Anekdotz

FMyLife.com is a hilarious website, as is MyLifeIsAverage. They also seem to be simple to make, if you know what you're doing with respect to web sites. I've had an idea for a while for a fmylife type community to supplement my blog. Unfortunately, I don't, so I've had to keep my idea for a short-story site like FMyLife on hold. I tried posting requests on free-lance web development boards, but didn't want to spend so much right away.

Anekdotz appears to be my answer, as it's free to install. I had to sign up for a google account (also free) and register for Google App Engine (a web host run by google). For App Engine I needed to verify my account via SMS. It took about a minute, and was simple enough.

The overall process of launching an app using Anekdotz takes about 5-10 minutes including registering for App Engine etc. I haven't had the chance to design the site to my specifications, but there seem to be plenty of options available in the "Admin Console" of my site to create the perfect design and match my blog.

You can also edit the functionality of the app, for example switch between different modes for archiving stories and different modes for moderation. Overall it's a pretty complete package as far as the different options for how you want your site to work.

I think it's a great service, and I hope that everyone who is interested in launching such a site checks this out before spending money on a "script" or getting someone to design them a site from scratch.

I've been trying to make my own website like FMyLife.com for a while now. If you haven't heard of FMyLife, it's a story-sharing community where users post anecdotes of their daily troubles, and it's hilarious.

Anyway I had an idea about such a website, but I didn't know anything about programming or even running a website. My friend tweeted about http://www.anekdotz.com/, which claims that anyone (really anyone) can start a short-story website in the vein of FMyLife for free.

So I went over to the site, and it's pretty well laid out. Not amazingly well designed but clean and simple to navigate. I checked out a couple of the example sites listed on the home page, and these seemed to be generally what I was looking for in my future site.

I clicked "create app", as it states to do on the top of the home page. I was thinking I would just check out how difficult it was and come back when I had a bit more time. But it was actually really easy, though you need a mobile phone# for verification.

Apparently Google has a service called "App Engine" for people to run their own custom web applications, and Anekdotz apps run on this service. During the process of creating your app, you have to register for an App Engine account, which is where you need the mobile # for registration.

The actual setup on anekdotz.com is very short, the actual design of your website happens after it is up and running. It took about 3-4 minutes (including waiting 1 minute for Google to text a verification code to my phone) to "launch" my app. Now that it's online, I am going to take some time this weekend to customize it.

But overall, I thoroughly recommend Anekdotz.com for anyone who wants to start a simple, super-fast website for sharing stories.