Hey y’all, happy Thanksgiving weekend!
This is my first email newsletter I’m sending out! I got laid off a few weeks back (but recently accepted a job offer!), so I’ve been back writing all the cool things I’ve been working on lately!
I recently started a coding podcast here called CodeChefs, it’s for junior and mid-level developer seeking to level up! It’s built on GatsbyJS, the same as my personal site.
I published a few articles from things I learned along the way:
Building a Custom Podcast Site with GatsbyJS, ReactJS, AmazonS3, and Netlify
I spent 6 months building CodeChefs with one of my best coding friends. We wanted the challenge of learning how Podcast distributions work, so we did it ourselves! There weren’t a ton of articles out on the web detailing how to do it, so it was a bit of a learning curve. Like how to handle RSS feeds to connect to Spotify and iTunes, or how to host the mp3 assets used on those platforms!
Feel free to check it out if your just the least bit curious about how it all works!
Installing Blog Comments on your GatsbyJs/React Site using Utterances
I wanted to install comments on my personal site, vincentntang.com. But I wanted full control over how it was used and how it showed up on my site. One of my requirements is it had to be open source too, as other blog commenting systems like Disqus have been known to inject ads.
Utterances seemed to be the best solution for this. I wrote the guide I wished I had first read when setting this up, as I found myself lost and stuck getting this to work.
On writing a custom RSS feed for GatsbyJS
So this one isn’t really a tutorial per say like the other two above. I ran into some issues getting our RSS feed for the podcast over to one of the podcast platforms. I needed to adjust the RSS feed output, but it became kind of weird and complicated.
I wrote a story of how I went about solving it. Maybe you might find it entertaining!
WTF are JAMstack Apps and Static Site Generators (SSG)
Bit of a disclaimer, I was on the fence on writing such a provocative title. I still am. Recently I’ve been mentoring some junior web developers and the question of JAMstack apps came up. JAMstack apps are tools like GatsbyJS, which powers my personal blog and coding podcast site.
I struggled for the longest time understanding what JAMstack event meant. So I did a lot of research on this topic and wrote it from a historical standpoint. First by describing what came before it (static site generators) and how they relate to JAMstack apps.
I hope y’all enjoy my first newsletter! Feel free to spread the <3