. It's confusing to click the button when I have a required field showing that doesn't need to be filled out.
The only problem I have with this is the video player:<p>Videos don't look good when not in full screen mode.<p>When you click the full screen button (bottom right corner), it doesn't go to full screen mode. It shows you another button on top right corner which you must click to go into full screen mode.<p>In full screen mode, videos look good but, there are no controls beside the pause button.<p>BTW, everything else seems right with this site.
That would be useful to me. Waow it's pretty nice. Color theory I'm going to watch that. What I got to sign up? Well it seems like professional content so I'll sign up quickly. Oh I have to pay? Hahah forget that, so many free resource on internet, feels like I'm going back 10 years ago when I had to pay for an encyclopedia or a research engine :)
Great site; I would appreciate a bit more language on the homepage about what exactly it does and how it works.<p>Something like "Treehouse is a ...." what? An interactive subscription based learning platform? A online classroom? Whatever you want to call it but it took me a while to figure out<p>1. What is it<p>2. What can I do for free vs what do I need to pay for?
This is awesome. I'm a long time webOS fan but I'm no where skilled with web languages to develop for webOS but this will surely help me a lot.<p>I just got an iPhone due to lack of webOS devices and my inner geek wants to learn how iOS development works and this made my day to find iOS learning videos!<p>Thanks for the amazing website!!
So the operators of a web dev education site apparently don't know enough themselves to at least look at their website on Windows before launching?<p>Hint: if you are trying to sell stuff, it's probably best to reach out to the widest possible customer base. I can see no business reason to target Mac/Linux users only.
Hey Ryan, great website. I would really like to try your product but its completely out of my price range (I'm a student). I was wondering if there was any chance I could provide you something in exchange for a discounted rate. Say, testing, feedback, or anything in that nature.
Beautiful site, great UX.<p>I will be signing up and if the videos are as good as the samples I'll definitely be sticking around; worth $49 a month for sure. I love that you guys are trying to tackle this end-to-end - ambitious, but I hope you pull it off.
Hey guys! Great website design. I was wondering if there was a student pricing option. $49 a month is really really steep for a poor grad student and I would really like the project videos as well as the standard videos.
Looks totally awesome. Not related to the product: I think different testimonials would sell this better. You guys aren't (or shouldn't be) competing with universities, which have a completely different mission.
I have a strange behaviour: I cant see the videos on Chromium/Linux Mint 11 while they work in Firefox/Linux Mint 11 on the same laptop, but they were ok on my Chrome/XP office computer. Any idea?
Like the new layout so far, though I loved the old one just fine too (customer here), but my big question is: where's the affiliate program? Did you can it?<p>We were just starting to pick up steam on our campaigns.
This is amazing. One click from the homepage and I was ready to learn about iOS development. It's very evident that you guys have put a lot of work into making a great UX. Keep up the great work!
I'm interested in why you'd go with 'Treehouse' as the name considering the trademark space for educational content is already pretty cluttered for that term. Was this considered and dismissed?
Great execution. I wish there was like a $10/month option though! Or student discounts or something...<p>But the content is well worth the $25/month and up. Loved ThinkVitamin Membership, this looks even better.
Cool design and good quality videos, nice product!<p>but IMHO the Badge map is confusing. When I click a badge I expect to be redirected to the page of each badge, not to a full size image of all of them.
This is a repackaging of the thinkvitamin website from Carsonified. These are literally the same videos I already downloaded from ThinkVitamin. Same talking heads, same, same...
If the Treehouse folks are reading this, can they please add closed captions/subtitles to their videos? Lynda.com has captions and it has made the difference for me.
I'm a big fan of Ryan Carson. The sites really cool. The fonts in the intro videos bother me though. Museo in particular looks really ugly for whatever reason.