Share Your Kofi
A platform that helps creators on Ko-fi get discovered.
Hi everyone 👋
Over the weekend, I built a simple but meaningful side project that I thought I'd share here.
As a Ko-fi creator myself (_Ko-fi is a platform where artists, writers, podcasters, etc., accept donations or sell their work_), I noticed there’s no real official directory to find and support other creators easily. You basically have to rely on social media posts, search engines, or hope Ko-fi features someone.
That got me thinking: what if I built a community-powered directory?
Where:
- Ko-fi creators can submit their own page for others to discover
- Fans can recommend their favourite creators
- Visitors can browse, filter by categories, and explore new talent
So I spent my weekend building ShareYourKofi.com - a free and simple discovery platform.
Tech Stack:
- Frontend: ReactJS
- Backend: ExpressJS (NodeJS)
- Database: MongoDB Atlas
- Hosting: Render (server) + Netlify (frontend)
Everything is mobile-friendly, uses clean simple layouts, and relies on a lightweight card-based system for browsing creators.
Submissions are stored in MongoDB. Frontend fetches them dynamically, and I added simple likes/views counters to encourage engagement. There's also category tagging and filtering to help visitors find creators based on what they’re looking for (e.g., Stickers, Podcasts, Virtual Backgrounds, etc.)
🔍 A few lessons I learned during the build:
1. MongoDB Atlas with Mongoose makes backend schema setup really smooth
2. Styling basic responsive cards manually without a UI library like Tailwind took a bit longer, but kept the app super lightweight
3. React’s useState and useEffect hooks were enough to manage the entire state cleanly
4. Adding category filtering client-side (without backend refetch) made UX much snappier
Super happy with how it all turned out.
Anyways, just thought I'd share this here. Would love feedback from fellow coders/webdevs, Ko-Fi creators and other entrepreneurs! 🚀
Cheers!
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