📰 Blog

Just a quick update on the errors we are seeing on Micro.blog, it looks like the issue lies with Linode and their storage. Need to wait and see. Don't think this is our fault because I remember the SSL certs being renewed recently.

There are a few issues with displaying some images, like Avatars and Uploads, on Micro.blog. If you use the CDN for your hosted site images then these are also affected. This is caused by invalid SSL certificates (and I don't have access to renew these 😭 ...yet 😅). Updates when we have them.

If you're using Sublime Ads, I've updated the embed.js javascript. Now it's loaded as a module and there is an updated script tag. The old way still works for now. This allows me to skip any complicated build steps. Updated docs are here.

Flew past 500,000 combined page hits, across 432 sites, on tinylytics today 🥳🤯

Spent some time on Sublime Ads yesterday and changed over the build architecture for JavaScript and CSS — basically moving away from using Webpack. Now a happy user of cssbundling and jsbundling.

Got a bit of interest recently on the project, considering the ad landscape is 💩

Added the ability to download your raw hits data, in CSV format, in tinylytics. Works with whatever filter you have set, or current data. Hope this is useful to a few of you ✌️

Small feature request today to add password protection to public stat pages for a site on tinylytics. So here we go, I've added it ✌️

Now you can secure them and send that special someone a special link with your special token... great between friends and family (and other grown up stuff 🤔🤷‍♂️)!

For tinylytics subscribers, I've added the ability to hide the branding on your public stats page.

Excited to start something new-ish on Micro.blog, for the website ✌️ You'll have to wait and see what it might be.

Some minor cosmetic changes to the account screen on tinylytics this morning. Nothing major as I don't have enough brain space.

Before (with the big logo) and after shots.

Hope to flesh this whole section out more and add data export options (and more stuff).

Alright, last one for today. Scribbles editor in dark mode... because my computer just switched over, so I thought I'll tackle it. You can also see the slight blur effect in the toolbar.

Here's the empty editor for Scribbles. It'll autofocus onto the post title.

Been styling out a working editor for Scribbles. Simple and clean. Next up, adding options to save as draft, public or private post.

Made a slow start to Scribbles today. Gotta start somewhere. Want to keep this as clean and minimal as possible.

Yesterday I sent out the third "monthly" newsletter for tinylytics. Here it is, if you'd like to read it. I missed last month 😅

Micro.blog as a saved web app on Sonoma! Seriously awesome. I can see how it could be tweaked ever so slightly. Happy we took the time to make it look nice across different screen sizes.

Just added a little feature to tinylytics allowing you to pin your favourite sites to the top of the list. So if you have a lot of them, but are interested in only a few main ones, they will always show up first.

Over 3 years ago, I had a very similar idea to HEY World, with a simple blogging flow to just write. This was, and is, also partially inspired by spending time on Micro.blog and writing there.

I still want to explore this concept where you just simply write, and publish, with your standard RSS feeds and a public viewing page – with super simple styling to just get your words out there. No themes and nothing fancy.

I find it super useful to try and keep up with creating something that I can just explore without boundaries, whilst keeping things simple, light and fun.

If you've been following me for a while, you know I like creating things, from web to apps, so I want to continue this trend — because I already have enough to do!

So why a code challenge? It's what I name these... and it'll be an MVP (minimum viable product) and I want to challenge myself to go from zero to something in two weeks. 🤷‍♂️😅

The last time I said two weeks it was much longer because I stopped in-between. Ideally I would like to one day launch something really "tiny" within 2 days. In fact, tinylytics was done mainly over one weekend and then I iterated over it for a few weeks — now it's getting updates on a near weekly basis.

So what is "Scribbles"?

Scribbles are exactly that, just scribbles, in other words: long form blog posts and thoughts (no micro posts though) that you may want to share with others via RSS or a public facing page.

The plan right now for the MVP is the following:

• A simple editor in the web app, for blog text and title input, including inline images.
• Save your posts either as "public" or "private" – public means it will be available to view by everyone, private will only be for you or a select view members (for example a family) with a special link/RSS feed. You can also save them as drafts.
• A public page, with your "public" posts and a simple profile on top of your public page.

Some stretch goals (but most likely afterwards):

• Allow you to email your posts to a special email address, which means you can write your posts in any given email program (with options in the web app on how to handle these).
• Allow grouped private posts, using tags, which you can separate into different private pages or RSS feeds – may it be "Family" or "Subscribers".

And what about the technology stack?

You know me, I'm a Ruby on Rails guy, so I'll continue this trend, however in addition to that, I would love to explore:

• Kamal Deploy, allowing me to deploy with ease.
• Using SQLite as my production database using Litestack.... EXCUSE ME, WTF? Yeah... 😅

I'm a huge, and super happy, user of Hatchbox for all my Ruby based projects (all of them), but I wanted to try this on my own using Kamal, because I always feel afraid of servers.

Where can I find out more and follow along?

Easy peasy... this blog and the RSS feed of course, plus on my Micro.blog profile (which you can follow via Mastodon). There will also be a project specific section on my website here, with a project specific JSON feed. I'm also going to be posting to X, using the #buildinpublic hashtag. It'll be more or less the same micro posts I make here. I know I know — I've made a few friends here, which is nice for me (so a huge thank you for following me there).

Next steps:

I'll probably take the day off now 😅 Nah, I'm just preparing a few things. There is no holding page just yet either, and I think this time around it will be the last thing I do.

There's already login logic and the logo set, so now to get the first interface out and do a few teasers.

Thanks for reading, and hope you enjoy this series ✌️❤️

I've been working on a logo and favicon for something new today... but whatever could I be up to again? 🤷‍♂️😅

I've improved the speed of collecting hits for tinylytics this morning. This is just a minor little change that basically just moves the hit collection to a background task, instead of doing it during the request. Happy with that, and you will probably not notice the difference 😋

For paid subscribers on tinylytics, I've added an experimental option to enable unique hit collection for a site. It's opt-in.

It will generate a random id when the script is fetched and stores it on a temporary basis for the session and will use it together with the hit collector.

One more Micro.blog app related fix we will have for the next iOS update: The post editor now scrolls nicely when the post is super long. Previously it wouldn't let you scroll 😋🤷‍♂️

Some awesome little tweaks coming to the post editor for the Micro.blog app soon. Specifically you can now open the "Uploads" section, grab any previously uploaded media and easily add it to the post, which includes videos and audio with ease. Still working on it, but it's pretty cool.

One more fun thing for tinylytics, you can now embed the countries that have visited your site, in emoji form. Check out the documentation on how to get started.

I added an option to delay your public stats page data by one day in tinylytics.