Building an Inspirational Website in Just 2 Hours: A Quick Guide to Creating Motivation on the Go
Hi there, ✋
I’m Miguel, living in Barcelona, nice to meet you! We’re living in an amazing time where technology makes it easier than ever to create. Last weekend, I set myself a challenge to see how much I could build from scratch in just a few hours — and that’s how 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗠𝗼𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 was born! 😍
With my Product background, I’ve worked on bringing various ideas to life, but this time I wanted to see if I could pull off building a website without a tech or design background.
This post is a lighthearted take on that journey — because life is all about having fun — and to show what’s possible in under 2 hours!
If you enjoy this type of content, here some more that you might appreciated: “Strategy & Organization” and “Feedback is About Listening”- enjoy yourself!💡💥
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗠𝗼𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻?
Our mission is simple: to offer a simple and intuitive platform for generating hundreds of inspirational quotes across categories like business, sports, science, and life.
Whether you’re looking for a quote to spark inspiration in your next presentation or to boost your social media game, FreeDailyMotivation is your go-to source. ✨
What is the pain point that we are trying to address?
Ever found yourself stuck while building an impressive PPT to align stakeholders with your extraordinary vision? Or wondered how to captivate your audience and make them fall in love with your project?
One simple, yet powerful strategy is the appeal to authority. This rhetorical technique involves supporting your argument by referencing statements from someone widely respected or influential in the field. By leveraging the credibility of these authoritative voices, you can add weight to your ideas and make your message more persuasive.
However, this is often easier said than done! Many times, I found myself recalling parts of an inspirational quote, but never quite getting it right. This inevitably led to a frustrating Google search through outdated, clunky “motivational websites” that are difficult to navigate and far from user-friendly.
I often found myself spending more time searching through these obsolete websites than actually focusing on the details of the PPT I was working on!
So… why not build something to solve my own pain point — and maybe help others too? Something more dynamic, with better design principles, customer centric, and a much more user-friendly UX/UI experience. 🛠️
Let’s do it properly with a project charter that defines the roadmap for FreeDailyMotivation and will be used to guide the development and ensure alignment with the stated goals.
Project Charter: FreeDailyMotivation
🎯1. Project Purpose and Objectives:
The purpose of FreeDailyMotivation is to create a user-friendly, intuitive platform where users can easily generate and access inspirational quotes from famous figures across various categories, including business, sports, science, and life. The platform aims to inspire, motivate, and empower individuals through curated content that can be shared across personal and professional channels.
Primary Objectives:
- Provide an easy-to-use interface for users to find and share motivational quotes.
- Categorize quotes into themes such as business, sports, life, and science for easy navigation.
- Ensure a seamless, visually appealing user experience across devices (desktop, mobile).
- Offer functionality to share quotes via social media platforms like WhatsApp.
- Support SEO-friendly design to improve visibility and traffic.
🗺️2. Project Scope:
In-Scope:
- Development of a responsive website that allows users to browse, generate, and share quotes.
- Incorporation of a minimalist and aesthetically pleasing design.
- Integration of quote categories for easy filtering (e.g., Business, Sports, Life).
- A WhatsApp share feature to allow quick distribution of quotes.
- Optional dark mode and light mode design for user preferences.
- A pop-up feature encouraging users to bookmark the website.
Out of Scope:
- Development of a mobile app (initial phase focuses on web-based delivery).
- User account authenticationvia social media (e.g. embedded Facebook or Twitter integrations).
- Gradual expansion to support multilingual capabilities (e.g., Spanish, Portuguese).
- Advance filtering by authors or related terms.
- Bookmarking favorite quotes.
- Daily notifications or other sources of communications.
🚀3. Deliverables:
- Fully functional website with inspirational quote generation functionality.
- Clean, responsive UI/UX design optimized for mobile and desktop devices.
- Simple category-based filtering of quotes.
- Social sharing features (WhatsApp, potentially expanding to others).
- SEO optimization (sitemap.xml, metadata, content structure).
- Backend functionality for storing and fetching quotes (JSON or other format).
- GTM implementation for traffic analysis.
📅4. Project Timeline and Milestones:
Phase 1 — Research and Design (30 min):
- Define website requirements and design prototypes.
- Develop branding and visual guidelines (logo, color scheme, etc.).
- Set up GitHub repository for project code.
Phase 2 — Development (30 min):
- Implement core website features (quote generation, categories, mobile responsiveness).
- Add dynamic quote-fetching mechanism using JSON.
- SEO setup (sitemap, keyword integration, meta descriptions).
Phase 3 — Testing and Feedback (30 min):
- Usability testing across devices.
- Gather feedback from a small group of initial users (“hi family”!).
- Debug and finalize any remaining issues.
Phase 4 — Launch (30 min):
- Deploy the website along with a LinkedIn announcement and creative assets designed in Figma.
- Implement ongoing marketing strategies (social media, SEO).
- Monitor traffic and engagement via Google Analytics.
💸5. Budget:
As this is a self-driven project, the primary costs are associated with:
- Web Hosting: free
- Domain Registration: $15–20 annually
- Marketing: free (mainly SEO and Social Media)
- Tools: GitHub: for repository management; ChatGPT: for coding (HTML, JS, CSS); Firefly (Adobe): for generating images; GTM & GA: for traffic and analytics tracking; GoDaddy: for domain setup; Figma: for editing images.
🧑💼6. Stakeholders:
Key Stakeholders:
- Project Sponsor: Elon Musk 🤓
- Project Manager: Jeff Bezos 🤓
- Target Audience: General public, students, professionals, social media influencers, and anyone looking for inspiration or motivational content.
Secondary Stakeholders:
- Web developers (for technical support in future phases). 🧑💻
- Content creators (for expansion into blog or custom content). 💋
⚖️7. Risks and Mitigation:
⭐8. Success Criteria:
- Website receives a consistent stream of visitors within the first 6 months (u wish 😆).
- Users share quotes regularly via WhatsApp or other social media platforms (now just dreaming 😴).
- Positive user feedback on the website’s simplicity, design, and utility.
- The website achieves strong SEO rankings within its niche.
- Expansion of the quote database to include a wide variety of categories and famous figures.
If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done. — Thomas Jefferson
Visit www.freedailymotivation.com for more inspirational quotes! ✨
“Where are we?” you might ask.
A bunch of awesome features are already in PR! And honestly, they’re like my little tech babies — handcrafted from scratch, prioritized with love, tested and debugged through sleepless nights. So yeah, I’m basically their proud parent. 👶🍼
Here some features highlights:
💬WhatsApp sharing:
- Now you can spam your friends and loved ones with powerful, inspirational quotes that did not ask for!
🌗Dark Mode:
- They’ll tell you it’s for the environment, but let’s be real — it’s mostly because it just looks cool!
📈GTM and GA4 integration:
- It’s great to see the millions of fans visiting the website from across the world — go ahead, say “hi”!
👀Pop-up to boost LTV:
- Because it’s literally the worst thing you can do for user experience… but hey, I’m a bit of a contrarian, so why not? eheh
🔣Logo in browser tab:
- It just makes everything look more professional!
… .and a few hidden gems that I’ll let you discover for yourself on FreeDailyMotivation — progress is being made!
What’s next?
We base our decisions and shape our strategy on extensive and ongoing user research, allowing us to gather valuable feedback to continually improve our product. In other words, I have some friends who shared a few insights to take it to the next level! 😻
I’ll keep drawing inspiration from other websites (looking at you Muzli) and learning by doing. And who knows? If this starts gaining some traction, I might give it 30 min more. 😜
If you’ve made it this far, I’m grateful for your time. Feel free to share your own experiences with website building or any feedback on FreeDailyMotivation in the comments below.
Thanks! ❤
Carve-out (acquired.fm style):
We even have a Facebook page (check it out here)! Plus, there’s a podcast about it (powered by Notebooklm) that you can listen to (here)!