Erik A. Hanson's Weblog

wshlst.com is a wish list website I created for my family to use.

It differs from other wish list sites in a few ways: it’s group-oriented, it allows people to add items to other peoples’ wish lists (secretly, if desired), and it allows people to discuss wish list items (again, secretly, if desired). The result is a site that lets a group of people plot and scheme behind each others’ backs to make gift buying easier.

Site Tour

The site’s main page is divided into three panels. The first is called “People” and lists all the people you share wish lists with. For me, it lists everyone in my family and everyone in my wife’s family.

Clicking on a person loads their wish list in the next panel, the “Wish List” panel. As you’d expect, you can add and remove items from your wish list. But you can also add and remove items from other peoples’ wish lists. By default, when you add an item to someone else’s list, it’s not visible to that person. Items can also be marked as “Claimed” so two people don’t end up buying the same gift.

Clicking on a wish list item loads comments about the item in the third panel, called “Discussion”. Comments in the discussion panel are also hidden from the item’s intended recipient by default.

Try It Out

There’s no way to sign up to use the site (yet—if there’s interest from anyone outside my family, I might take the time to add the ability), but there are demo users you can use to try the site out. Details are on the front page of the site: www.wshlst.com.

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