cooldoganytime

Built with Vue and Django. The goal is to create a small community of individuals with an inclination towards less 'mainstream' and more 'arthouse' titles. You can rate titles, see how your compatible your taste is with other users, receive recommendations based on what compatible users like, and discuss titles via Reddit-style nested discussion pages (but memes and low-effort content are heavily discouraged). There are also a lot of other various common features like list creation and instant messaging.

I use my own database, host my images, etc. so I don't need to rely on any third party services. Many of the most popular media 'databases' (e.g. IMDB, Goodreads, IGDB, etc.) are owned by Amazon or some other media conglomerate, which I think is a big conflict of interest... New titles must be added to the database (with a lot of help from automated data scraping tools to reduce effort) so the library of titles is 'handpicked' by the community. There are definitely less titles than other sites, but a much higher chance that you'll stumble onto something unique.

I'm a hobbyist programmer and this is my pet project- I wanted to create a web app/PWA that I would want to use regularly.

I was heavily inspired by www.criticker.com which is the best site for film recommendations that I've found and I've been using it for over a decade. However it's feeling pretty dated at this point and I also wanted to apply the same concept to books, music, etc. which is why I decided to create my own platform.

I also love to read discussions that allow me to engage with media on a deeper level. I like to see different perspectives/interpretations or learn about details that I missed. I appreciate social networks like Reddit where some discussion takes place, but in-depth discussion has been largely replaced with low-effort and tired memes and catchphrases.

My goal with this web app is to create a niche community of open-minded individuals who love to discover, share, and discuss media outside of the mainstream. The community is self-governed and self-sustained, with no reliance on external APIs or services, and with an emphasis on quality over quantity in both recommendations and discussion. It is completely free with no ads or data-harvesting. The app is feature-complete and I officially launched it today.

I’m a self-taught hobbyist, and I built this app over a few years with Django and Vue. If anyone has any feedback or questions about development then I’d love to hear them.