First thoughts: yeah yeah 4 weeks isn't that impressive. But then... that included learning to program from scratch?!? Wow.
How I built 7books in under 4 weeks
31–40 of 79 posts
Re: How I built 7books in under 4 weeks
#32I built a similar site - http://www.instabrary.com awhile back which is pretty much the exact same idea. It's running now but since I moved to Heroku you can't register. I should look into that. The Rails source is here: https://github.com/marcus/Instabrary
Re: How I built 7books in under 4 weeks
#33How much did that domain name cost? These are similar, they may help inspire you for features: http://www.goodreads.com/ http://www.shelfari.com/ Keep it up!
I contacted 7books.net and 7books.com along the way - I'll write a follow up post talking about that experience at some point.
Thanks for the links - I've already looked at them to check they didn't do exactly what I do but will definitely have a proper play around. There's also librarything which I'm a member of.
Books ftw!
Re: How I built 7books in under 4 weeks
#34As someone who within the last two weeks picked up app engine and created an MVP of my own http://www.pubcontweets.com , I can not only relate to your story but also applaud you for sharing the it as well as your code. Thanks.
Oh - and nice site.
Re: How I built 7books in under 4 weeks
#35This is really great. I love the concept and simplicity. Here are some suggestions: 1. Use the Amazon API to autosuggest book titles and author names. 2. Normalize the lists. That is, count up which books are recommended the most and use those statistics to recommend books. 3. List similar lists on each list :) Lists that list the same books might be related. If they list two or more of the same books, they're probab…
The ajax thing is definitely a strong priority - but I need to learn how to do ajax first and I think it's pretty hard...!
Re: How I built 7books in under 4 weeks
#36This is awesome - I built a site called 22books a couple years ago as a way to learn Ruby... it took me a little longer than 4 weeks but I think I launched with more functionality. I haven't done much with the site but it actually ended up getting used by teachers and librarians so I would feel bad ever shutting it down. http://22books.com
Hey mate - we spoke on email a few weeks ago! I was gonna drop you a line about the site but things have been a bit manic recently. I think I'm going in a slightly different direction to you so hopefully you don't mind too much that our sites are similar. I'm going to look at exploring the community angle in the coming months so hopefully we won't tread on each others toes too much.
Re: How I built 7books in under 4 weeks
#37As someone who within the last two weeks picked up app engine and created an MVP of my own http://www.pubcontweets.com , I can not only relate to your story but also applaud you for sharing the it as well as your code. Thanks.
Hey - I'm at pubcon right now!! Come say hi! My email is on the 7bks site or twitter me or something. Small world :) Oh - and nice site.
Re: How I built 7books in under 4 weeks
#38or did you learn it as your learned google's app engine?
Re: How I built 7books in under 4 weeks
#39Did you learn Python first? or did you learn it as your learned google's app engine?
Re: How I built 7books in under 4 weeks
#40It would be nice if you can pull in some images from amazon of book covers.