linkUpdate #1 - June 2020

About a month ago, we first announced coding.blog. It was received really well by the community, much more enthusiastically than what we had anticipated. So since then, we've been at work to more sharply outline our roadmap and work towards making coding.blog a reality.

Here is a rundown of what has happened since our announcement and our future plans:

• The first blog was released alongside a plugin for CODEDOC that helps developers create more elegant blogs about coding both on coding.blog and on other hosting services (or for self-hosted blogs).

• We've started the alpha stage: we are slowly activating blogs of writers who signed up on our Prospective Creator's List. The first batch of creators already have their blogging space set up and have begun testing and publishing their blogs.

• As the created content begins to grow, we will start featuring the top blogs (based on relevance and quality of content, topic and writing) on coding.blog itself. We will also support the creators by promoting their content organically as well.

• Along with that process, we will further develop and finalize the curation pipeleine and enter the beta stage, where people will receive personalized curated lists.

• In lock-step with the above processes, we will begin rolling out the tipping system as well.

• We have conducted a more in-depth financial analysis of this project, and are exploring different financing options for the initial stage of this project.

linkFirst Blog and Blogging Tools

We released the first version of the publishing process. It works by binding a publicly accessible blog repository with a domain name, which is done via blog management interface. Alongside it, we published the first blog.

While working on the first blog, we realized that although CODEDOC is capable of producing elegant programming blogs, we often find ourselves building custom components specifically for blogging purposes (for example hero images, author information, etc.). As a result, we standardized and released a plugin system for CODEDOC, and created a plugin that provides these components and tools.

This plugin is not limited to coding.blog blogs. You can utilize it on blogs using CODEDOC, hosted anywhere (including GitHub Pages). To make the process even more convenient, we created this starter project, which has CODEDOC setup and the plugin pre-installed on it, and is enriched with proper config and workflows for deployment to coding.blog and automatic deployment to GitHub Pages.

linkAlpha Stage

We began activating blogs of prospective creators. This process happens in batches: In each batch, a number of prospective creators will have their accounts created and their preferred domains (their.coding.blog) bound to their account, receiving an email with a link to access and manage their account and their blog.

We opted for a slow roll-out instead of an all-out access to ensure that we will have the capacity to focus on feedback of every creator. Our publishing process might need further polish, our Content Delivery Network (CDN) might require further optimization, or there simply might be great ideas from authors and creators on making coding.blog a better blogging tool, and we don't want to miss any of that!

The first batch of creator accounts were activated today. We simply prioritize people who are more likely to start creating content and test our systems more actively, also emphasizing the diversity of specific fields they might focus on (frontend, backend, devops, ML, data science, theoretical CS, etc.).

If you are enlisted as a prospective creator and are eager to help us conduct testing, simply drop me an email on eugene@connect-platform.com. If you are not enlisted as a prospective creator and want to be, you can do so here.

linkTowards Beta Stage

We anticipate more content to be generated on coding.blog as more creators are on-boarded. As this number grows, we will begin featuring top posts on coding.blog itself and promoting them via other channels.

When we reach a sufficient number of blog posts with a sufficient flow of new articles, we will begin finalizing the curation system and pipeline. When this is finished, we will be able to begin the beta stage, where beta users will receive their accounts and curated article lists based on their preferences.

We also plan to roll-out the tipping system around this time. Proper roll-out and testing of the tipping system is also dependent on the amount and flow of articles we have and community interaction, and might happen before or after the start of the beta stage.

linkFinancial Stability

We are managing coding.blog in an exceedingly lean manner financially, meaning we try to minimize all costs and only scale them in lock-step with the traction. The decentralized nature of the platform, alongside the fact that all the underlying tools (such as CODEDOC or coding-blog-plugin) are open-source, help a lot (so if you want to help out, the best way right now would be contributing to these open-source projects).

However, based on our financial assessment, we would require some external investment/funding before reaching the break-even point. The exact amount is highly dependendt on the growth rate of coding.blog, and we do not intend to slow its growth down due to financial reasons, specifically considering the amount of enthusiasm and support from the community we have received.

As a result, we have begun exploring the idea of external investment/funding for this project. This is only to be able to manage the initial growth phase (if the traction remains sustainable), as we intend to avoid allowing this project becoming another heavily-investment dependent and unnaturally hyped tech project that remains at a loss years into its existence.

linkFuture Updates

We will keep you updated as we progress forward on this path. coding.blog is heavily reliant on the community to work-out, so we think extreme transparency in whatever we are doing is essential in its success. So stay tuned as we'll be back soon with more news!