beatonma.org

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beatonma.org

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github/beatonma.org
django
docker
typescript
blog
nextjs
react

I used to use Google+ to post stuff about the little Android apps that I made, and to follow other developers. The death of that platform, along with the communities and content it contained, forced me to rethink my online presence.

I was wary of just moving to another platform because the same thing could easily happen again. I was increasingly uncomfortable with the centralisation of the internet around a few major platforms, owned by a few fickle billionaires and liable to be deleted when the profit margin faltered. I wanted something else.

So I made this thing. It’s just a blog with a few bells and whistles, and I almost never actually write anything on it, but it’s mine. Welcome, traveller, to my little corner of the internet.

Changelog

changelog

This site has always made of experiments and duct tape - a tightly-coupled mixture of React components, plain javascript, build-time custom-generated Django templates, and shared SASS stylesheets. This was choreographed with a fragile gulp build script and a long list of gulp-specific dependencies which kept dying off.

No more! Django now only handles data and provides an API, while the frontend is entirely served by NextJS.

No more Django templates! No more SASS! No more gulp! No more unholy components with separate-but-mostly-equivalent html and tsx implementations which need to be maintained because sometimes they are used in Django templates and sometimes in React widgets and sometimes both on the same page. Oh my…

It’s now just React components with Tailwind and a few CSS modules for defining grids and animations. That’s it!

And the best bit? I now get to delete literally hundreds of files worth of technical debt. There’s going to be so much space for new experiments!

changelog

Hosting for this site is now provided by a European company instead of Amazon.

It’s an extremely minor thing, but it is a thing nonetheless. 🇺🇦🇪🇺🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

changelog

Stuff you can see

  • Generally improved consistency and usability.
  • Much improved surfacing of content. I don’t write much in the way of blogs or articles so the main feed now includes changelogs and apps too.
  • Along the same lines, much better search functionality - also includes links to Github repositories.
  • Added ‘Toys and Tools’ quick-links to fun or useful webapps.
  • Redesigned Github UI now displays info on closed issues and merged pull requests as well as recent commits.
  • Improved contextual color themes.

Stuff you can’t see

  • Complete rewrite of Django templates.
  • Complete rewrite of SASS/SCSS.
  • All React and JavaScript converted to TypeScript - including Gulp build scripts.
  • Front-end tests with Jest and Cypress.
  • Complete rewrite of Github API integration.
  • Better integration of content from Github API with our own content.
  • Improved admin interface.

Basically a whole bunch of things that been annoying me for ages. The overall site structure is now much simpler to work with - for me and hopefully for you too :)