Thinking back, it was around nine years ago, maybe late 2014 or early 2015. I got this idea stuck in my head. I was collecting these vintage toys back then, and keeping track of everything – what I had, what I wanted, condition, price paid – it was a mess. Just scribbled notes everywhere. So, I thought, why not build a simple website? A little online tool just for tracking collections like mine. Seemed simple enough.
I was all fired up. Decided I’d build it myself. I mean, how tough could a basic website be, right? Famous last words. I knew practically nothing about building websites. Zero. So, I started digging around online. Found some tutorials on HTML, CSS. Figured I needed something more, so I dipped my toes into PHP and MySQL because someone on a forum said that’s what you used for dynamic stuff and saving data. Seemed logical.
The actual building part… or trying to build
Man, that was rough. Way rougher than I expected. I spent so many evenings, after my actual job, just staring at the screen, trying to make things work. Getting the data to save properly into the database? Absolute nightmare. Things would break for no reason I could figure out. I remember trying to get this simple form to submit data correctly, spent like three whole nights on just that. Felt like banging my head against a wall. Constantly.
- Tried finding cheap or free web hosting. Found one, but it was painfully slow. Sometimes it would just go offline.
- Looked for help on forums. Sometimes people tried to help, but their answers used all this jargon I didn’t get. Other times, just silence.
- The whole design thing? Forget about it. My focus was just making the damn thing work. It ended up looking super basic, kinda ugly if I’m honest.
Getting something… anything… online
After weeks, maybe a couple of months of this struggle, I actually got a very, very basic version running. You could add an item, give it a name, a description, maybe upload a picture (that part was extra tricky). It was clunky. It wasn’t pretty. But it technically worked. Sort of. I put it up on that cheap hosting I found. Felt a tiny bit proud, but mostly just exhausted and a bit disappointed it wasn’t closer to what I’d imagined.
Then came the reality check. I thought, “Okay, maybe other collectors will find this useful!” Shared the link with a couple of buddies who were also into collecting. Posted it cautiously on one forum dedicated to the hobby. And… crickets. Tumbleweeds. Maybe 5 or 10 people signed up, clicked around a bit, and that was it. Nobody stuck with it. Nobody seemed to really need it, or maybe my version was just too basic, too unreliable.
Pulling the plug
My initial excitement just fizzled out fast after that. Keeping even that simple site online felt like a chore. The cheap hosting started showing annoying ads, or had more downtime. I wasn’t motivated to fix the bugs or add the features I originally planned. Why bother if nobody was using it? Eventually, the domain name came up for renewal, and I just let it go. The site disappeared into the digital ether.
Looking back now? It feels like a huge amount of effort for nothing. A total flop in terms of creating a useful tool or a successful project. But you know what? It wasn’t entirely useless. That whole frustrating process taught me a ton. I learned firsthand that building even “simple” software is way harder than it looks. I learned about databases, about how websites actually function behind the scenes. Mostly, I learned that having an idea is easy, but making it real and making something people actually want are completely different games. That failure, weirdly enough, made me appreciate the tech people I worked with later way more. And it definitely made me think twice before jumping into another “simple” project without doing some homework first.
