ākeepsakeā ā noun. something that you keep to help you remember a person, place, or event.
Keepsake serves one purpose āĀ to deliver meaningful letters which will eventually become a timebox of memories. āØ
The site is still in its very early stages, so I might have missed bugs here and there. If you do find some, just give me a message. Iād appreciate it!
tl;dr here's a video you can watch that explains Keepsake!
ps, you can also support/buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/kenzojrc ā
Sometimes, all it takes is a bunch of words to make a person's day.
Hi there! My name is Kenzo. I've always enjoyed receiving friendship day letters in high school. I still have all of them tucked safely in an envelope. When I feel a bit down or sentimental, reading them never fails to lighten my mood. I wanted to bring that experience back and make it a more regular thing, especially in these trying times.
Sure, you can simply send a meaningful & long message through Messenger, DM, email, or even by hand, but really (and sadly), who does that nowadays? The world seems too fast paced for substantial, meaningful messages, so I want Keepsake to start becoming an avenue for that.
Keepsake started as a project for me to learn more about web development during this quarantine periodĀ (because of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 which stopped all our lives and not to mention the feeling of isolation that it has inflicted on all of us, for folks reading this in the future),Ā but it became way more than that. I thought might as well finish it and make something people can use. This project definitely kept me busy and became something for me to get excited about during this dark period.
Send letters to anyone on Keepsake.Ā Write letters to anyone, even to yourself. The recipient wonāt see the contents before the letter is delivered by Keepsake through email. This is my link, for example: Ā https://keepsa.ke/kenzojrcĀ (feel free to send something nice š).
Make your letters more personal.Ā Attach a cover photo š¼ļø and a short audio š¤ or video š¹ message to your letters.
Send your letters to the future.Ā Schedule the letters to send on a birthday, or as a surprise on some random day in the future, or on a specific day & hour. Keepsake takes care of all the scheduling and sending so you donāt have to worry about it! All you need to do is to write something nice š
Share your letters.Ā On top of that, you can share your letter publicly so that anyone can read, share, react, and comment on yourĀ public letterš¢
If I could offer this totally for free, I would! But nothing in life is free š
Keepsake runs on servers and services which cost money every month. For now, I shoulder them myself. But eventually, if usage of the site goes up, costs will also go up, so Iāll need all the support you can give to keep Keepsake up and running for years to come.
On top of that, the more support Keepsake receives, I may be able to give more time to Keepsake and release more features. š
You may avail of a premium plan or donateĀ here.
Basically, a surprise. Keepsake will deliver your letter on a random day 1-12 months from now. Itās the default selection and it ensures that the recipient would receive at least one letter per month in the next 12 months.
Again, the intent of Keepsake isĀ to make meaningful letters a more regular thing (and to make you smile every month), hence this type of scheduling.
Yes, as long as theyāre links! Just click on the image/video icons on the editor. Or simply drag an image from the web to the editor. For videos, you can embed YouTube or Vimeo ones.
Make sure that you are using a modern browser (tested onĀ latest versionsĀ of Chrome, Firefox, and Edge) and that you've allowed Microphone/Video access.
For recording audio on iOS, use Safari.
Support for video recording/playback on Safari & iOS is limited due to missing browser features. It may or may not work. You may try enabling experimental features.
For iOS, go to Settings > Safari > Advanced > Experimental Features > Enable MediaRecorder
For macOS, go to Safari > Preferences > Advanced > Show "Develop menu in menu bar" then go to Develop > Experimental Features > Enable MediaRecorder
Just enter your birthday in Settings, then it will appear. It's that easy! š
Yes! Keepsake letters are time zone aware. Whenever you write a letter with the specific date option, the time you enter there is in the time zone of the recipient. With birthday letters, the recipient will receive them at exactly 12AM on their next birthday, in their time zone.
No. The intent of having accounts and usernames is to verify & protect the email address of the recipient (from spam or unwanted mail), but I may implement a process to allow this in the future.
Everything except the sender and recipient. If you want your letter to be totally anonymous, do not put anything revealing in the letter subject, body, and attachments.
Nope. Just one person (so far), and a lot of ā¤ļøšØāš»ā
There's still a lot in the backlog, but something interesting Iām looking into is scheduled texts (if youāve watched the Netflix showĀ Crash Landing on You, youād probably appreciate this). This list may change as more people use Keepsake.
Pretty much with hundreds of hours of research, coding, testing, and a lot of frustration in between.
I wanted to learn modern JavaScript, and I believeĀ the best way to learn how to code is to work on a project.
Warning: some technical jargon coming through
I initially just wanted to learn React (I literally had zero background of it before this), but it then led to learning Next.js (because I needed SSR), TS, GraphQL, serverless frameworks, infrastructure as code, payments integration, ads, and a looot of other stuff all at once ā and building this site was almost the perfect learning experience. Coming from a Python/Django background where things are pretty opinionated with a set way to do things, modern JavaScript is a whole different world.
There are definitely some things I wouldāve done differently if I were to start from scratch again. Maybe Iāll write a blog post about this soon š¤
Just give me a message on Messenger at the bottom right of the screen or emailĀ hello@keepsa.ke.
Not the full list but Keepsake wouldn't be what it is without these packages:
React, Next.js, Apollo GraphQL, Jodit, TypeORM, Formik, RecordRTC, VMSG, ++
Last updated on July 25, 2020