I'm Zara aka Zela.
(pseudonym ยท pen name)
I've been coding for a few years, but I didn't really fall in love with it until I started building things for actual communities. That's when everything clicked.
ZelaVerse is the little corner of the internet where I put all of it, the bots, the apps, the themes and the experiments. One person, a lot of coffee, and a refusal to ship anything soulless.
I'd rather make one thing that genuinely helps 50 people than ship 50 things that help nobody.
How I got here.
Scrappy code, big ideas
Started messing with Discord bots because I wanted features my own server didn't have. Nobody was going to build them for me, so I did. Badly. But I did.
My first real bot
Built a community bot for a handful of friends. It broke constantly. I learned more in three months than any tutorial ever taught me.
Rebuilt from scratch
Took everything I'd learned and rebuilt Ivar end-to-end. Proper architecture, cleaner code, real error handling. This is when things started to actually take off.
1,000+ communities
Ivar got adopted by bigger servers. I had to level up fast: infrastructure, databases, monitoring, uptime. It stopped being a hobby and started being a craft.
Turning thanks into a game
Built Lux to fix Discord economies that are done badly. Members thank each other with kudos, build daily streaks and climb ranks. No real money, ever, and admin tools are PIN protected.
Out of Discord, into the browser
SnuggleBase, Fieldday, PayOffPal. I wanted to prove you can ship useful apps that don't demand your email, your data, or your soul. All local-first. All yours.
Giving back to builders
Five production-ready website themes: SaaS, portfolio, e-commerce, local business, blog, all free, all responsive, no build step. Because everyone deserves a beautiful starting point.
Still shipping. Still learning.
Every project teaches me something. The next one will probably teach me I was wrong about the last one. That's the whole job.
What I won't compromise on.
Your data stays yours
Local-first wherever I can. No sneaky analytics, no dark patterns, no sold data. Ever.
Real humans, real answers
You message me, I reply. No bot-only support, no ticket voids.
Craft over checklist
If it doesn't feel nice to use, it isn't done. Period.
Transparent pricing
If something costs money, the price is visible. No mystery tiers, no "contact sales."
Fix it fast
Bugs get hunted. Outages get posted. Silence is worse than a bad status update.
Grow slowly
I'd rather have 100 people who love what I do than 10,000 who tolerate it.
Want to work together?
I take on small, weird, fun projects. Tell me yours.