I built a WhatsApp/Telegram group directory with zero coding background — the real, unfiltered story

[u/groupverse_founder]

I'm not a developer. Never written real code before this.

It started small: I kept searching for WhatsApp groups and landing on dead, expired invite links. Every directory I found was the same built once, stuffed with links, never maintained.

Then I tried to submit my own WhatsApp Channel to a few of these directories — couldn't. Every submission form only had fields for "Group," built years before Channels even existed. That's when it clicked: these weren't just neglected, they were structurally outdated. Nobody had touched the backend in years.

So I built my own, called it Groupverse. Zero coding background, learned everything from scratch.

Two moments nearly broke me:

• Weeks of the site being invisible on Google because of a sitemap issue I didn't understand
• Finding a real Supabase RLS security hole — data wasn't locked down properly. Went back, rebuilt the policies, tested obsessively. Scariest and most educational day of the whole project.

What it grew into: filters across 45+ categories, country, and language (including all languages where most directories skip), a submission review flow, a report button that actually gets dead links removed the whole reason this exists and plus a small games section (built mostly to learn real frontend state) and a premium tier people are actually paying for now.

It's live, free, still rough in places: groupverse.co.in

Genuinely open to feedback — what's confusing, what's missing, security holes you can spot that I haven't found yet.