We came up with this idea more than a year ago to build an online community for quilters, feeling that it was a hobby that was underserved by the Internet. The idea was to keep it relatively simple by including a forum and a place to document your projects, journal style. We named it QuiltLoop.
I banged out about 80% of the work last May and June, not working super hard on it, but generally getting it done. Then we planned the move, and work just stopped. I didn't pick it back up until I had my time off between jobs. Between that week, and the weekends since, I probably put about 20 hours into it to fill in all of the gaps I had. Today, I pushed the code into production so we can get it in front of people and start learning if what we thought up is really what people want. We just need to find an audience.
Keep in mind, it's pretty rough. There isn't a lot of thought around the design or anything. I don't want to get too invested in anything until I understand how people might use it.
While I punish myself a bit for leaving it sit for a year (who knows, maybe it could have a thousand users by now), I am excited that it's using some interesting technology. I'm using a lot of cloud stuff, and a search engine library I've not used before. It's kind of neat to have that stuff in the background even if the users don't care.
Diana put some feelers out tonight to see if it would get any attention. Here's hoping some people sign up, and like it enough to tell others.
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