This is part of a service I’ve been developing quietly in the background for a few months. I realised some of it had the potential to unlock really cool new features for Zaparoo users, so I’m releasing it today to see what people can do with it.
What is Zaparoo Online?
I’m taking things back to digital (just a little!) and hosting a service to collect, organise, and update your own digital versions of Zaparoo cards. The trick is that these digital cards are tightly linked to your physical Zaparoo cards: scan a physical card, and it fetches its instructions live from the online version.
So, why bother with that?
Because now we can do things that just weren’t possible when Zaparoo was local-only:
- Share your cards with people.
Once your cards are on Zaparoo Online, you can show them off or let others copy them. I love seeing everyone’s photos of their Zaparoo gear, this is a way to build on that and make it interactive. - Create live playlists and digital mixtapes.
Put a deck of cards together, and it becomes a shareable, dynamic playlist. Every time someone scans your deck, they get a live version they can explore. - Manage what your cards do in one place.
Once your physical cards are linked to Zaparoo Online, you can update or reconfigure them instantly using the web interface.
How Does It Work?
It’s all built around the new zap link feature in Zaparoo Core.
Every digital card and deck gets a unique, permanent ID and link. You can write that link to a physical card (NFC or QR). When scanned, Zaparoo Core fetches the latest script from the server and runs it.
How Do I Get Cards?
Cards do cost money, but not as a subscription. Every card represents a long-term commitment to keep that unique link alive with minimal downtime, and that infrastructure costs me money to maintain.
So for now, I’m offering them as one-time purchases and seeing how that goes. (I’m also personally a bit tired of subscriptions for everything.)
Here’s how to get started:
- New accounts get a few free “Launch Promo” cards automatically.
- If you’ve bought official Zaparoo Trading Cards, congratulations!
That QR code I printed on them now does something. You can redeem those cards in Zaparoo Online, they’ll appear in your account with the set details, unique card number and any lucky extras (like gold cards!). - More digital cards can be purchased directly through the Zaparoo Shop.
Is This Self-Hostable?
The official infrastructure won’t be, but the underlying tech is open.
I’ve kept the zap link mechanism simple, and Zaparoo Core already supports loading scripts from any compatible server. There’s a self-hosting example in the zap link docs if you want to run your own server.
The Zaparoo Online UI isn’t open source yet, but I plan to release it once I begin integrating it more with the Zaparoo App and Designer.
Wrapping Up
This is a really unique set of features that I’ve put a lot of work into, and I’m honestly not sure yet how useful it will be to people. I’m hoping a few enthusiastic Zaparooers will give it a proper go and let me know what’s working and what needs changing.
This initial release is aimed more at power users who don’t mind writing a little ZapScript manually, but it’ll get smoother over time.
*Requires the latest version of Zaparoo Core! (v2.5.0)
