Comments

• By usrme 2025-06-1112:552 reply

  I would definitely recommend adding example images directly to the main page, along with the link to the example trip. Otherwise there's nothing really to draw users in to using if they have to go searching for how the experience looks like.

  By kenrick95 2025-06-1113:272 reply

  Thanks for your suggestion! I was hesitant at first cause it was under heavy development so anything I put there on main page might get outdated very soon. I'll add them very soon~

  By swyx 2025-06-1118:113 reply

  also just because your landing page now has an example featuring singapore - this is my guide to singapore http://swyx.io/sg-guide and i feel like encouraging people to make opinionated guides to where they live is kinda nice and under explored

  By zie 2025-06-124:161 reply

  I agree with you, though you might think about contributing to wikitravel too. This is their Singapore page: https://wikitravel.org/en/Singapore

  By swyx 2025-06-1217:24

  yea but what matters is this is "my" page for "my" friends who specifically ask how i see singapore yknow

  By RamblingCTO 2025-06-1119:17

  curation definitely is underexplored and I'd say we're seeing more of that in the future given the AI slob that's hitting us.

  By kenrick95 2025-06-121:04

  Hi swyx, great idea! Thanks for your tips

  By swyx 2025-06-1118:09

  well screenshotting is easy and cheap + even if its outdated it helps communicate what you do

  By thefourthchime 2025-06-1115:47

  Also let the user do something without them making an account or verifying an email.

• By figmert 2025-06-1115:263 reply

  This is amazing. I've used wanderlog extensively, but while its feature set is great, it can be a nightmare to work due to how slow it can be sometimes.

  I've just registered to test it out a little bit. I tried to replicate my upcoming trip that I have set up in Wanderlog, and have the following feedback:

  - Overall, amazing! Snappy. Real easy to follow.

  - I love the simplicity.

  - I like that this is essentially excel (kind of), but with travel specific additions.

  Now for the potential improvements:

  - I can't add someone else as an editor, it seems. Clicking add just logs a "TripForm" with the form object. I don't see any network requests either.

  - Expenses don't allow me to select how to split it (maybe this is an issue because there's no-one else part of the trip?)

  - Timetable contrast needs a bit of work. Maybe needs some padding/margins or something.

  - MapTiler doesn't seem to have a good enough database. I struggled to add 152 Morrison Road

  - Activities can't span multiple days (I tried adding a train ride than arrived 45 mins past midnight)

  - Adding/editing activities while on the timetable page, does not update them until I refresh (or navigate away)

  Outside of all that, how are you planning to monetise this? The code is released under MIT, which doesn't stop anyone from adding some subscription plan, hosting it, and advertising it. May I suggest something like AGPL?

  By kenrick95 2025-06-1115:40
  Thank you for trying them and providing such a detailed feedback!
  - On Trip Sharing, hmm that seems weird. While I understand that there's no 'loading' indicator yet, one should be able to do so if one is the 'owner' of the trip
  - Expense split: because that feature isn't there yet
  - Thanks I'll consider it
  - The map I chose on MapTiler is OpenStreetMap, but I limit it to Point-of-interest only, maybe I need to expand it to match more kind of objects
  - Aha, for that case, I find that it's so troublesome that I have to split the activity into two different elements for display in the timetable, so I disabled the case for now. Thanks for a great use case!
  - Hmm strange, the activites should reflect live. Maybe the 'back-end' is a bit slow
  Anyway, the 'back-end' is InstantDB ( https://www.instantdb.com ) and it's opening a WebSocket connection, that's why you don't see network calls when doing operations
  P.S. I don't think I'll monetise this ever. If someone forks it and monetise it, as long as it doesn't affect me, I think I'm fine with it. If I run out of my 'free usage' quota, I'll probably limit the users to only handful of people
  By ensignavenger 2025-06-1115:49
  The AGPL won't prevent anyone from adding some subscription plan, hosting it, and advertising it. It does require them to license derivative works under the AGPL.
  There are many different goals for developing software, and different ways to make money doing it. The AGPL can be useful for some of them, but can be rather limiting too.
  By phsource 2025-06-1120:031 reply
  Hey figmert -- this is Peter, one of the co-founders of Wanderlog. I'm actually on a trip to Italy right now and definitely feel your pain with some performance issues, and we've been working hard to improve this.
  If you haven't tried the app in the last few months, can you try it again and let me know what parts are feeling slow for you by emailing me directly at peter@wanderlog.com? I'd love to take a closer look, and especially if you've got specifics with screenshots/videos, I can try to fix some of these myself too.
• By mi100hael 2025-06-1114:095 reply

  What's your goal with the project?

  I built a web app that looked very similar a few years back: friends & family collaboration on a trip plan, itinerary with map view, packing list, notes/journaling, favoriting, private or public with commenting, that sort of thing.

  My thesis was that the current common method of trip planning in a shared doc was messy, and a more structured, guided approach would make the process easier for users. And being able to share/show trip plans with others who aren't on the trip would be something people would want to do.

  My goal was to scale it and get actual broad adoption, make it a social experience, but even getting a handful of users was an uphill battle.

  I found that my thesis was likely wrong for a couple of reasons:

  1. The messy shared doc approach had the benefit of being very low-friction. It's easier to just type a bulleted list than to click "add item" and fill out some form fields.

  2. Browser usage was (I think) a limiting factor. I'm not sure if it would have worked as a native mobile app, but it definitely wasn't going to work as a web app.

  3. When people want to show off their trip or look for travel inspiration, they turn to apps like Instagram and Tiktok. They want visuals with photos/videos, not a list with a map. It's very difficult to create a new purpose-built social network.

  I ended up winding it down and moving on.

  I don't mean this to be a Dropbox "why are you building this" comment, but more hopefully pointing out a few challenges that exist in the space that you'll likely need to think about if you want to scale.

  By kenrick95 2025-06-1114:161 reply

  Several things, but wide adoption is NOT one of them.

  First and foremost, it's for my own personal use. I like to organize things and I find that the messy doc/spreadsheet way is way too messy for my liking, especially when I find a need to coordinate plans with other friends overseas. That's why I started this.

  Secondly, it's for fun and for learning. I enjoy build websites and explore what browser can provide. I learned that browser have API for drag-and-drop element to pass data to a target element

  So at the end of the day, I see it as a fun side project and nothing more.

  Thanks for sharing your experience too :)

  By layer8 2025-06-1118:061 reply

  The landing page very much looks like a serious product looking for adoption, though. It might mislead users into thinking that it is intended to be something more than a fun side project.

  By yumraj 2025-06-1120:16

  Is there a harm in that, if it meets a user's requirements they can decide whether or not to use it, right?

  By mountainriver 2025-06-1120:191 reply

  A friend of mine built a similar thing as a mobile app and also failed to get adoption.

  I think what these tools miss is that it’s kinda fun to plan a trip and I don’t necessarily need an app to help. It seems hard and like something I’ll need to learn once, and relearn when I need it again

  By presentation 2025-06-123:59

  Also I don’t want to plan out every second of my trips. Seems like this is useful for big trips with many people who need to be herded around, but in my estimation that kind of trip usually isn’t even that fun to begin with.

  By packetlost 2025-06-1122:36

  > The messy shared doc approach had the benefit of being very low-friction

  This. If you want someone to use your thing, it needs to have a very strong value proposition over familiar general purpose tool.

  This applies to basically every tool, but especially software.

  By pimlottc 2025-06-1116:44

  I agree that anything that requires tripmates to make an account is going to be a hard sell for most groups. At least most people are already on Google Docs these days.

  It's not clear to me how much of this requires an account, but I would encourage making as much as possible accessible without a login. Some people will want to help plan but there are also many people who just want to come along for the ride.