Milestone reached, now what?

A couple of weeks ago, I posted I finished my author’s blog application. And it nearly was. You are looking at it now. Honestly, I’ve built this site a few times over the years. This uses Rails 8-alpha. After looking at 37 Signal’s first two Once products, they impressed me with how few gems (external libraries) they used to produce an application. They also created a new authentication approach. I took their lead and am relying on eight gems. One is required to export CSV and another to integrate with my email delivery service. Two gems relate to time-series data display (you will see the results in the Writing Projects and Dashboard views). Three relate to ordering, deleting and listing items. And one displays icons (mostly on the admin side).

I stopped using Tailwind and other frameworks, though I incorporated some Open Props. I’m amazed at how far web technologies have come. DHH released Rails in August 2004, the same month I officially hung my developer spurs and started law school. The same month that one of my children was born. Back then, I had to roll just about everything. This application is as close to Rails vanilla as I could get it with the features I wanted.

There are a few screenshots below to show some features at the end of this post. I’m leaving a few details out, such as the ability to add links to distributors (e.g., Amazon, Barnes & Noble).

Advice given to entrepreneurs is to build something that solves a problem you have. This was my problem. I wanted a minimalist blog that showcased my books and let me track my writing progress; bonus if it used GitHub’s contribution map. I wanted a blog that could let me periodically send blog posts as newsletters. Nor did I want to use the automation services of email marketing platforms like Mailchimp and MailerLite. They send emails based on customizable triggers (e.g. haven’t engaged in a while). I believe an author’s site should be authentic and show a personal, hands-on approach.

What’s next? I’ve used Hugo or Jekyll to manage my websites over the past decade. They were cheap and fast, costing about $2.00 a month to host but without a proper ability to send a newsletter. Sure, I could use Mailchimp or Mailer Lite, but they’re offering far more than I think I need. I expect I will pay about $4-8 per month on hosting, and another $15 per month on newsletters (once I crack the free tier).

I must now live with this application to identify its flaws. I’ve built a sales platform should I choose to monetize this. All that remains is the deployment mechanism.

If you’ve looked at other related posts, I have a target completion date for this. I wanted this site operational by 10 August, and I want the deployment application completed before 20 September (Rails World). I’m accepting that I am a week late on getting this to production; longer if the integration with the email service is required. I’m going through that process now. There are a few technical challenges I need to figure out before I can finish that application.

However, I want to get back into writing. There’s a book I started writing in April that I want to get back to. My wife read one of my alternative history novels (not yet released) and loved it. This project is Fantasy and not Alt-History, but it might be the sort of book she enjoys as well.