Journey to first release of "remozine.com"

Over long time working on remote, I’ve experienced the pros and cons of remote work in depth. While several major tech companies calling their employees back to the office, I firmly believe that remote work will remain a viable and popular working style option.

This has been motivation of making website which introduce informations about remote working, name as https://www.remozine.com/ .

Planning Progress

When I initially planned this, my goal was to create a robust infrastructure using AWS for deployment and operation.

It included:

• AWS Route53 for domain management
• S3 for static file hosting & image storage
• EC2 and RDS for API server and database solutions

Or alternatively, also thought about using AWS Amplify for a simplified setup.

However, I soon realized that focusing too much on infrastructure was slowing down content creation. To address this, I decided to prioritize simplicity and rapid deployment to make output first.

Simplified Approach with Next, and Vercel

I choose to start with a straightforward frontend project using Next.js. Since it's been several years since I transitioned from frontend development to data engineering, I'm a bit out of touch with the latest frontend tech stacks. So, I needed to keep things as simple as possible, and decided to use most popular one.

Also decided:

• Embed content as static values within the project
• Utilize Vercel for hosting, which helps easy deploy setup and seamless integration with other SaaS solutions like Supabase, Neon, and Upstash

This approach streamlined the initial development process and ensured I could focus on delivering content.

Decisions and Domain Setup

Here’s how I proceeded:

• For base setting, I started with Next.js starter template, and connected project to Vercel for hosting
• For content managing, as described above, I added content internally using Markdown templates. Since there are only few content on starting, this method was efficient and straightforward

After a quick deployment, I purchased a domain and linked it to my website (Vercel offers simplifed logic for registration process), and submitted the site to search engines.

As SEO optimization takes several months, I decided to focus on creating content rather than building a complex service architecture, for user accessibility.

Of course, I'm setting up database connections logic in separate branch for future use, but improving content remains my top priority for now.

Future Plans

As my website evolves, I have several plans like infrastructure stability, UI improvements, content expansions, community building, etc. But for now, I've went on a first simple step share my experiences and tips about remote work. I look forward to seeing how it evolves and helps others embrace this flexible working style.

Please let me know if you have any suggestion about https://www.remozine.com/.