

Show HN: Prodigy Notes – a web app for daily journaling and note taking - timdavila
https://prodigynotes.com

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DrScump
I tried the signup and immediately got this page:

___

Oops

Sorry, an error occured.

500 Internal Server Error

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displayed URL:
[https://prodigynotes.com/register](https://prodigynotes.com/register)

using Chrome 43.0.2357.130

and, backnavigating cleared all my entered data.

So, my first feedback would be that your error messages are unhelpful. ;)

BUT, retrying with same signup data told me I was already logged in and gave
me a home page. (to get picky, the page says "Welcome Back!" even though it
was my first load of it)

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timdavila
Sorry about that! Yes, looking at the server logs quite a lot of people are
getting database connection errors. My next dev task is to get this optimized.

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timdavila
Hi everyone, my name's Tim. I designed and developed Prodigy Notes over the
past six months. Prodigy Notes is a web app designed for journaling, but could
also be used as a lightweight Evernote or OneNote alternative. There are a lot
of options in this space, but the features that I wanted weren't all in one
place, so I built Prodigy Notes to scratch my own itch. These features are:
prominent word counter, side by side note view, and uncluttered UI. This is my
first web app, and I'm putting this out there to get feedback on the
usability, design, and technical approach. It's pretty basic now, so I've
outlined a roadmap here: [https://prodigynotes.com/blog/product-
roadmap](https://prodigynotes.com/blog/product-roadmap)

Thanks for your time!

~~~
mxuribe
Neat design! I myself have a preference to self-host things...Do you plan on
providing an option to self-host?

Also others might be interested in what are the main differences between
Prodigy Notes and, say, Simplenote.com ?

Also the site is getting intermittent " 500 Internal Server Error" but that
could just be from a bunch of HN traffic.

In any case good luck!

~~~
timdavila
Thanks for the feedback!

I plan to open source it down the road, which would give you the option to
self host.

Main differences? Right now, UI and functionality wise, not much. Simple Note
has a whole slew of native apps and a few years of history going for them. In
the future, I plan to tailor my offering to people who are trying to make
writing a habit. That means activity calendars like Github for writing
progress, with word counts by day for example, in app writing prompts, etc.

It does look like the database is hiccuping right now. I am going to look into
optimizing calls over the next few days- I'm a jr. dev and don't get paid to
do this, so I'm learning in my spare time. Thanks for bearing with me!

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devarist
Nice work Tim. [shameless plug] it is similar to what I built at devarist.com
except that I'm more interested in the daily scratch pad than encouraging a
journal, because that was my itch. It's great to see someone else building a
similar product though because it means I'm not completely crazy. Good luck
with it.

