What To Gift Me

Since I became a web developer, What To Gift Me has been haunting me. While I've had many ideas in the past, I keep coming back to this one. Mainly because I am a terrible person to get gifts for. I usually get what I want when I want it, or I look at an empty Google Doc with a blinking cursor mocking my inability to actually think of something for others to get me. This has gotten even worse for me as I have to create a wishlist for each of my children and coordinate which gifts can be received from which family. To say this has been a pain in my ass would be the equivalent of being told to "walk it off" after getting kicked in the head by a horse.

Hyperbole aside, I am finally carving out time to work on WTGM. The first important piece is working on the minimum viable product. I've been thinking about this idea and need to find the simplest version of this product that is both functional and intriguing enough to attract actual users and get their feedback.

Goals of WTGM

What To Gift Me allows users to create wishlists and convert them into event registries. Gift givers can mark off which gifts they are giving the recipient without the recipient knowing who is getting them what until the day they receive the gift. When a user/recipient creates a wishlist, the item URL gets converted to an affiliate link. This allows me to get paid while not charging any users for usage.

MVP Features

I'm not going to include things like registration or authentication. At this point, those features go without saying, as the very nature of the site requires multiple users creating lists. Not having those things just doesn't make sense.

• Affiliate URL conversion
  • Respect the original affiliate code if it has one. I'm not looking to get sued.
  • URL Shortener
• Event creation
  • event notifications based on when the event is getting closer
• Wishlist creation
  • organization of wishlist items
  • self-updating after an event. Items that were purchased are removed from the wishlist
• Gift registration, gift givers need to be able to mark gifts so there aren’t two different people getting the same gifts. I’ll may have to utilize sockets for this.
• Invitation system
  • Email non-users and navigate them to register before usage
  • Email users and have them sign in
• Purchase now
  • Allow users to click on an item and then purchase said item. Have the api report back that it was purchased

The Tech Stack

• Laravel
• Inertia
• Svelte
• Tailwind
• MySQL

Conclusion

There are definite challenges to this one. The main concerns I have are with the affiliate URL conversion and ensuring that I don't override any other person's affiliate code. Other than that, the gift registration might be an issue, as timing will be important.