#2: From Idea, to Build, to Launch in 1 week, live on Twitter.

Hey folks,

I'm doing this new project, from idea, to build, to launch in 1 week. I've built all this awesome stuff in my professional developer career, but doing these small solo projects is another kind of journey.

This is my second project: A tool to simply create a digital accounts card in minutes. No signup needed. Easy to to share different accounts.

The app is built with React, Redux, TypeScript and Firebase in one week. I build my stuff in public, tweeting everyday about the mental and technical hurdles. You can read it here.

Launching feels very intimidating to me. Not that much best practices, I even didn't add that much testing. For a professional perfectionist like me this feels very odd. But adding all best practices leads to more procrastination. A valuable skill to learn: publishing stuff although it's not even close to perfection.

Also, I tried to build the project very fast, so no hour-long thinking about the architecture and the tooling. Simple Create-React-App with TypeScript, Redux (although no need for it), but nowadays it's very easy to plugin. A simple Netlify deployment.

Link to app

I would love to see you using it. And I love your feedback.
Do you miss some accounts? Do you see some errors?

I would love to hear about your side projects?
What do you build? What are your struggling with?

Comments

[Médéric Burlet]

Pretty cool idea and love it.

Here are a few recommendations:

• UI: make two columns there is enough space to have them nicely spaced out
• FEAT: add custom card with custom title
• FEAT: custom url, let the user have a custom url (first served basis)
• FEAT: auto-generate the url with the first username found.
• FEAT: make the cards clickable when viewing them instead of a copy button (target: "_bkank")
• FEAT: Analytics, number of times the pages (with all cards was viewed + see how many clicks per social profile)
• FEAT: themes, the main visual page is very dull dark grey in background, classic material-ui add a simple background color picker and highlight which replaces the icon, border, copy grey color to picked color. If you are using svg you can easily colorize icons.
• FEAT: QR code link, why not also have a qr code generated when using the website people can take a pic of it or save it and show it to friends, cv, business cards and more.

Major concern is the complex url scheme:

https://accounts-card.netlify.app/cOI9ttAnOQsWcviuBEcS

This is way to long and not memorizable but if I could have:

https://accounts-card.netlify.app/crimson_med

Like my instagram would make it easier to use the service.

[miku86]

Thanks Médéric,
that's awesome!

[Olalani Oluwaseun]

Good work 👍.
Here is my feedback on #2 project, I filled my informations then submit which pop up the information filled and click on create card which was not responding. It was fast enough but the card was not created.

[miku86]

Thanks @olalani ,

will have a look at it!

[Olalani Oluwaseun]

Okay

[Lankinen]

Cool idea. I had similar half a year ago but I tried to build something in only one day. Of course it limited me to use only the tech I knew well because I didn't have time to learn anything. It wasn't maybe the best thing because of that but then in the other hand it was a lot of fun. I have learned that it's better to have two projects running the same time because that way you can switch the other project every time you feel bored about the current project. I try to keep the Google's rule one day a week for hobby project and rest for the main project.

[miku86]

Thanks @lankinen .

Yeah, I also had some thoughts about the duration. One day is very short for me, but one month is too long, because boredom and "too much features" would kick in. Therefore I use the one week approach. Some core features, but not too many to get drawn into perfectionist-mode.

My plan is to build one project per week, at the same time I collect feedback for the old projects and try to make them better due this feedback.

This is also an awesome rejection therapy: getting used to the fact, that probably no one cares about my stuff. And that's okay, nothing to be worried about.

[Adam Crockett 🌀]

Name: Max might be a bit confusing.
Try name John

[miku86]

Thanks, Adam.

Yeah, that's right, Max is probably not that well-known outside of german speaking countries.
So you mean something like "John Doe"?

[Adam Crockett 🌀]

Max is also a range of input.

John Doe would be better due to his markedly famous name 😂