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[1432.38 --> 1440.40] to do that. So, um, by giving these practical articles, people are able to, um, you know, jump |
[1440.40 --> 1445.46] in and see how someone else is doing something and, um, learn from that. So. |
[1446.60 --> 1450.52] Let's pause the show for just a minute and give a shout out to our sponsor, TopTile. For those of you |
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[1494.00 --> 1502.96] You cannot miss it. That's T-O-P-T-A-L.com slash developer. Let's talk about the, the process of |
[1502.96 --> 1509.48] taking the SaaS way and making it open source. What, uh, you know, I know that I did the original |
[1509.48 --> 1516.64] design and then the second, uh, the second redo, I guess, is, uh, it's pretty much all you, like you, |
[1517.20 --> 1523.22] um, took the old repo, pulled all the content out, moved us to middleman and a bunch of other fun |
[1523.22 --> 1529.08] stuff. You used SaaS, I'm sure, behind the scenes to, you know, write the styles. Did you use a framework? |
[1529.08 --> 1532.90] You know, what was the process of like redesigning and then going open source? |
[1535.32 --> 1543.84] Yeah. So we, I mean, we had a number of reasons, uh, to redesign. One was that the, um, we really |
[1543.84 --> 1552.06] wanted to update the logo and sort of the feel of the site. Um, SaaS had had the, um, the woman on |
[1552.06 --> 1557.24] the phone, right? Um, the sassy lady with the phone in her hand, the sassy lady with the phone in her |
[1557.24 --> 1568.52] hand. And, um, funny story about that. The, um, with the SaaS website, they redesigned the logo. |
[1568.96 --> 1573.78] Um, and we wanted to update our branding to kind of reflect that. So that, that was part of what |
[1573.78 --> 1585.34] motivated, um, me sort of getting in, rethinking the design. Um, I think, you know, from a higher |
[1585.34 --> 1590.74] level, I was also interested in just kind of simplifying some of the things, um, we wanted |
[1590.74 --> 1596.36] the site to be more responsive. One of the things that I'm learning more and more of is, is that a |
[1596.36 --> 1600.40] lot of times people are reading these things on the go, whether you're, you know, for sure, |
[1601.00 --> 1607.14] whether you're on the bus or, you know, frankly on the toilet at work, you know, you're pulling it up |
[1607.14 --> 1611.28] on your phone and you're looking at it and you're reading your Twitter stream. |
[1611.28 --> 1613.96] Why do they gotta be at work while they're on the toilet? Why, why at work? |
[1614.66 --> 1617.20] I'm trying to think of a productive reason to be on the toilet. |
[1617.36 --> 1617.60] Okay. |
[1618.32 --> 1627.24] Anyway, um, so, so, you know, the mobile side of it was, was part of it. Um, I think the other |
[1627.24 --> 1631.30] thing that I was really kind of interested in too was in just illustrating, particularly |
[1631.30 --> 1638.24] some of the modular CSS stuff I've been writing about on the CSS, the SaaS way for, um, a while. |
[1638.24 --> 1643.34] I wanted to spend some time to kind of make our CSS more modular in that regard. Um, |
[1644.44 --> 1653.94] so a lot of things there, uh, we ended up, um, I had been playing around with middleman and |
[1653.94 --> 1659.22] middleman to me, I, I can't really say enough good things about it. I've created my own thing, |
[1659.22 --> 1668.66] uh, serve, um, which is kind of in the same space. Um, it's really for, um, rapid prototyping |
[1668.66 --> 1674.68] rails applications, but it also generates static sites kind of similar to middleman. Middleman, |
[1674.68 --> 1683.96] um, to me is kind of the, um, Ruby has had a series of static sites generators, uh, Nesta, |
[1683.96 --> 1692.66] um, the oldest one is static matic static matic. Um, there there's, there's really like six or seven |
[1692.66 --> 1697.26] of them that have like played a major sort of role in it. And middleman is kind of the late comer, |
[1697.26 --> 1704.16] but he's sort of learned from everybody in terms of like what people want to do with their static sites. |
[1704.16 --> 1712.94] Uh, Jekyll's another one of them. Um, and middleman has this plugin architecture, uh, and sort of a data |
[1712.94 --> 1721.98] model that, uh, those two things really make it a killer content management system. Um, I actually, |
[1722.22 --> 1731.18] uh, they have plugins for doing the blog portion of it. And I ended up just writing a little Ruby code, |
[1731.18 --> 1739.16] uh, and helpers, uh, to, uh, pull out the information I needed instead of actually using the plugin |
[1739.16 --> 1746.20] that they have. Um, because the structure of our site was significantly different than if we had |
[1746.20 --> 1754.06] chosen to use their, their blog plugin. Um, and it was impressive to me that I was still able to, |
[1754.14 --> 1761.74] you can do things like, uh, go through the list of all of the pages on your site and, you know, |
[1761.74 --> 1768.04] grab their summaries and filter them in different ways. And having the ability to do that, um, |
[1768.04 --> 1774.72] you know, in code to build those category pages and other things like that, that we needed. Um, |
[1775.00 --> 1783.10] and to do it exactly according to our old structure was just amazing. Um, I thought we were going to |
[1783.10 --> 1789.20] have to, you know, do a lot more with redirects or something like that when we upgraded the site. |
[1789.42 --> 1795.08] It's always tough when you move a site from even one similar system, because Nestle wasn't very far off |
[1795.08 --> 1799.46] a middleman, honestly. I mean, they're pretty similar monsters, but obviously a slightly different |
[1799.46 --> 1805.04] structure, but the URLs that we chose originally were meant to be short and sweet, not, you know, |
[1806.20 --> 1811.68] extra category sections and segments in the URL. It's, it was pretty straightforward. So I was really |
[1811.68 --> 1817.46] happy with that too, that we were able to keep the URL structure one, just because it fit. And two, |
[1817.54 --> 1819.42] just to not have to do the redirects like you'd mentioned. |
[1819.42 --> 1825.72] Right. And I think, um, I mean, one of the things that I was really pleased with was, um, |
[1826.22 --> 1834.16] it was almost like I was just deleting code in order to make it work well in middleman. Um, |
[1834.82 --> 1843.20] and what I mean by that is that, um, there were times where we had like, in Nesta had to use like |
[1843.20 --> 1850.82] multiple partials and sort of like these hacks to like go around things. And, um, in middleman, |
[1850.90 --> 1855.82] when the final product was there, there were like less files that were had to be used to like get it. |
[1855.94 --> 1859.50] And, um, yeah, so it's. |
[1860.12 --> 1864.06] Even middleman and Jekyll though, for those listening and thinking like, you know, middleman, |
[1864.22 --> 1869.18] Jekyll, how do you choose and why do we choose middleman? They're very similar. I mean, even they |
[1869.18 --> 1874.34] both have the front matter. They both have similar ecosystems. And I think Jekyll is starting to get |
[1874.34 --> 1881.30] a lot more new life with, uh, with Parker taking over and, um, taking the helm of, you know, leading |
[1881.30 --> 1884.94] that. I mean, it's growing into its own thing as well. And author press has always been there |
[1884.94 --> 1888.62] leading the way as well with it, but middleman, like you had said, it's kind of like in this |
[1888.62 --> 1894.36] middle ground of, and the usability of it's really, really nice as well. And the fact that it's got |
[1894.36 --> 1900.18] that plugin ecosystem and it's got tons of stuff like a blog plugin and all sorts of cool stuff |
[1900.18 --> 1908.24] that you can do with it. Yeah. It's, um, I mean, my, my feeling is, is I would much rather use |
[1908.24 --> 1917.96] middleman and I've used Jekyll before. Um, Jekyll just seems to be, uh, it sort of pushes you into |
[1917.96 --> 1924.72] that blog paradigm kind of thing. It's a little bit like, um, WordPress years ago, uh, how every |
[1924.72 --> 1929.06] WordPress site was like a blog kind of thing. Right. At first it was a blog and then you kind |
[1929.06 --> 1934.42] of morphed into a site. And now it's become more of a content management system WordPress has. |
[1934.96 --> 1940.56] Um, or at least that's my understanding. I haven't used WordPress in years. Um, but I, |
[1940.66 --> 1946.40] and I think Jekyll's on a similar journey, but middleman is a content management system first. |
[1946.40 --> 1954.84] And in my mind, uh, it just makes a lot more of decisions the right way in, in that regard. |
[1955.58 --> 1962.36] Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm a huge fan and I, I mean, serve basically competes with middleman on, |
[1962.56 --> 1967.06] uh, in some people's minds as well. So, you know, I'm a passionate middleman user and I, |
[1967.14 --> 1973.32] I wrote my own thing. So. Yeah. I, I was always, uh, I always wondered about that too. Cause |
[1973.32 --> 1980.84] you know, I was a huge fan of your serve framework, which like you had said, is very similar to |
[1980.84 --> 1986.02] middleman and competes with it. And I think, um, there was even a point too, and I was like, |
[1986.06 --> 1990.04] man, middleman really requires a ton whenever you do, you know, gem install middleman, |
[1990.16 --> 1996.22] a lot comes with it. And I think with serve, you kind of leverage tilt a lot more. And was it tilt or |
[1996.22 --> 2000.88] what was the, the one particular library that you were other Ruby library you were leveraging to kind |
[2000.88 --> 2012.64] of keep things, you know, less dependencies? Do you recall? Um, I mean, I didn't, well, okay. So |
[2012.64 --> 2017.58] rack is probably what you're talking about. Originally serve was not built on rack. Um, |
[2017.84 --> 2025.36] and at a certain point we rewrote it so that it was on top of rack. Um, I, and at a certain point we |
[2025.36 --> 2032.66] rewrote it so that it was on top of tilt as well. Um, so I think middleman and serve are fairly |
[2032.66 --> 2040.54] comparable in that regard now. Um, I still feel like serve, what I love about serve, |
[2041.06 --> 2046.72] particularly using it in unstructured mode, you can just throw a bunch of files in a directory and, |
[2046.72 --> 2053.38] you know, just type the serve command and it knows how to, you know, serve up SAS if you want SAS or |
[2053.38 --> 2059.24] serve up, you know, the other stuff. Um, but when you get to something, so it's almost like the code |
[2059.24 --> 2066.04] pen tool kind of thing. That's, that's sort of where serve sweet spot is. Um, but when you get |
[2066.04 --> 2071.48] to something a little bit bigger and really a site that you want to manage, I think middleman wins |
[2071.48 --> 2077.58] hands down, I'd still probably use serve for prototyping rails apps. One of the, one of the things |
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