about wishmash.com

The name

wish ('wish), n.: 1a : an act or instance of wishing or desire: WANT b : an object of desire : GOAL
mish·mash ('mish-"mash, -"mäsh), n.: HODGEPODGE, JUMBLE
[Source: Merriam Webster Online]

The goal of this service is to create something really useful out of the normal mishmash of wishes that fly around by the millions, especially at holiday time.

What does it do?

It's a free service to help organize wishlists for the holidays, especially (where coordinating a gift exchange within a group gets pretty complicated). I threw in support for "Secret Santa"-type exchanges and birthdays as well, plus a slew of features that seemed obviously useful:

Amazon wishlists: you can import your Amazon wishlist completely, or selected items.
Easy communication: you can make notes on someone's wishlist, plus on specific gifts, that will be hidden from the owner of the list. When you find a gift, you can check it off the list so other folks won't get the same thing. And if you need to, it's simple to send a message to everyone except the wishlist owner.
Shared gifts: I can mark a gift on my list as for me AND my wife, so she won't be see the secret notes about it, or if it's been claimed (don't spoil the surprise...).
Quick print: you can print out all of the wishlists for an event right from the home page.
No squinting: Just click "[+]SHOW LARGE PRINT" on the homepage to switch to the large print version of the site (this change is saved for future visits).
Easy online shopping: there are automatic links to Google, Froogle, and Amazon if you want to search for a gift online.

Origins

I built WishMash.com for my own family, originally for the 2004 holiday season. I'd finally had enough of the endless emails involved in getting presents for a growing number of people. Emailed wishlists flying everywhere, then updated wishlists, then "I got this for this person" (hopefully emailed to the right people!) and "so did I!", and so on. This is my solution. I admit creating an entire website is probably overkill, but I'm not really the type to do things halfway.

Uh... how are you paying for this?

It's surprisingly cheap to build a website if you know what you're doing. This site runs entirely on free, open-source software (Linux, Apache, PHP, MySql), and was developed and tested with free tools. That just leaves the cost of hosting, but I think I have that covered, too: if you buy any items through a search link to Amazon, or items that were imported from an Amazon wishlist, WishMash.com gets a small commission. This doesn't affect your prices at all. I like this solution -- you aren't inconvenienced in any way (no ads, and you can certainly buy gifts from other places!), and I can hopefully pay for hosting with referral bonuses from Amazon. We'll see how that goes.

Contact

Thanks for visiting, and feel free to contact me if you have questions or ideas for the website!

Rob Whelan