Oli Kenobi

Last sunday I launched a new web project called Gimme Fortune. It consists of a single page that randomly displays a fortune message. The kind you get in a fortune cookie.

What’s the story?

I’ve had the idea for a month now. I thought it would be a fun website to make and use. There’s no real purpose except to share the link with friends… I honestly don’t expect much from it, I just made it for fun.

First I had to find a name. I searched for a name that would be available as a .com domain name. Fortunately, I didn’t have to search for a long time, the ‘Gimme Fortune’ name came out after 30 minutes… and it was available as a .com! So I quickly registered the domain name, then took some time to think about the implementation. Meanwhile, I found a couple of lists of messages over the internet that I put in a text file.

Last Saturday, I thought it was time to start. I designed the page in less than 2 hours, and took half an hour to convert it into a web page. Then I imported the messages in a database and finally added some code in the page to grab and display a random sentence.

How was the launch?

I sent out a message with the link to Twitter and Facebook. I also created a Twitter account for the site. Not much you’d say, but I have a couple more ideas to spread the news in a near future… So far people think it’s fun, that’s the goal, so I’m happy.

What’s next?

I have a couple of ideas to improve the site.

• First I will add a star rating so you’ll be able to vote for each sentence. I know some of them are not that great and I want to remove the crappy ones… People will help me by voting.
• I’m also considering adding a form so you can send a random message to someone (by email and maybe Twitter).
• I want to automatically post a new random message everyday on the @gimmefortune Twitter account, I’m currently doing manually.

I hope you’ll enjoy the website, and I would really appreciate if you could help spread the link.

Website: http://www.gimmefortune.com
Twitter: @gimmefortune