DEV Community: Scott Mathson

Off-site acquisition channel: ‘Deploy to x’ buttons

Scott Mathson — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 14:00:00 +0000

I find any/all acquisition channels fascinating. Learning how users get to your site and signup for your product has always been and will always be mission critical for businesses and their marketing teams.

Often, focus is largely skewed to owned channels - optimizing our own websites, social channels, and other properties we can directly manage, yet this leaves so much off-site growth over-looked. Now, don’t get me wrong - you do have the most control over your own, app-led/product-led as well as marketing-led initiatives, yet experimenting off-site can bring tremendous results!

Particularly when you marry the best of both together via an off-site acquisition channel leading to on-site, owned flows. Build this out to scale on its own via user-generated usage, adoption, and community-led growth.

This is the case with the incredibly powerful “Deploy to x” flow!

‘Deploy to Netlify’ as a marketing channel, inspected

Undoubtedly one of the earliest pioneers of this is my very own employer, Netlify. Netlify introduced the “Deploy to Netlify” button in 2016, with then-CTO @calavera, CEO @biilmann, and others who brought this idea to reality.

This flow truly removes any barriers to entry! One-click and you’re into the site creation workflow in-app (a few clicks if you haven’t signed up yet).

Visualizing what this looks like, off-page/off-site on GitHub :

"Deploy to Netlify" button example on my search-optimized Jekyll static site boilerplate.

Clicking that “Deploy to Netlify” button brings users in-app, into the site creation workflow where the project is then setup/deployed in a matter of minutes :

Here, see it in action and give it a shot by clicking the deploy button below to get full context :

How URL attribution looks, in-practice: https://app.netlify.com/start/deploy?repository=https://github.com/scottmathson/virtuacon-jekyll-boilerplate?utm_source=dev.to/scottmathson&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=scottmathson-deploy-button-post

Netlify’s @cassidoo, Principal Developer Experience Engineer, recently wrote: “…just click the handy “Deploy to Netlify” button, and it will clone the project for you and you can customize and tweak it to your heart’s content…”.

So the magic of this experience is apparent, yet how has it scaled since launch? What are some stats?

Show me the numbers

Of course, I’m only going to reveal publicly available data that anyone can access, here. With some time, manual research, and know-how you can access the below information using Google search site operators and/or tools like SEMrush (affiliate link).

At the time of writing this (April 2021) the app.netlify.com subdomain has nearly 280,000 backlinks, the largest majority of which (you guessed it) lead to this: app.netlify.com/start/deploy flow - 232,000 links, to be exact.

Nearly 50% of these inbound, deploy-driven links are led by off-site channels: primarily github.com, like in the “Deploy to Netlify” button in repo example above. Of course, not everybody is going to be using this “Deploy to Netlify” recommended verbiage, but what we can see via a Google search operator site:github.com "deploy to netlify" is that there are ~20,000 indexed references on github.com with “Deploy to Netlify” verbiage included. There’s some on GitLab, too.

As mentioned, everything indexed here isn’t including the button, but the majority is.

Again, this GitHub referral is typically similar to that GitHub README screenshot example above. Check out another, Cassidy’s Next + Netlify Markdown Blog Starter. It’s not all off-page via earned efforts, we’d frankly be remiss if we didn’t utilize this on other channels for this acquisition channel. Thus, it’s utilized on other, owned channels like Jamstack.org directories.

(https://jamstack.org/headless-cms/netlify-cms/)

With some of the above stats outlined, you can do the math for as to what this type of acquisiton channel at-scale could mean for any business. It’s quite the powerhouse of an off-site acquisition channel, leading users into on-site signup flows.

Who else is doing “Deploy to x”

“Immature artists copy, great artists steal.” -Steve Jobs

Now, that concept can be quite controversial, yet it’s apparent in tech. Just look at Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, Spotify, and others currently vying for that market share of the live audio space. Or Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and others stories product features throughout the years.

In regards to “Deploy to x” marketing, primarily focusing in on utilizing this on GitHub’s developer platform, here’s some others who have announced similar functionality throughout the years.

Heroku: https://blog.heroku.com/heroku-button
Vercel (prev Zeit): https://vercel.com/blog/deploy-button
Microsoft Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/deploy-to-azure-button-for-azure-websites-2/
Google Cloud: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/serverless/introducing-cloud-run-button-click-to-deploy-your-git-repos-to-google-cloud
Cloudflare: https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/platform/deploy-button

And the list goes on.

Again via some Google site search operators, we can see that GitHub has ~14K repositories indexed on-site with “deploy to heroku” verbiage,~14K repos indexed with “deploy to Azure” verbiage, and on.

Conclusion and who’s next?

I hope that I’ve helped contextualize some of the power of acquisition channels like this. At-scale, this is an amazing referral channel bringing news users into the top-of-funnel, and deepening product engagement with existing users.

Where might this go? Who else might utilize a similar approach?

Though hard to predict, I see this as quite the opportunity for a variety of other companies/products like Shopify (OSS Apps/Themes Marketplace “install App” integration/workflow), or Slack (OSS slackbot “install bot”), or WordPress (OSS themes/plugins “Start a site” on .com), or Zapier, and on. Getting real meta, GitHub could implement an actions-focused “deploy Action” workflow from their own marketplace and other’s individual repositories.

Again, I find any/all acquisition channels fascinating, and I believe that “deploy to x” is not one to be overlooked.

Aside: “Powered by” marketing

Another, adjacent channel is the all-powerful “powered by”. Now, this is on-page, and a bit of an aside from the main contents of this article. Yet “powered by” deserves an honorable mention here (maybe I’ll follow-up with its own article).

We’ve all seen this in the footer of sites/products: “Powered by Statuspage” (DigitalOcean example), or “Powered by WordPress” (plus “Powered by WordPress VIP” (TechCrunch example)). These referral paths on the bottom of user’s websites/products are powerful. From day one, I’ve done “powered by” marketing on Plink’s freemium pages.

"Powered by Plink" example on How I Built This with Guy Raz freemium episode page

You click it? I'll see https://plinkhq.com/?ref=lpage&id=1150510297 (podcast ID) attributed in analytics

As with others using this method, I’d recommend this being optional for paying users, giving them whitelabel and functionality to remove any “powered by” branding that they may not desire to have on their page.

People are curious, people want to use products/tools used by those that they admire use. “Powered by” is social proof, testimonial, and just plain smart acquisition all-in-one. Being able to then attribute which sites/products/pages bring in the most referrals via this channel is an important metric to know which high-referring relationships to further nurture (and perhaps even incentivize via affiliate programs, etc). “Powered by” is another great acquisition channel atop “Deploy to x” discussed above!

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Competition in SaaS doesn’t have to be cutthroat

Scott Mathson — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 14:45:00 +0000

Competition can be a very motivating aspect of life. Winning is instilled in us from a relatively young age in a lot of our societies. Yet tit for tat competition in interpersonal relationships or competing with black hat techniques in software doesn’t actually get a person or company to where they desire to be.

I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with a variety of software companies, both large and small, and with small and local businesses and individuals, alike. All of whom face this reality of competition within their respective markets.

How do we currently respond to competition or how should we be responding? How impacted are we by other’s actions? Are we being reactive or proactive?

A resounding theme amongst the companies and individuals that I personally admire most is that they are fully aware of their competition, yet they are not debilitated or broken by, nor are they retaliating when competitors swoop low, trying to battle with them.

Competition is particularly cut throat in the software industry (or software as a service (SaaS)), and this is not limited to being true amongst just large, public companies. Startups are trying to assert dominance and make their place known in the market, and it may even be more cut throat at that level.

Yet there’s another route, a better option.

Eugenio Pace, CEO and Co-founder of Auth0, often repeated a phrase internally to that growing team of 650 individuals at his identity and security scale-up. Paraphrased, it went something like this:

I’m not worrying about the competition. The advantage that we can bring to the market is in focusing on what we have control over and doubling down on that. Advancing our own product and offering with focus, developing solutions that best serve our customers, is how we’ll win.

Recently I was reminded of his mantra and this approach, after news broke that Auth0 had been acquired for $6.5 billion by their largest competitor Okta. Had these company’s leaders been focused on competing with each other via common tactics within the industry like paying to piggy-back on each other‘s trademarks and earned awareness or directly “talking shit”, for lack of a better term, on each other throughout their websites, or any other harsher forms of attacking each other, then this combining of forces would never have seen the light of day. Had they built a point of view of one another as being enemies versus potential partners, then this would have never happened.

Undoubtedly this type of deal isn’t happening very often (due to adopting “the enemy way”) and this combining of seemingly competitive forces has raised question from skeptics. Yet these leaders ultimately decided that their combining of each other’s parallel missions, products, and offerings - that their teaming up - would be the best way forward for the future of this space. They were selflessly thinking of their own teams, their financial backers, their customers - developers and businesses - and they were thinking of their customer’s customer.

Instead of acting selfishly, they put everyone who relies on them first.

It doesn’t stand to do anybody any favor to over-focus on what our competitors are doing. Keep up with them, be curious about their approach, yet stay true to your own mission, build your own unique product, and remain open-minded.

I personally have had plenty of competitiveness instilled in me from various mentors, coaches, managers, and in my own actions and ways of approaching things throughout the years. Yet I’m noticing that in my efforts to be more introspective, to be more aware of defensiveness, and in questioning a knee-jerk reaction, it’s made me be more thoughtful and act in ways that I can be more proud of.

I’ll likely always be researching competitors and admiring their different tactics and techniques, it’s part of what I do. Yet I’m focusing on opening my mind to a more curious, focused, and open approach. There’s this toxic “growth at all costs” approach within the industry that, upon studying, makes clear that it does no good for anyone involved in its ways.

Both prospective and active customers alike are sensitive to bullshit. So, in any effort to better your company’s metrics and success, consider how taking the route of practicing cut throat competitiveness, along with all of its BS, actually negatively affects growth. Consider how this tactic may be interpreted by a potentially loyal customer of your brand. Customers can, do, and will recognize these things.

SaaS doesn’t have to be so cut throat.

In running my own, small software product for the past couple of years (smart podcast linking service Plink), I’ve been taking this open-minded approach more often than not. I’m actually quite close and continue to have conversations with nearly all of my direct competitors. We’ve even explored potential collaboration and partnerships.

Now this isn’t to say that the times like that in 2019 when I’d learned that one of them had just raised millions of dollars in fundraising or more recently that one of them had been acquired by a larger company, didn’t affect me in an emotional way. But the way that I choose to respond to that is key. And I’m choosing to respond with congratulations versus envy. I’m more aware than ever that behind every company are passionate humans like you and me.

Perhaps you’ll try practicing growing your product and its mission without any hurtful and attacking tactics, the kinds that unfortunately run rampant in technology and the broader world. Perhaps you’ll listen to interviews and study leaders that have a humble versus arrogant nature. Take notice how these leader's drive, values, and focus are what makes their companies actually have a larger, more positive impact in the long run.

We can all learn from each other. We can all ensure that markets and industries move forward. And we can do our part to ensure that it’s done in a humane and thoughtful manner, together.

In economics, cut throat competition is also referred to as ruinous, excessive or unfettered competition. More generally, cut throat competition is also subsumed under the term "destructive competition". source

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JAMstack JAMuary Series - Week 2 Recap - Static vs. Dynamic and More

Scott Mathson — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 21:46:51 +0000

In case you haven’t heard yet, we’re talking about JAMstack this JAMuary. During the second week of the new year, Divya Sasidharan and Phil Hawksworth put together a recap of the posts that Netlify’s Developer Relations Team has been busy publishing here on dev.to.

Picking up where the part one recap post in this series left off, let’s explore more of the latest and greatest JAMstack articles in this ongoing series, below!

JAMuary digest – more JAMstack posts

January 8th - Is the JAMstack eco-friendly? As serverless still uses servers, it’s known that the tech industry utilizes very real resources that directly contribute to carbon emissions - “data centers now account for 1.5% of all electricity consumption in the US alone”. In this post, Divya explores how efficiency and advancements in edge and cloud computing (and the JAMstack) clearly make it the more environmentally-friendly approach to take.

January 9th - Can a JAMstack site be dynamic? If static sites are just flat files served up in user’s browser of choice, can the JAMstack approach and static sites be dynamic? In this post, Divya dives into adding more dynamic-ness to static sites with serverless functions.

January 10th - Is SSR compatible with the JAMstack? As the title clearly suggests, this post explores differences between static sites server-side rendering approaches. “...a server side rendered website is built for every request made...” and the JAMstack has a “...focus on pre-rendering ahead of time...”.

January 11th - Is JAMstack antithetical to Wordpress? WordPress is still a force to be reckoned with on the web. Places like W3Techs and Wappalyzer cite WordPress as being used by sweeping majorities of all websites online today. This post explores the dynamic versus static site approach, alongside utilizing the obviously beloved (or at least widely familiar) WordPress CMS in a headless fashion atop the JAMstack.

January 12th - Can content authors be happy on the JAMstack? Not every content marketer is familiar with version control and pushing their blog posts via command line. So how does JAMstack work for them? This post looks at how developers can create websites that utilize CMSes in a headless fashion to empower every teammate, while still gaining the benefits of the JAMstack.

Features like open authoring in Netlify CMS moreover, offer a seamless way to support guest content contributors so content can be easily submitted without the overhead of setting up new user accounts

January 13th - Does JAMstack mean having to pre-render all the things? In this post, Divya explains pre-rending on the JAMstack, comparing to progressive enhancement movement, and how its approach stacks up to common approaches of single page apps.

January 14th - Can a “native” WordPress site be JAMstack? Diving deeper into the dynamic nature of WordPress being used as a headless CMS, this post takes it a step further into showing how you can utilize the platform as a JAMstack static site generator (SSG) in and of itself, so as to not abandon any of your most-beloved plugins and themes.

A community JAM

Getting Started with Serverless Functions

In this same JAMuary timeframe, Jason Lengstorf published a two-part series on getting started with serverless functions. Deploy Your First Serverless Function Using JavaScript goes over writing the JS necessary and setting things up to get this function online. After getting your first function shipped, take things a step further by accepting user input - learn how via this article Access Query String Parameters in Serverless Functions.

Note: these functions tutorials use Netlify Functions for development and deployment. Signup for Functions for free as a pre-requirement to this series.

JAMstack JAMuary Series - Week 1 Review - What, Why, Who

Scott Mathson — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 21:46:37 +0000

While most of us were making new year's resolutions about putting the bins out on time and exercising more regularly, Divya was already building momentum on a great habit for the new year - sharing thoughts and insights about JAMstack on a daily basis.

Her series of consumable, focussed posts answering common questions about the JAMstack is a great introduction to an otherwise elusive term that many find so confusing. What follows is a breakdown of some of the highlights of her first week and I highly recommend following along.

JAMuary digest - the posts so far

Jan 1st - What is the JAMstack? - In her first post, she goes over how the JAMstack is a way to prebuild and prerender sites without the need for a server, enhancing the site’s dynamicism with microservices. A quick intro and a great place to start!

Jan 2nd - Why choose the JAMstack? - In this second post, Divya talks through the amount of choices in the ecosystem, and the relative flexibility of the JAMstack. She mentions that one of JAMstack’s strengths is the ability to focus more on the methodology than the technology choices. This post gives some useful context around traditional approaches and motivations for selecting one stack over another.

Jan 3rd - Who is using the JAMstack? - In this post, Divya talks through the strength of being able to decouple technologies. She cites a few examples you can dig into and includes this amazing statistic:

In an enterprise setting, time is of the essence and a slow site can cost millions in revenue. Loblaw Digital , a company powering one of the largest food retailer in Canada, saw a whopping 92% performance improvement and an almost 38k in cost savings by shifting to the JAMstack.

It's useful to see where this is being used to great effect.

Jan 4th - What makes a site JAMstack? - With a concept as seemingly broad as this (so many technologies and tools can lend themselves to delivering a JAMstack site) this can be an area of some confusion. Divya offers some detail especially with regards to a very important distinction, the difference between traditional static sites and JAMstack sites.

“You could say that a JAMstack site is a static site but a static site is not necessarily a JAMstack one.”

Personally, this post was one of our favorites.

Jan 5th - Can a SPA be JAMstack? - Uh-oh. It's clash of the web terminology! And another area worthy of some clarification. How do Single Page Applications (SPA) fit with the JAMstack model and how can they offer good SEO and other fundamentals which drive success? Divya tackles these concerns by first defining what a SPA is, a Single Page Application, and clarifying that not every SPA can be considered JAMstack because it can’t be assumed that it’s served directly from the cache.

Jan 6th - Can a site be too large for the JAMstack - An excellent question! And one of the most controversial aspects of the JAMstack—if you’re pre-building and pre-rendering, what does that mean at scale? Choosing the technology and approach to any site requires some consideration of what the site is and how it will be used and maintained. Some sites have hundreds of thousands of pages and at first glance might not seem like a good fit for the JAMstack. This post touches on some techniques, tools and considerations which can help. A great starting point for this conversation.

Jan 7th - How far can you take the JAMstack? - This post is excellent because it acknowledges some criticisms we hear most often as people start learning about the JAMstack. She offers some pragmatic thoughts on those criticisms and talks through the power of APIs and leveraging a growing wealth of available expert services.

JAMuary bandwagonners

Feeling somewhat inspired by this flurry of posts, Tara, Jason, and I decided to offer some JAMuary posts of our own.

Pre-rendering is the key to a tasty Jamstack -
Focussing on just one attribute which is key to the JAMstack architecture: Pre-rendering. What sorts of advantages does this one principal unlock?

What is Serverless Besides a Bad Name for Using Servers - Yeah, naming things is hard. Given how serverless is such a wonderful companion and enabler for the JAMstack, this post tries to explain just what serverless actually is.

Deploy Your First Serverless Function Using JavaScript - Following on from figuring out what serverless might actually mean, this post gets you up and running incredibly quickly with writing and deploying (and understanding) your first serverless function with Netlify Functions.

More to come. Maybe from you?

This first week of posts are a fantastic primer for anyone trying to understand benefits, caveats and the general ecosystem of JAMstack, and an invaluable resource for developers! As January... er... I'm sorry, JAMuary keeps rolling, expect to see more posts from Divya along these lines. Be sure to follow the JAMuary tag on dev.to to keep up.

And perhaps you have JAMstack stories, lessons, or examples of your own. We'd love to see those too. If you share them on dev.to and tag them with #JAMuary we'll be able to find those and learn from you too.

How Startups Can Be Like SMBs - Big Dipper Ice Cream, Missoula, MT

Scott Mathson — Sat, 27 Jul 2019 14:00:00 +0000

Since 1995, Big Dipper Ice Cream has consistently been a staple of Missoula, Montana.

Coneboy, their cheerful, Distrokid-eque mascot, is seen on apparel like hats, buttons, and tees, in film festivals and other event’s sponsors lineups, on their ice cream trucks, in grocery store ice cream aisles, and many other locations.

Handcrafted, small-batch ice cream served from their original location, is within walking distance of an evening along a river’s edge in downtown Missoula. People go to Big Dipper for an experience. The entire brand, its products, storefront design, the happy team, upbeat music, involvement in community, and their integrity continue to shape this experience.

This Big Dipper experience is intentional - their brand, the product, the overall vibe is intentional. I am fascinated by and deeply admire small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) like Big Dipper who focus on creating experiences around consistency, from product to service to packaging - all consistent. Businesses who exist to wholly serve their friends, family, and their local communities. I am seeing this happening more among SMBs than with large tech organizations.

What if more tech startups started thinking like this?

They’re continually experimenting with new and interesting, locally-inspired flavors, partnering with area chefs, breweries, coffee roasters, and other businesses. Standing in (the always long) line at the flagship Higgins Ave. storefront, your eyes naturally look to the handwritten seasonal and specialties board. Some flavors stick, some flavors don’t, yet most importantly Big Dipper isn’t afraid to experiment.

Having heard co-owner Charlie Beaton speak at a local, Missoula business event a few years ago, I recall him speaking to the fact that they have never really had 5- or 10-year business plans. Big Dipper has evolved organically, nothing forced. Expansion for them has come in the form of storefront growth, as well as wholesale distribution.

Shortly after this event, they launched a Big Dipper Select line. This evergreen expansion came 21 years into the business and through strategic partnerships they have pursued new opportunities around this like distribution to area stores and restaurants, alongside serving their ice cream to visitors of Montana’s Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks.

The Beatons remain humble, never seeking to be in any spotlight, though folks like Good Morning America, Food and Wine Magazine, and USA Today have all shone a light on their business. Sharing an experience with longtime, loyal customers sitting at a wooden bench outside of their establishments are what continues to bring them joy.

Startups can learn so many brand, marketing, and product lessons from SMBs like Missoula, Montana’s Big Dipper Ice Cream. Stay curious, continue to look outside of your own niche and industries, and be consistent.

How Simplecast’s Brand Caught my Eye - Customer Support Convinced me to Buy

Scott Mathson — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 14:00:00 +0000

Simplecast’s brand caught my attention and their approach to support convinced me to use their hosting service.

Their implementation of a heavy, Helvetica-inspired typeface for the website’s copy and statements, coupled with the quirky illustrations and overall styleguide and color palette - everything about this brand evoke feelings that summarize the entire podcasting industry. Podcasting is an industry inspired by radio, that merges older, analog technology into a modern, digital medium.

No doubt, there are a lot of podcast audio hosting companies out there. When I was setting up my second podcast Makerviews, a couple years ago, Simplecast was one podcast hosting and analytics platform that got onto my radar through research. This brand’s website, articles, and visuals instantly resonated with me.

Simplecast caught my eye and I started following their work, digging in more.

Drawn-in by this brand’s visuals, blog articles, and overall ethos, what eventually got my card out and sold me on their product was their personalized attention to customer success.

Their customer support team’s responses to my inquiries were superb. My technical inquiries about their API eventually led into me continuing the discussion directly with their CTO Stephen Hallgren. Simplecast is a team with a personalized, all-hand’s customer support approach. They have fine-tuned their customer support, communication, and feedback system.

Every touchpoint, every interaction that anyone has with a brand shapes the entirety of the brand and its authority, trustworthiness, and credibility. Brands that pay close attention to customer support show prospective customers that they care.

Simplecast showed me that they give a damn.

Bootstrapping Beyond SaaS MVP into Automation & Optimization - Founder’s Journey

Scott Mathson — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0000

Years ago, I was certain that I was going to become a famous musician and recording studio owner.

And before that, a pro skateboarder.

My path and the trajectory of how I got to where I am is a bit of a winding path.

But before immersing myself deeper into marketing, web development, and a whole gamut of full-stack startup roles, I had my nose to the grindstone in audio production and music. Initially learning and playing drums and then gravitating towards learning guitar, bass, songwriting, banjo, and so on.

Mid-2000’s I was running a recording studio for area musicians, offering audio production services. During this time I learned more about podcast production and eventually started hosting a show (since archived). Audio was one of my first entrepreneurial experiences and music has always been important to me.

Rooted in arts and creativity, the path I’ve chosen to travel has delved deeper into the more technical side of things. Website design and dev led to freelancing and agency ownership, content to day-jobs and side projects, marketing and product to full-time day-jobs, engineering, design, entrepreneurship, and beyond.

I’m always creating, always making things.

In the same vein, I recently launched Plink - a podcast smart links service. Holding to my newsletter’s promise to openly document my corner of the web and share projects, I’ll be sharing more about Plink and my journey of bootstrapping this venture.

So let’s dive into what Plink actually is, why I’m creating it, and the problem it solves. As well as sharing decisions I’m making, struggles I’m overcoming, and insights into business and product optimizations.

Table of Contents :

What is this podcast smart linking product? And why create it?
Moving beyond MVP
- Making v1. And making it work on a budget with third-party solutions
- Shipping an MVP without user accounts, emails, and other functionality

What is this podcast smart linking product? And why create it?

Plink is a smart-links-as-a-service, software as a service (SaaS), podcast marketing product. I’m creating this to solve pain-points for podcast creators and consumers, alike. Both sides of which is obvious have been experiencing disconnect.

Being a podcaster (Makerviews) and fan of many a pod myself, I’ve experienced firsthand the time-intensive, manual task of link-collecting for listening platforms when promoting shows and episodes. On the consumer’s side, an over-prioritization of iOS Apple Podcasts makes this medium seem non-accessible to Android and other consumers, especially first-timer listeners.

Plink makes smart links that anyone, any device, can open and play. Offering a podcast marketing solution for creators and enhancing consumer’s user experiences, no matter the device, operating system, or geographical location.

Using Plink and smart linking everyone, especially first-time podcast listeners who do not yet have an app preference (or don’t know that one exists yet), will automatically direct them into pre-installed, native applications in a variety of devices. There are more features I’ve developed like Show Page podcast app links landing pages, among others. And plenty more is continually being prioritized and added onto the roadmap.

How creators link to shows from a variety of platforms directly impacts consumer’s experience and the accessibility of the entire ecosystem. I’m very passionate about this and wrote more about podcast discovery and accessibility on the Plink blog.

Outside of my day-job and life at home, I’ve been laser-focused on developing this service and solution for the better part of the past few months. From market research, customer interviews, product planning and development, private beta testing, and beyond. I publicly shipped a mature minimum viable product (MVP) of Plink at the start of Q2 2019, building the MVP with Eric Ries’s lean startup methodology in mind.

Yet it’s an MVP nonetheless and in order for it to scale, it’s time to move beyond the proven-to-be-viable MVP.

Moving beyond MVP

I’ve already been moving into the next phase and incrementally improving things and squashing minor bugs. Currently, I am very confident and pleased with where the product is at. It has proven the initial hypothesis, solves a problem, saves creators time, and improves consumer’s listening experiences.

Hell, I’ve even added features like the ability to help podcasters earn more, passive money in adding their iTunes affiliate IDs to paid, custom links. This is all very exciting to me, as Plink continues to be validated through further adoption, positive feedback and reviews, and an increasing user-base of both free and paid customers of the product.

But I’ve recognized that it’s actually time to shift the majority of my focus away from the core product. Away from ideating, developing, shipping, and marketing new (and optimizing current) features.

It’s time to transition my focus into optimizing things for the business. In order for this to scale, I need to automate manual tasks, re-work onboarding, scale self-serve support, documentation, and other core business optimizations.

Recently I was listening to The SaaS Podcast, hosted by Omer Khan an ex-Microsoft, Seattle-based SaaS coach and entrepreneur. Episode number 207 featuring guest Tyler Tringas really resonates with me. I’ve found myself re-listening to this episode and nodding along, agreeing, and seeing many parallels between his founder’s journey and my own.

This episode follows the journey of what Tyler calls his “Micro-SaaS” (very targeted niche, small team, focused product) business that he previously created and has since sold. His MVP of what became Storemapper was shipped on a lot quicker timeline than most. After a roundabout 30-hour international flight from San Francisco to Buenos Aires, his niche Shopify store locator app was shipped. And within 24 hours he had paying customers.

This entire story from idea to acquisition is quite amazing. I’ll be referencing more of Tyler’s work throughout.

Making v1. And making it work on a budget with third-party solutions

With the product idea and problems to solve front-of-mind, I ran a period of customer and market research, customer interviews, product planning, and then into initial product design and development. From there, I opened a window of time dedicated to private beta testing with a handful of folks. The feedback gained during this period was so invaluable - shoutout and thanks to UNCO podcast host Timothy Buck, Yo! podcast host Rob Hope, my brother Mark, and many others.

Undoubtedly, there is this movement of no-code happening right now. Folks like Ben Tossell of Makerpad are empowering so many makers to build MVPs, start startups, and ship them fast. Tools like Zapier, Carrd, Airtable, and so many third-party solutions make any technical barriers to entry lower than ever.

Did I go the no-code/low-code route? No.

But it’s worth noting, as Plink’s MVP does incorporate third-party solutions that made time to market much shorter. Throughout my years of making things, tools like Zapier and Gumroad have empowered me to be able iterate quicker, early on.

Without diving too deep into the most-developed part of Plink, the code and scripts - link routing functions, static pages solution, and more, know that Cloudflare Workers helped in launching the MVP. With Workers, you can write, deploy, and run server-side JavaScript “from the edge” in WebAssembly/service worker-like environment, serving everything from data centers close to the end-users. Workers and serverless environments, in general, are extremely efficient, performant, and fast.

Beyond the HTML/CSS/JS, Node.js, and Webpack codebase “from the edge” in Workers, making use of other Cloudflare solutions like their Workers key-value (KV) storage, CDN, and DNS management only made sense. I utilized other third-party solutions like DigitalOcean, GitHub, and more along-the-way.

Bootstrapping anything makes you constantly more aware of what paid subscriptions are actually needed. I keep overhead to a bare minimum, often opting to build things over buying. With an MVP though, using and buying into pre-made solutions early on can really help get the ball rolling sooner.

After I ended the private beta period, I received some press for Plink from the acclaimed podcasting industry newsletter and show, Podnews (thanks James), as well as from other industry publications - international press too: Polish podcast Radiogram and Spanish site Vía Podcast.

With the MVP now being public knowledge, I started some organic marketing pushes - here we go!

Plink v1 quickly proved to be a service that creators want and they started using right away.

Oh yeah, Plink is free, to boot.

My choice to build and launch a freemium offering, alongside paid upgrade options for custom, short links has worked in my favor. Without a doubt, the free plinkhq.com domain links (versus custom plnk.to domain links) have increased further product adoption.

The fact that I have customers that I’ve never met, folks outside of my network, alongside true champions of the service, and even affiliates is exciting. I’ve already established amazing, new relationships and partnerships with creators, consumers, and other podcast industry companies.

Has the MVP proven viable to spend more time on? Yes (and quite quickly)! Again, all of this really excites me.

Founding things always involves looking into the future, always staying a couple steps ahead.

Parallel to Tyler’s Storemapper story, I’ve been recognizing that I’m spending too much time on some things.

So, it’s time to polish things up and really move beyond MVP.

Shipping an MVP without user accounts, emails, and other functionality

Like Tyler shares about Storemapper’s initial MVP, Plink’s MVP lacks some standard SaaS functionality.

At its core I ensure Plink does what it says it will do on the marketing site.

Does it solve a problem and pain-point for creators? Yes. For consumers? Yes. Is it stable? Yes.

I have (quite cleverly) managed to couple things together. Yet it’s time to optimize things for scale - items like transactional emails, subscription management, and a customer-facing web application complete with signup, login, authentication, account and link management/customizations, a more robust internal API, and more need be developed.

As much as I want to only focus on product functionality and designing, developing, and shipping new features, there’s a sense of some MVP technical debt that I feel looming. And debts must always be paid.

SaaS subscription management and user signup was initially shipped with Gumroad recurring subscription drop-in solution. It’s time to move beyond this, though. Gumroad is great for information products/premium content and is a great product overall, but Plink needs an in-house (likely with Stripe) subscription management solution that’s more robust, putting control in my hands, and is more integrated/built into the product. Developing this will decrease per-order transaction fees, to boot.

A lot of this fragmentation can be attributed to my MacGyvered, third-party solutions setup. Some things should take a lot less time to accomplish and/or should be completely automated. So I’ll be focusing on developing solutions for this in moving beyond the MVP stage. Building solutions that ensure everything is more manageable and scalable going forward.

Read the rest of this article on scottmathson.com

How to Merge Multiple GitHub Accounts + Transfer Commit History

Scott Mathson — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 12:00:00 +0000

Managing multiple GitHub accounts can be frustrating. Let’s change that by consolidating and merging two (or multiple) GitHub accounts into one.

For years, I have had multiple GitHub user accounts and know of others who also do. Often this is different accounts with separation of personal and work projects. Recently I changed this and have consolidated into one, and I think you should too.

Do you have two or more, personal Twitter accounts? Multiple, personal Instagram accounts? Maybe you do, and there’s no harm in that! In an effort to make your git workflow more manageable, though, you should consider consolidating into one GitHub account.

Here’s how to do that!

Table of Contents :

Merging Two (or many) GitHub Accounts
- How to Transfer Repository Owner on GitHub
- Account Email Management on GitHub + Git Commit History

Merging Two (or many) GitHub Accounts

It’s a relatively quick process to transfer repo ownership, manage (add/remove/change) account email addresses, and most importantly: keep/transfer any commit history to the profile’s contribution graph.

Throughout this article, I’ll refer to scottmathson-auth0 user account (“a”), consolidating into scottmathson user account (“b”).

During my user accounts combining/merging I was in contact with GitHub’s support team, who were excellent to talk with and I’ll note some of what they shared. Thanks again Matt!

How to Transfer Repository Owner on GitHub

There is no automated account data “export” functionality within GitHub, so you’ll need to start with manually transferring repository (repo) ownership account-to-account. Repo transfers between accounts includes all issues, pull requests, forks, stars, alongside automatic redirects being setup for git and http*.

“For merging two user accounts, I’m afraid there isn’t any automated process for this so you’re already on the right track with [manually] transferring your repositories.” - GH Support

This only requires a few steps.

During transferring repos account-to-account, it naturally lends towards cleaning house and deleting any stagnant or unmaintained repositories. Now would be a great time to do that.

From Repo > Settings page > Options > scroll to the bottom, looking for red-colored “Transfer” button within the “Danger Zone”:

Fill out the required fields, typing the name of the repository to confirm and entering the new owner’s GH username:

New owner receives an email with an auth token that expires after 24 hours. Be sure to check that email for the account you’re transferring to and follow the link to fully complete any repo transfers.

*Even though it will redirect automatically, it is recommended that you update your remote’s origin URL once the transfer is complete: git remote set-url origin new_url

Refer to this documentation from GitHub if you’re looking to transfer a repo owned by an Organization.

Account Email Management on GitHub + Git Commit History

Git commit history, SAML, and other items are tied to the email(s) you have on-file within GitHub and in your remote, local setup. When consolidating multiple GitHub accounts into one, this is an essential step to cover to ensure you keep any commit history + have it added to contribution graph on user profile.

Account email management also ensures you are able to fully accept certain Organization invites.

“…effectively once you finalize the data transfer, your commits will be reattributed once the email address on scottmathson-auth0 is added (and verified) on scottmathson. For related contributions, these will be updated as well subject to certain criteria” - GH Support

Pull requests and issues fall under this “certain criteria” grey area. Most commit history will transfer once the email address that authored those commits have been added to your account. With the exception/caveat of losing pull requests and issues commit histories, more on this below.

How to add/verify one (or many) email addresses to your GitHub account:

From GH dashboard > Click your profile photo dropdown > Settings page:

Click on Emails in the left sidebar > Add email address field > Add new email:

Check your inbox for the email address you’ve just added and click the link included. You should land on your GitHub dashboard, seeing an email verification confirmation banner.

More regarding PRs and issues: any contributions/commits within PRs and issues by account “a” scottmathson-auth0 did not transfer. GitHub support explains this as, “…would instead be attributed to our “Ghost” user once the account is deleted, though the issues/PRs themselves would otherwise be unaffected.”.

Do keep this in mind! Though you can add an assignee for any open PRs/issues to the account you’re transferring data to, certain contributions will not transfer.

Any emails that you’ve been actively using in your local git configuration should be added to your GitHub account email settings in order for commits to be re-attributed and added to graph.

With the newly-verified email address(es) added, you can now authenticate and accept Organization invites after you’ve removed any emails associated with SSO and SAML from the stagnant account, account “a” scottmathson-auth0.

Allow GitHub a bit of time to propagate the history and contributions between accounts.

Again, managing multiple GitHub user accounts can be frustrating and I’ve personally combined accounts for a more effective workflow and portfolio. At one point shortly after starting to use GitHub, in an effort to have consistency in my usernames/email across platforms (using @scottmathson on social), I completely deleted a GitHub account and created a new one.

Looking back, I could and should have simply changed the username and added a new email to accomplish the goal I was after. I could have gone through the processes outlined above to transfer repos, instead of downloading/organizing/re-doing so locally and then creating new repo origins. Obviously, I effectively wiped all public contributions and history of that first user account.

I hope this article has helped, please pass it along if so. Thanks for reading!

In the case that you have multiple GitHub accounts and want to keep everything as-is and this article wasn’t for you, thanks for reading this far and check out this article from freeCodeCamp showing how to manage multiple GH accounts on one machine with SSH keys.

Having any issues? Feel free to reach out @scottmathson on Twitter and/or read more from GitHub: Why are my contributions not showing on profile graph?

Add Cross-domain Tracking to your Website with AMP Linker - Learn here

Scott Mathson — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 12:00:00 +0000

Are you using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)?

If so, your Analytics sessions data may be skewed and inaccurate.

This post shows how to easily add cross-domain analytics tracking to AMP HTML layouts. As well as background on cross-domain tracking, Google Analytics in AMP, AMP’s caching URL and ecosystem, and more. Utilize AMP Linker for tracking your user’s journeys from Google’s AMP cache domain to other domains.

Table of Contents :

Cross-domain tracking and Skewed data
Google Analytics and AMP
- Adding Google Analytics to AMP
- Google AMP Cache
Adding AMP Linker for cross-domain tracking

Cross-domain tracking and Skewed data

Nothing is worse than having analytics and web traffic data that is bloated, inaccurate, or missing. Tracking sessions in Analytics is done either via localStorage or cookies and these are on a domain-by-domain basis.

Domain “a” cannot easily access cookies on domain “b” and as modern browsers continually add new privacy and security features, some that ban third-party cookies, then your analytics and data is likely to become skewed.

In the AMP instance, individual session-based tracking can be shown in your Google Analytics data as multiple sessions, as the user moves from domain-to-domain. This can result in more user and sessions data and lower pageview data within sessions.

AMP serves your content to users on Google’s own AMP cache domain (learn more about AMP cache below). Your AMP HTML template likely has links back to your own domain, be it through main navigation, footer links, another CTA in the content itself, or within Google’s cache viewer itself. When clicked, those links then bring users onto your domain, away from Google’s AMP cache URL and this is where your analytics become inaccurate.

For those utilizing AMP HTML and using Google Analytics, you can now very easily setup cross-domain tracking and track your users across AMP cache and your own domain, read on!

Google Analytics and AMP

AMP requires the use of unique markup and elements and introducing Google Analytics functionality into your AMP HTML is done via an amp-analytics component/element and an inclusion of a script in the <head>. This brief article’s sole purpose is in introducing a specific feature of this: AMP Linker. I will briefly go into an overview of adding Google Analytics via amp-analytics though, as this is a prerequisite.

Just looking for the new cross-domain tracking AMP Linker? Carry on.

Adding Google Analytics to AMP

As mentioned prior, adding Google Analytics tracking to AMP requires adding a specific script into the <head> of your template that introduces this unique amp-analytics component.

Let’s add it before the closing </head>:

<script async custom-element="amp-analytics" src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-analytics-0.1.js"></script>

Example:

<!doctype html>
<html amp>
   <head>
      <meta charset="utf-8">
      <title>Hello world</title>
      <link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/blog/hello-world/" />
      <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,minimum-scale=1,initial-scale=1">
      <script async custom-element="amp-analytics" src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-analytics-0.1.js"></script>
   </head>
   <body>
      <p>Hello world!</p>
   </body>
</html>

SEO side note : Please ensure you’ve set your domain as canonical.

Once this script has been included we can now add our amp-analytics element within the <body> of the template. To ensure we’re utilizing AMP’s built in Google Analytics support we’ll add googleanalytics to the type attribute.

<amp-analytics type="googleanalytics">
    ...
</amp-analytics>

AMP currently only supports certain Google Analytics tracking. To enable session-based pageviews on your AMP posts/pages let’s include this JSON:

<amp-analytics type="googleanalytics">
   <script type="application/json">
      {
        "vars": {
         "account": "UA-XXXXX-Y"
        },
        "triggers": {
         "trackPageview": {
            "on": "visible",
            "request": "pageview"
         }
        }
      }
   </script>
</amp-analytics>

Note : Please ensure you’ve set your unique Google tracking “UA” id.

Now we’re tracking pageviews in Google Analytics for our AMP content!

Google AMP Cache

The Google AMP Cache is a proxy-based content delivery network for delivering all valid AMP documents. It fetches AMP HTML pages, caches them, and improves page performance automatically. When using the Google AMP Cache, the document, all JS files and all images load from the same origin… — ampproject.org

As mentioned earlier in this article, this is where the problem with cross-domain tracking lies. Your AMP content is being served up via their own URL (that looks like google.com/amp/s/example.com/blog/hello-world/) to your users.

Your AMP content likely has links back to your own domain and as users navigate away from Google’s AMP cache URL and onto your own this is where it can skew the data, as this cross-domain journey can creates new sessions.

AMP’s cache CDN is very robust and has some nice features built in like a pre-validation system ensuring that the posts or pages are guaranteed to work, among other features.

Natively though, we need to add AMP Linker the ensure accurate data in Analytics.

Adding AMP Linker for cross-domain tracking

The solution to this problem presented throughout this article is a very simple addition to your AMP template. AMP Linker is a newly-announced feature in Accelerated Mobile Pages that ensures this cross-domain session bloating isn’t happening.

As users click away from AMP cache URL, it appends parameters with unique IDs to domain “b”’s URL. Domain “b” where you have Google Analytics, can easily parse this parameter and translate into a first-party cookie.

That url will look something like: https://example.com/about/?_gl=1*1vlvis7*_ga*U0Rt...

We’ll enable AMP Linker and ensure accuracy in your data by including "linkers" and enabling it in the Google Analytics pageviews tracking element within <body> of your AMP template:

<amp-analytics type="googleanalytics">
   <script type="application/json">
      {
        "vars": {
         "account": "UA-XXXXX-Y"
        },
        "linkers": {
         "enabled": true
        },
        "triggers": {
         "trackPageview": {
            "on": "visible",
            "request": "pageview"
         }
        }
      }
   </script>
</amp-analytics>

All-together now:

<!doctype html>
<html amp>
   <head>
      <meta charset="utf-8">
      <title>Hello world</title>
      <link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/blog/hello-world/" />
      <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,minimum-scale=1,initial-scale=1">
      <script async custom-element="amp-analytics" src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-analytics-0.1.js"></script>
   </head>
   <body>
      <amp-analytics type="googleanalytics">
         <script type="application/json">
            {
                "vars": {
                 "account": "UA-XXXXX-Y"
                },
                "linkers": {
                 "enabled": true
                },
                "triggers": {
                 "trackPageview": {
                    "on": "visible",
                    "request": "pageview"
                 }
                }
            }
         </script>
      </amp-analytics>
      <p>Hello world!</p>
   </body>
</html>

Note : Again, please ensure you’ve set your unique Google tracking “UA” id.

Thank you very much for checking this article out!

SEO Basic Beginner’s guide - How to optimize a website for search

Scott Mathson — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 17:00:00 +0000

My intentions in this article are to lay out some basic SEO (search engine optimization) best practices, answer common questions, define certain conventions, and to provide a basic understanding of SEO.

Table of Contents :

An introduction to SEO and best practices
- Keywords
- Semantic URLs :
- Page titles :
- Meta descriptions :
On-page - Asset/images + Naming conventions
- File names :
- Alt tags
SEO tools and resources

An introduction to SEO and best practices

If you’re new to publishing content and creating websites, SEO may be a foreign term. In your searches around learning SEO, I’m sure you’ve discovered that optimizing your website for search engines, with intentions of ranking higher/ranking for specific keywords is truly a vast topic.

That’s why I’m here to lay out some SEO basics.

There are a lot of different ranking factors that Google’s constantly-advancing algorithms take into account. Search engine’s algorithms and indexing bots will decipher and rank your website’s page or post based off of the content itself, the content’s relevancy to a specific topic, among many other factors.

Most importantly, focus on writing content that provides value, is worth promoting/sharing, and is consumable by your website’s users - humans.

Keywords

Often the first step in content SEO is defining the keywords that you want your whole website, alongside individual pages and blog content to rank for.

There are a lot of tools for doing keyword research - narrowing down the exact terms or phrases that are actually being searched, alongside their search volume, and how competitive that term will be to try and rank for.

At a basic level, and for the sake of a consistent example in this article, let’s select the term/phrase “SEO for beginners”.

Semantic URLs :

It’s important to have the keywords incorporated into URLs to increase relevance, stay semantic, and for higher rankings.

The structure of your URLs truly is important. Semantic URLs are written with hyphens (-).

Here’s an example of a blog post with a semantically correct URL string, with our “SEO for beginners” keyword phrase:

https://scottmathson.com/blog/seo-for-beginners/

An example Google SERP (search engine results page):

Certain website CMS or tools may add category, date, or tags to URLs, as well.

Page titles :

Keep titles under 60 characters
Lead with the keywords/phrase you’re trying to rank for
Again, don’t keyword stuff

Re: 60 char. limit: Page titles in SERPs (search engine results pages) are actually based off of pixel width, displayed at 600px, which at times will show titles up to ~70 characters in length.

An example of a page title for this keyword phrase chosen, alongside adding more context to the page or post title could look like:

“SEO for beginners - Search engine optimization strategy”

Google SERP example:

Just as we do in naming the URL, it’s important to add definitive keywords in the page or post’s title tags to signal relevancy and increase search engine impressions.

Meta descriptions :

Keep meta descriptions under 160 characters
Include keywords/phrase, but write naturally, for humans
Again, don’t keyword stuff

Meta descriptions provide information to your potential readers and if you get them to click-through to your website, therein is the value - increased traffic and CTRs (click-through rates). They should be incorporated and optimized on every single page and post.

Optimized meta descriptions are 160 or less, they’re unique to that page or post (not duplicated across many), and provide an opportunity to rank for terms, phrases, and keywords, alongside grabbing your potential reader’s attention.

Write meta descriptions for :

Every.

Single.

Page.

“SEO for beginners: develop a strategy to optimize your website for search. Learn how to optimize page titles, meta descriptions, alt tags, file names, and more.”

Google SERP example:

These core pieces make up the SERPs and items like the page title are also used in browser tabs, when shared on social, and more.

As search engine algorithms advance and results become richer, we’re seeing images alongside the text-based results and/or expanded, longer-length descriptions, and more features.

Hopefully this starting point illustrates how having these optimized foundational elements is important to optimizing websites for usability, accessibility, and SEO.

There’s more!

It’s important to optimize other on-page elements that I will go over next.

On-page - Asset/images + Naming conventions

File names :

Semantic URL structure with hyphens
Concise, with descriptive keywords/phrase included
Yet again, don’t keyword stuff

Something often overlooked in SEO are images - their file names and alt tags. Label images “what they are” so as to tell indexing bots, as well as anyone working on the website what these images are.

Images should be named relevant to the content of the page they’re being shown on and include the keyword or phrase that relates to the context of the content.

Always avoid labeling “how they are” (dimensions, editing programs used, etc.) and also avoid “when they are” (dates).

Bad : “SEO4529DHH_PHOTOSHOP.jpg” or “SEOForBeginnersInfographic:1920x1080px.jpg”

Good : “seo-for-beginners-infographic.jpg”

It’s important for individuals and teams to have consistency in this.

Ensure that any image files uploaded to your website or CDN are logically named, making sense to both search engines and users.

Alt tags

Meta data such as alt tags (alt text) and title tags in images help with SEO and accessibility. In adding alt text to images, search engines are able to have more context as to what this image is in relation to the rest of the content and it provides text to be included in image search results.

Most importantly, write alt tags/text for humans and you should not use hyphens. Write a natural phrase, as these are what display when an image path is broken and/or for screen-readers.

Alt text displays in a few instances:

1st case: a broken image. If the page that is trying to display an image cannot for some reason, it will display the alt text in place of it. This is relevant to email marketing and template development, as well.
2nd case: for accessibility’s sake. For visitor’s that are using screen-readers, the alt text gives context for those people that cannot see images.
3rd case: image search results.

*Bonus tip : Use the title attribute to add even more SEO value and when hovering over the image, it will display this attribute. <img src="example.jpg" alt="example image" title="This is an image title" />

Recap :

URLs : ‘/category-page/page-or-post-with-relevant-keyword/’
Titles : ‘Title of Page or Article (with keywords/phrase) - Company’
Meta descriptions : Under 160 characters and written naturally, for humans.
Image File Names : image-of-keyword.jpg following URL structure with the hyphens
Image Alt tags : Accurate image description

SEO tools and resources

If you’re a) new to building and maintaining websites and/or b) you are using WordPress, I highly recommend that you check out the Yoast SEO plugin. Here are a few other must-have tools when focusing on SEO and building websites, in general.

Raven Tools Site Auditor
Google WebMaster Tools (Search Console)
Google Analytics
PageSpeed Insights (or Lighthouse Auditor)
SERP preview + Writing tool “ctr.tools” Tools Free Site Auditor Audit my site * * *

Why haven’t I written about SEO yet?

Though SEO is something that I am very passionate about, practice daily, and have been working on for the last 10+ years, I’m usually doing just that: working on optimizations and I haven’t made enough time for writing articles about search engine optimization, website development, design, content marketing, and more.

Also, I’ve been unsure exactly where I’ve been wanting to take my personal website here. Portfolio site? Digital journal/micro-blog? I do regret not spending as much time writing quality content for you readers and hope to change that.

Thank you, to those of you reading and I’m looking forward to providing more content in the future.

Simpol Jekyll Website Theme - Minimal theme for blogging, focus on the writing.

Scott Mathson — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 17:00:00 +0000

Introducing Simpol Theme

Simpol Theme is a minimal, clean website theme made for Jekyll.

It’s a free, open source project.

Focus on the writing, the content.

Simpol Theme was inspired by a previous, custom build, template, and version of my personal site, here.

My inspirations for Simpol Theme:

A few of my inspirations in designing and developing this Jekyll theme are websites like Zen Habits and Justin Jackson’s personal site, websites that embrace minimalism and truly focus on the writing, the content of the pages/posts.

Beyond the physically-represented inspirations, I feel that Simpol’s simplicity and minimal design evoke a sense of calm, of organization, and of clarity. As a a designer, an artist, I’m constantly inspired, not only by “things”, but more importantly by feelings and emotions.

Okay…this is starting to sound cheesy as all get out, but it’s true, it’s genuine, it’s real.

Check out a live demo of this template, here.

A Glimpse at the Code

First up, here’s a look at the Gems/plugins that are currently in-use on the theme - intentionally keeping it simple, light-weight, and fast-loading.

plugins:
- jekyll-sitemap
- jekyll-seo-tag
- jekyll-feed
- jekyll-paginate

It’s very easy for users of this theme to setup and start customizing Simpol Theme to your liking. Nearly everything you need is located within the _config.yml file and it is a one-stop-shop for the initial setup.

I’ve developed the theme to have some default content, “out-of-the-box”, as I’m not a fan of themes that show users the absolute bare-minimum, stripped down version of the theme once they’ve purchased/downloaded it. What you’re seeing is what you get (and then some) - no gimmicks. The theme has liquid if/else blocks that have some of Simpol’s default text content, auto-filled.

Here’s a look at just one of the custom, configuration options that comes with the theme. Once filled in, this information that you write in the config file, writes to the Index page.

#content for index.html
  #Add your own info, deleting the comments "#". This data automatically writes to the Index page's mini, about section.
greeting: #GREETING_GOES_HERE | default: Hello, I'm Simpol.
logo_img: #LOGO_IMG_SRC_GOES_HERE | default: /assets/img/simpol-theme-square-writing-logo.png
subgreeting_one: #SUBGREETING_ONE_GOES_HERE | default: Jekyll theme that's all about the content.
subgreeting_two: #SUBGREETING_TWO_GOES_HERE | default: Minimal, clean, simple blogging.

Since this site is build with Jekyll, it’s going to sort out the liquid if/then blocks below. Raw code from the theme appears differently.

<div class="top-headline-photo">
    <div class="sm-1-col md-2-col lg-2-col pull-left">
        <h1>Hello, I'm Simpol.</h1>
    </div><!-- end .sm-1-col lg-2-col pull-left -->
    <div class="sm-1-col md-2-col lg-2-col pull-right small-mobile-hide">
        <img src="/assets/img/simpol-theme-square-writing-logo.png" alt="Simpol Theme Index Logo">
    </div><!-- end. sm-1-col lg-2-col pull-right mobile-hide -->
</div><!-- end .top-headline-photo -->

<div class="sm-1-col md-2-col lg-2-col pull-left">
    <p>Jekyll theme that's all about the content.</p>
</div><!-- end .sm-1-col lg-2-col pull-left -->
<div class="sm-1-col md-2-col lg-2-col pull-right">
    <p>Minimal, clean, simple blogging.</p>
</div><!-- end. sm-1-col lg-2-col pull-right -->

Front Matter for the posts really couldn’t be simpler, yet with as much robustness and SEO value added. Each post features (if written out/chosen) an author’s name, published date/time, header image that display in the main Index page syndication, post categories that is then displayed as a list of categories and posts on the /categories page on the site, and more.

Of course all of this data, including Title, Description, Date/Time, Author, and more is included in the metadata with open graph data, for incredible SEO value.

As well, Simpol Theme is absolutely using schema.org markup for your whole website and it’s posts, telling search engines what the post is all about.

Here’s a look at the Front Matter for blog posts in Jekyll-based Simpol Theme.

---
layout: post
title: "Simpol Blogging, Adding New Posts"
description: "How to add your first post. Simpol Theme blogging overview."
date: 2017-04-16 17:00:00
author: "Scott Mathson"
header-img: assets/img/posts/header-img/woman-typing-macbook.jpg

categories:
  - Tips/Tricks
---

Installation

As a Fork

Fork the repo
Clone down the repo with $ git clone git@github.com:username/reponame.git
Delete the simpol-theme-screenshot.jpg file and example post
Install bundler with $ gem install bundler
Install gems with $ bundle install
Run Jekyll with $ bundle exec jekyll serve
Have fun!

As a Jekyll theme gem

Simply run $ gem install simpol-jekyll-theme to download the latest Gem

Or:

Download the theme, quick download link
Install bundler with $ gem install bundler
Install gems with $ bundle install
Run Jekyll with $ bundle exec jekyll serve
Have fun!

Run with Docker

Docker Installation guide can be found here: https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation

You can start the site locally by browsing to the project’s directory and running docker-compose up.

You should see the following:

simpol-theme | Configuration file: /srv/jekyll/_config.yml
simpol-theme | Source: /srv/jekyll
simpol-theme | Destination: /srv/jekyll/_site
simpol-theme | Incremental build: enabled
simpol-theme | Generating...
simpol-theme | done in x.xxx seconds.
simpol-theme | Auto-regeneration: enabled for '/srv/jekyll'
simpol-theme | Server address: http://0.0.0.0:4000/
simpol-theme | Server running... press ctrl-c to stop.

Current Features

Minimal design and feel.
Simple and customizable Navigation, Index, and Footer
Site greeting, sub-greetings, links, logo, and more
All easily setup and managed in the config file
Clean, light-weight, default layouts for pages and posts
Search engine friendly! Optimized metadata for SEO.
Easy, site-wide Google Analytics setup/integration
Post categories and archive page
Social sharing for Twitter, Facebook, and email on all posts.
Sitemap, XML Feed, and 404 Page
Single, yet powerful and light-weight CSS Stylesheet
Simple, like a website should be.

Please send feature requests by tweeting, in-reply-to this status.

Resources

Check out these blog posts for help in getting started blogging with Simpol Theme. Within the posts are even more resources to help you.

Simpol has been made with the intentions of you using the free hosting and repository deployment options through GitHub Pages! Learn more about Jekyll / GitHub Pages here - the easiest setup method for Simpol Theme, literally be up-and-running in minutes.