Some­how unable to cope with actu­ally hav­ing free time of an evening, I have taken on yet another project which will doubt­less push me deeper into the dark, untamed wilds of the inter­net, the land stalked only by the mys­te­ri­ous beast known as the “web developer”.

Eric has come up with the idea for a fiction-writing com­mu­nity known as “A Thou­sand Words”. The con­cept is simple:

• Users sub­mit pho­tos or other images that they find interesting
• Every week (or other suit­able period of time), one of these is cho­sen by the site staff
• Users then write short sto­ries, of around 1000 words, inspired by the picture
• Users rate, com­ment etc. on each other’s stories

I’ll be cod­ing up this site in my spare time over the next few weeks, and you can check out my cur­rent progress on the live site at a thou­sand words.  Cur­rently, the data­base design is done and I’m part­way through the UI of what will be the main page.  My todo list is roughly:

1. Fin­ish the main page and story page UIs.
2. Add bare-bones pages for all the GET/POST func­tions, e.g. reg­is­ter­ing accounts, sub­mit­ting sto­ries, sub­mit­ting pictures.
3. Test all the functions.
4. Work on their UIs.
5. Start closed beta test­ing for any­one interested.
6. Lib­er­ally apply jQuery to improve user experience.
7. Add com­ment­ing, pos­si­bly via DISQUS.
8. Add proper user pro­files, gra­vatar sup­port etc.
9. Get every­one I can find to try and break it.
10. Release!  Open the flood-gates, and despair at the drib­ble I receive.

As I go I’ll be post­ing updates and hopefully-interesting insights here, and you can always check the site at athousandwords.org.uk to see how I’m get­ting on.