It has been a long road since I attended the Getting Real workshop last winter and decided to completely tear down and redesign the site that would become Lovetastic.com.

I’m proud to announce that this week we launched Lovetastic with:

1. Fewer features
2. A simpler, cleaner interface
3. Fewer requirements on sign up
4. Requests for all information from users pushed to the last minute we need them
5. A remarkably easy search page, which does the thinking for you
6. An elegant, maintainable, and DRY Ruby on Rails back-end
7. The judicious use of javascript and xhr to make data-entry more intuitive and less tedious

Many (if not all) of these ideas came directly from examples and ideas in the Getting Real workshop and book — and the great examples set by applications like Basecamp, Campfire, and Backpack.

I look forward to blogging in more specificity, now that the site is launched, on how we built the site.

In the mean time, to enjoy more of my 37signals fanboyism, listen to my interview on Leo Laporte’s Inside the Net podcast, in which I talk about the building of Lovetastic and all the ideas that I love to write about here.