This marks the day #7 of the challenge to make a usable product in 7 days.
Well, this is a very long day that covered 3 days of 24 hours!
As the release day approached, I found a couple of features that would be dropped as of version 1, but found out also some of the features were really needed If I wanted the first visitors to stick around!
I integrated mailgun to send emails, bought and installed new SSL certificates, added a touch on notifications, adjusted configurations to support both development mode and production mode( I have no testing mode, yet), wrote and integrated the customer email template, refined the search — boiled down to 3 modes instead of 5 (all, favorites and inventory).
Lessons learned —for next challenges, if I ever want to launch from day one, I will go instead this way: 1. Product name and domain name that goes with it 2. SSL certificates — set up the server to be ready to receive first code 3. write down all email communications and post them so that users can comment on them 4. integration with third party libraries + dummy tests. 5 write the actual MVP on top of a fully functioning stable system.
If I take a break and look back, third party services integration is a pain in ass. They are less predictable, the documentation and support doesn’t come in as you want it(you have always to wait) and in most of cases apply some hacks to make it work. Always make a call for help/support first, and read the material next! One guy at mailgun sent me this link, as an answer :-) .
Bottom line — I deployed the app at https://app.hoo.gy, but still have issues with Nginx server, and those will be solved next year(we are Dec 31th 2014 already).
