| Owner | Jaspreet Kaur (a hobby project) |
|---|---|
| Started | 2024 |
| Role | Design and development |
| Stack | WordPress, a custom theme, Advanced Custom Fields, WooCommerce and Google sign-in |
| App | Progressive web app, also published on Google Play |
| Website | thephilatelist.in |
The project
The Philatelist is a website for people who collect Indian stamps. It began in 2024 as Jaspreet Kaur’s hobby project: a complete checklist of the stamps of India that collectors can browse, learn from and use to keep track of their own collections.
I designed and developed the website for her, from the catalogue and collection tracking through to the community features and the mobile app.
A catalogue of Indian stamps
At the heart of the site is the Stamps of India catalogue. Every stamp is entered by hand, with images and details gathered from different sources and from our own stamp collection. Each stamp has its own page with its technical data: date of issue, denomination, quantity printed, printer, printing process, designer and themes.
I built the catalogue on WordPress with a custom theme, using Advanced Custom Fields to keep the stamp details structured and consistent. Collectors can search, filter by year, stamp type and theme, browse year by year, and switch between a table and a card view.
Tracking a collection
Collectors can sign in with Google and mark the stamps they own, either one at a time on a stamp’s page or quickly from the catalogue. The stamps they mark appear on their profile as their collection, and the catalogue can be filtered to show only the stamps they already have.
Community and learning
Beyond the catalogue, the site gives collectors reasons to come back and ways to find each other:
- Community map: collectors can put themselves on a map and find others nearby.
- Today in History: the stamps issued on the same date in past years.
- Philatelic terms: a glossary of collecting terms, with a term of the day.
- Short stories: stories from the world of philately, also shared on a WhatsApp channel.
- Shop: a small WooCommerce store for philatelic products such as postcards.
From website to app
The site is designed to work as well on a phone as on a desktop. It is a progressive web app that can be installed from the browser, and I also packaged it as an Android app and published it on the Google Play Store.
Results
- 3,802 Indian stamps in the catalogue
- 586 themes to browse by
- 396 registered users
Figures as of October 2026.
Design and development, end to end
The Philatelist brings together much of what I do: designing an interface around a large, structured catalogue, building a custom WordPress theme and data model to hold it, adding accounts and personal collections, and turning the website into an app people can install on their phones.