WhisperGifts Sees the Light of Day

Posted by Ross Poulton on Sun 16 March 2008 #jutda #django #wedding #whispergifts

I got married in March 2007, within a few months of a number of friends. We all shared our trials and tribulations as we each prepared for our big events, and a number of common issues arose. One of these common points of confusion was the preparation of a bridal gift registry - a list of gifts that we would love to receive from our guests.

Being somewhat geeky, I started to put together an online bridal registry system that could not only be used by my fiance and I, but also by our friends and family. This case of scratching an itch turned into a service that would eventually become WhisperGifts, the first public offering of Jutda.

This service evolved over time into a solution suitable for the commercial prime-time and as of today is ready for public consumption at whispergifts.com.

Here's just some of the major benefits of WhisperGifts:

  • Allows your guests to shop at any store they like. Aunty Mary who works for MegaTVCorp can now buy you that 42-inch LCD that you want, without paying department store prices
  • Allows you to describe the types of items you want, rather than selecting a brand and model
  • Lets your guests browse for gifts in the comfort of their own home
  • Lets your guests easily see gifts sorted by category (Kitchenware, furniture, or outdoor living for example), within certain price brackets, or by priority
  • Can magically e-mail reminder messages to guests before the wedding
  • Can magically e-mail you a list of guests and their selections just after your wedding, helping with the process of sorting out who purchased what when it comes to writing thank-you notes.

More information on WhisperGifts is available at the WhisperGifts website and in a recent Jutda blog posting.

Soon I'll publish some Django-related technical details of the service, as elements of a commercial service built on Open Source software are often interesting to the community as a whole. As a teaser, here's a few built-in functions that were made much easier with Django. Stay tuned (or rather, subscribe to the RSS Feed) for implementation details over the coming weeks.

  • E-mailing of PDF lists of gifts / purchasers
  • Integration with PayPal to allow for upgrades to be purchased
  • A subdomain per-user, to allow for ease-of-communication
  • Built-in context-sensitive inline help and tips to maximise the benefit obtained by users, both free and paying