I click on "create a realtime search" and it tells me I have to create an account. I think "hmm.. how about telling me what 'create a realtime search' means before bugging me to create an account?". So I click on "about". That tells me nothing about the service, but gives me a list of tools YOU use. What do I care what YOU use? All I care about is myself :) Ok, so I make that damn account. WTF does "Sign Up (Github)" mean? Well, whatever. I give you my name and email and chose a password and stuff. That gets me to a page with even more questions. After filling them out I realize that this is some kind of "update your profile" thing that is completely uneccessary. Ok. So now that I am logged in, I go to "create a realtime search" again. What do I get? "You need an Algolia account". Are you kidding me? How many more accounts do I have to make until you tell me WTF "create a realtime search" means? Ok, so I click "Don't have an Algolia account? Signup with free hacker plan". What do I get? "Error 404 The page you requested was not found.". I give up.
Not meant as a critique. Just as an information. I understand that the site is beta. And I'm a fan of "release early". I do web projects too and more often then not they have usability issues. And I love direct user feedback to make me aware of them.
Happy New Year!
I've push some modifications on the UI regarding your comments. You can now use some predefined datasets if you don't have an algolia account. For now you can build se search engine with data from Dribbble, Hacker News, Docker.io and some Pokemons :)
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/jvt1zdff3qyg18j/Screenshot%202015-... [2] https://www.dropbox.com/s/hv8erlgwfwstd3q/Screenshot%202015-... [3] https://www.dropbox.com/s/32dq94ku3uhxz7r/Screenshot%202015-...