Stef Lewandowski
Create something every day

What do you so wish?

Andrew Dubber emailed me a couple of weeks ago, with an idea - a site where you can ‘make a wish’ and then share the wish with your friends.

So in lunch hours and evenings we’ve put together a little site that seems to have been getting some attention since we opened it a couple of days ago.

It’s called “I so wish…” - take a look and make a wish!

So far this has taken me 16 hours work to put together,

Here are a few things that we stuck to along the way.

Just get started quickly

Here’s a snippet of the original email conversation:

from Andrew Dubber <dubber@gmail.com>
to Stefan Lewandowski <stef@3form.net>
date Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 11:53 AM
subject Somewhat reprehensible idea for a website

Hi Stef,

I had a hare-brained idea for a Web site, and wondered if there was pre-existing tech for this that would make it an easy coding job…

<andrew lays out a rough idea of what it was about>

—

from Stefan Lewandowski <stef@3form.net>
to Andrew Dubber <dubber@gmail.com>
date Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 11:56 AM
subject Re: Somewhat reprehensible idea for a website

Cool. When do we start - 50/50?

Stef

—

from Andrew Dubber <dubber@gmail.com>
to Stefan Lewandowski <stef@3form.net>
date Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 11:59 AM
subject Re: Somewhat reprehensible idea for a website

50/50’s cool. Let’s do it this afternoon.

—

from Stefan Lewandowski <stef@3form.net>
to Andrew Dubber <dubber@gmail.com>
date Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 12:03 PM
subject Re: Somewhat reprehensible idea for a website

Rails.

<other domain name that we didn’t choose> is available.

—

from Stefan Lewandowski <stef@3form.net>
to Andrew Dubber <dubber@gmail.com>
date Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 12:23 PM

—

from Stefan Lewandowski <stef@3form.net>
to Andrew Dubber <dubber@gmail.com>
date Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 12:24 PM
subject Re: Somewhat reprehensible idea for a website

Rails is fun.

So - basically within twenty-eight minutes we had the basic idea sketched out. A database set up, a little application that let you type your name and wish in and have it stored, and so on.

I used Ruby on Rails to build it, and because I’ve spent the last three months working very hard on my new dads’ website Odadeo, I thought I’d flex some coding muscles and see what I could make happen quickly.

Be time-limited

I gave myself a few hours to get something up and working, alongside doing some other tasks. so at 5.30 we had:

Which, when you look at the finished thing isn’t too far removed from what we’ve ended up with. There are some context ads (so we can pay for the hosting) multiple names, and so on.

I’m pleased with what I put together in 16 hours work! Not bad at all… and Andrew has been very busy too, but I’ll let him tell you what he’s been working on as a result of this…

Don’t bother with features

We wanted the site to be really really simple. ‘Stupid’ simple. We had loads of ideas about things we could add, but instead just went for Andrew’s mantra ‘that sounds like a feature’… and left them out.

Get it up quick

If you’re familiar with working with Ruby on Rails you’ll know that all of this is well and good but getting your application onto the web can be a pain. It takes ages and something always breaks. So, I was pleased to hear about Media72’s new cheap UK rails hosting based on Passenger. (For the geeks: Basically - upload your application via FTP. Log in via SSH. Run “rake db:migrate”. Go to your web address… )

Fit it in during whatever else you’re doing

We’re all busy, so if you have an idea like this it’s going to _have_ to fit in around whatever else you are doing. So keep it fun, keep it ‘not a chore’, keep excited, if anything starts feeling too difficult, leave it and move on!

It’s been lots of fun, but the result has really surprised me!

So far we’ve had about three thousand visitors and loads of amazing wishes have been added. There are a few obscene ones that I’ve filtered out, there are silly ones, boring ones, but there are some amazingly poignant wishes - things that really kept me just hitting ‘refresh’ on the home page all day yesterday.

Here’s a couple:

What do you wish?