ThisIsLeon.co.uk

Sometimes it’s the simple ideas that prove to be the best.

A month or two ago, I got an invoice for a hosting package I set up two years ago for flCodr (which is no longer being developed). It came as a bit of a shock, as there wasn’t any notification from the hosting company to let me know.

While things like this are really up to me to know, it would have been nice to have a reminder. Many (good) hosting companies do this for you, but you sometimes have hosting and domain reg with two parties, plus for whatever reason you may have different providers for each client/site.

It can quickly become a bit of a nightmare, keeping track of renewal dates.

To solve this I propose to build a really simple web app (still to decide on a name) that will allow you to list all of your hosting and registration details and be notified via email and Twitter when they are due to expire. That’s it, nothing more. Oh and you can only sign up via Twitter (this does away with a full auth system) –  no Twitter, no account!

In a nutshell the app will:

• Auto lookup the WhoIs info for each domain entered and try and auto fill details
• Allow you to sign up ONLY via Twitter oAuth. Avatar, display name and email (I think) will be pulled from Twitter.
• Notify you via email, (if you allow it) via Twitter (DM only – you probably don’t want the whole world knowing that http://www.kinkyladyboys is ready for renewal) and for iOS (prowl or Boxcar)
• Allow you to specify the notification period (month, week, day before)
• Allow you to notify (via email only) a third party (maybe an accounts dept)
• Assign an action next to each service (free text input that gets sent with the notification)

Hopefully this is something that I should be able to knock together fairly quickly using CodeIgniter.

If you have any thoughts, ideas or feedback (or a name for the service) then please sound off in the comments!

I’ll throw some wireframes together soon, and get them online!