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Show HN: My girlfriend needed a Secret Santa web app, so I built her one

66 pointsby dinosaursover 11 years ago

22 comments

dinosaursover 11 years ago
I built this. Girlfriend needed this to organise her christmas party and we couldn't really find a nice one on the internet.. So I built it myself. Mostly for her and as an exercise for myself (I learnt the basics of Angular and NodeJS along the way), but then my designer friend came up with the design and we put it live. Hope you enjoy it.
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tehwebguyover 11 years ago
Awesome, now get an affiliate account at Amazon and make gift suggestions
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nejover 11 years ago
This is cool but using Ghostery plugin on Chrome (<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ghostery/mlomiejdfkolichcflejclcbmpeaniij" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrome.google.com&#x2F;webstore&#x2F;detail&#x2F;ghostery&#x2F;mlomiejdf...</a>) reveals 16 different javascript trackers and advertising libraries used on this website. I know in the footer it states &quot;Memo from Santa does not store e-mail addresses. We will not send you e-mails apart from the event e-mail, nor will we use your e-mail address for any other purpose.&quot; but as this being a free service it&#x27;s kind of worrying. Should I be worried about giving the emails of all my relatives and friends?
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capnrefsmmatover 11 years ago
I tried this earlier with three people. Two of them were told to give presents to the same person, and one person was left present-free.<p>Not sure if you&#x27;ve fixed that already, but it seems like an important feature to get right...
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dinosaursover 11 years ago
If someone tests this and their email goes to spam, would they be so kind to pastebin me the message headers&#x2F;mime so I can try to solve that together with the Mailgun folks? Thanks a bunch.
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jrnkntlover 11 years ago
Note; you should fix your SPF records, all mails end up in spam.
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jameszhangover 11 years ago
Great job, this seems pretty fun. Plus, I&#x27;m sure your girlfriend really appreciates it, which is always awesome :)<p>Just one slight thing I noticed is that the &quot;winsdom_scriptregular&quot; font is quite hard to read.
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erex78over 11 years ago
HN people might not care about this sort of thing (ending a sentence with a preposition), but it screams out at me:<p>&quot;We&#x27;ll make sure everyone knows for whom to buy a present!&quot; vs. &quot;We&#x27;ll make sure everyone knows whom to buy a present for!&quot;<p>Good job on the who vs. whom though..
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Evgeniuzover 11 years ago
I recently did Secret Santa app too, but it is frontend only (no server side, to be ran with all people present). I did it mostly to play with AngularJS, but it has some nice geeky features like using truly uniform shuffling and Fortuna PRNG for more unpredictability. It&#x27;s in russian, but interface is pretty obvious, so feel free to try it :)<p><a href="http://evgeniuz.github.io/santa/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;evgeniuz.github.io&#x2F;santa&#x2F;</a>
kanamekunover 11 years ago
Looks great!!<p>Was just about to set up a Secret Santa on Elfster... was wondering how your site stacks up in terms of facilitating a gift exchange between friends&#x2F;coworkers?
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jrnkntlover 11 years ago
Ha, looks nice! You could monetize this by letting everyone fill out a wish-list and offer affiliate-linked suggestions based on what is filled in? (Same as <a href="http://namentrekken.be" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;namentrekken.be</a> does this; that wasn&#x27;t an option for your gf? :)
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derpson5over 11 years ago
Very cool, an inspiration. How long would you say it took you? (hours of work)<p>I ask as a young developer looking to gauge where he stands. Anyone have resources they could suggest for gauging fast&#x2F;slow development for oneself?
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huangc10over 11 years ago
great idea! :) I&#x27;ve been using elfster for the last couple of years.
ftayover 11 years ago
Currently, when I fill out the form, I have no idea what&#x27;s going out to the recipients - perhaps a mad libs-esque design would explain why each field, e.g. party title, is necessary :)
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afs35mmover 11 years ago
What platform did you use for deployment? When I dove into Node awhile back it seemed the most difficult part was finding a stable hosting solution...
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ninetaxover 11 years ago
It&#x27;s very pretty, what did you use to design the site visually? Just plain old html&#x2F;css? A template? It&#x27;s simple but good looking!
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Systemic33over 11 years ago
Minor annoyance: The &quot;Amount of cash to spend&quot; slide bar, needs to have its color inverted.<p>Otherwise, i think it looks great :)
era86over 11 years ago
Diggin it. Already using Elfster though!
tspikeover 11 years ago
Nice work! I built a similar site a few years ago and it&#x27;s turned out to be pretty popular.
dmakover 11 years ago
Elfster works pretty well!
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elwellover 11 years ago
load page.<p>press &quot;+&quot;<p>visible error message
mosselmanover 11 years ago
So?