Some time ago I started building an app where you could design and order a custom Kodes necklace. I then would receive the order and make the necklace.

This was ideally designed to be put on a tablet and handed over to any stockists who stocked Kodes who wished to give the opportunity to customers to request a custom necklace. The necklace is made of an SVG and the JS has some events on each bead on click which will ask the user to pick if to paint half a bead or the full bead.

I then met React on a project at HeathWallace and fell in love. I started rewriting the app from Node and Express https://github.com/morena/kodes-js to React https://github.com/morena/kodes-generator-react

I didn’t meet a deadline I had and then a million other things happened and I abandoned the project.

I’m now hoping to pick it back up now that I’m not in a contract and looking for one and finish it. I have quite an ambition shopping list, so I hope I will find work before I have enough time to finish it!

These are the challenges I have faced and still face:

  • Redux – As soon as I needed to go against React the one way down flow of data into components, I realised I needed something… redux! It’s still not in place and I’d like to add it ASAP
  • Payments – I tried to locate the PayPal SDK and I failed. I know! This should be an easy step. I hope this has changed since I looked last. Or I might actually look at integrating Stripe for taking payments
  • Mailchimp – before placing the order, I’d like to give the opportunity to the customer to sign up to my mailing list
  • Woocommerce – When the order is placed, I would like the app to use the Woocommerce API and raise an order directly on my Kodes website – then I would like to take full advantage of all the order functionality available through Woocommerce, like emailing the client etc – I am REALLY excited about this bit!
  • Colours – I now have a HUGE range of acrylic colours I use to paint the necklaces – I have to update the list but also make sure I match correct HEX colour to the real colour…
  • Patterns – I now paint a few different patterns, from Terrazzo, to Leopard and Granite – I need a designer to replicate the pattern digitally and add it to the colour switch button
  • Cord – I have not found a way to select the cord item on the SVG – on top of that I also do chains, so I would need a designer to make an SVG version of each chain

So there’s a lot I would like to do… On top of this I also would like to update the app so that:

  • it uses SASS rather than styled components
  • it shows the ordering page straight away and remove the first landing page
  • I can remove some DOM-dependant old code?
  • Unit Testing

Let’s see how far I get today!