Man I built an app a while back called Kanji Plus. The idea was to build a small side project to generate an income, then use that to fund my magnum opus, Phrasing [1]
I built the prototype in a weekend. I spent the next 8 months turning it into a product people cared about. As soon as people started using it, I realized I was going to spend the next 10 years beating around the bush on a product with a very low ceiling.
I eventually decided to build Phrasing [1]… and kanji plus just kind of disappeared. Dependencies updated, subscriptions expired, service providers went offline. I feel bad because I sold some lifetime memberships - genuinely expecting to just leave it on the internet forever - but man, apparently websites don’t do that out of the box anymore.
Luckily the entire product of kanji plus will fit nicely as a feature in Phrasing, and it’s written with the same front end tech so it should be a very simple copy paste. 2 weeks of work max (famous last words).
Still, I feel really bad that people paid me money and the service just went offline. I didn’t know I was being so naive just expecting things to work for more than 6 months unattended.
If any old kanji plus subscribers are reading this, please feel free to get in touch. I’m planning to give all my old supporters a free lifetime membership to phrasing once it’s ready to go! (a membership tier that will not be available to the general public)
That’s why I’m writing pure html and css in 2025. These sites can last a very long time. I just wrote about this a couple weeks ago:
https://joeldare.com/why-im-writing-pure-html-and-css-in-202...
Heh yeah kanji plus was closer to a video game than it was to a word document. It’s less to do with JavaScript and more to do with all the surrounding tech. Supabase, netlify, npm packages, etc
These days I do everything with elixir or dependency free (cl)js + react . Learned my lesson the hard way
I would not subscribe to your new app that is not yet finished when you have a previous product that was cancelled without fanfare.
I think that’s fair! The question was greatest fails though, I would say that is par for the course.
Check back in 10 years though, Phrasing will still be running, and it will have had all the features of kanji plus for 9 years and then some :-)
See you in 10 years!
https://archive.is/gnhIi