Uncovering the Secret Behind My Side Project Journey

Hey 👋

So this is my first post here, and honestly, I'm a bit nervous. But I figured what better way to introduce myself than by sharing the story behind my latest side project that's been consuming my evenings for the past few months.

The Annoying Problem That Started Everything

Okay, let me paint you a picture. It's Sunday night (because of course it is), and I just spent 3 hours writing what I thought was a decent article about integrating Supabase with Next.js. I'm feeling pretty good about it - got some nice code examples, explained the gotchas, the whole nine yards.

Then comes the fun part: actually getting people to read it.

Here's what my "publishing workflow" looked like:

1. Copy from Notion
2. Paste into Dev.to editor
3. Fix all the broken formatting
4. Upload images again because they didn't come through
5. Add tags and adjust for Dev.to's system
6. Hit publish
7. Now do the EXACT same thing for Hashnode
8. Then LinkedIn (but their editor is... special)
9. Maybe Medium if I'm feeling ambitious By the time I'm done, it's midnight, I'm frustrated, and honestly questioning why I even bother writing in the first place. Anyone else been there?

Three hours later, I'm still reformatting the same article for the fifth platform. At this point I'm wondering why I even bothered writing the thing in the first place.

But here's what really got to me - I write most of my drafts in Notion. It's just... better for writing, you know? Clean interface, great organization, no distractions. Problem is, getting stuff from Notion to these publishing platforms is a nightmare. You lose formatting, code blocks completely break, and images? Forget about it.

Wait, This Can't Just Be Me

So I started digging around. Reddit threads, GitHub discussions, random Twitter rants. Turns out I wasn't going crazy - tons of developers were dealing with the exact same thing.

Found one thread where someone was maintaining an actual spreadsheet to track where they'd published what. Another person just gave up entirely and stuck to Dev.to only, even though they wanted to reach different audiences.

The Notion thing kept coming up too. Lots of people draft there because it's such a good writing environment, but then they're stuck manually recreating everything elsewhere.

I'm sitting there thinking, "Okay, this is definitely a real problem."

The Lightbulb Moment

I was complaining about this to my wife (again), and she just looked at me and said, "Why don't you just build something to fix it? Isn't that what you do?"

And I was like... oh. Yeah. That's literally what I do for a living.

The idea seemed simple enough - write once, publish anywhere. Let people create content however they want (especially in Notion since that's where so many of us already are), then automatically distribute it.

Sure, there are some tools out there that kind of do this, but they're either super limited, way too expensive, or just don't understand the developer workflow.

Building AllPub: The Technical Journey

Alright, so I decided to build this thing. Here's where it got interesting (and occasionally frustrating).

The Core Idea

Write once in Notion → publish everywhere with one click → actually save time instead of creating more work

What I Wanted It To Do:

• Connect to my Notion workspace (read-only, because I'm not insane)
• Handle all the annoying format conversions automatically
• Publish to multiple platforms simultaneously
• Not break my bank account to run
• Actually work reliably (revolutionary concept, I know) ## The Technical Stack

I went with what I know best:

• Frontend: Next.js + Tailwind CSS (because I'm basic like that)
• Backend: Supabase (been using it for other projects, love the DX)
• Auth: Clerk (handles all the OAuth stuff so I don't have to)
• Hosting: Vercel (obviously) Nothing too fancy, but it gets the job done.

The Fun Parts (And By Fun, I Mean Painful)

API Integrations: Oh boy. Each platform's API is like a special snowflake with its own personality:

• Notion's API is actually pretty solid (once you wrap your head around blocks)
• Dev.to's API is straightforward and well-documented
• Hashnode's GraphQL API is clean but took some getting used to
• LinkedIn's publishing API... exists. Let's leave it at that. Content Transformation: This was the real challenge. Converting Notion's block-based structure into markdown that plays nice with each platform's quirks. Code blocks alone had like 6 different edge cases I had to handle.

The OAuth Dance: Getting users to connect their accounts without making them feel like they're signing their life away. Lots of "read-only" permissions and clear explanations about what the app can and can't do.

The trickiest part wasn't the tech stack - it was dealing with all these different publishing APIs. Every platform has its own weird quirks. Medium's API is okay but limited. Dev.to's is actually pretty solid. Some platforms (looking at you, LinkedIn) barely have usable APIs at all.

Using modern AI coding tools definitely made this way faster than it would've been even a year ago. Instead of constantly googling API docs or trying to remember how authentication flows work, I could just describe what I needed and get working code to start from.

Still had to understand everything and make sure the architecture made sense, but the initial velocity was crazy good.

Where We're At Now

So after about 4 months of evenings and weekends (and way too much coffee), AllPub is actually working and people are using it!

Current features:

• ✅ Notion integration (read-only, obviously)
• ✅ Publishing to Dev.to, Hashnode
• ✅ Automatic format conversion
• ✅ Scheduled publishing

• ✅ Free beta (because I'm not ready to take your money yet)
  What's coming next:

• WordPress and Ghost support

• Linkedin

• Better analytics (because who doesn't love graphs?)
  The feedback has been pretty encouraging. People are telling me they're saving 20-30 minutes per post, which honestly makes all those late nights worth it.

Why This Actually Matters

As I've been building this, I keep thinking about all the different ways this problem shows up:

For developers like us:

• Your library documentation that needs to live on GitHub, your docs site, and Dev.to
• Release notes that should go out everywhere people might see them
• Tutorial series that work better on different platforms for different audiences
• Personal branding stuff that needs to reach people wherever they hang out
• No more choosing between platforms - reach everyone
• Actually saves time instead of adding another tool to manage
• Built by someone who understands the dev workflow

• Integrates with tools we already use (Notion)
  For the broader community:

• More great content gets seen by more people

• Writers can focus on writing instead of platform management

• Lowers the barrier to sharing knowledge
  The Notion angle feels particularly important here. Based on everything I've seen, tons of developers draft in Notion because it's just a better writing environment. But then they're stuck manually rebuilding everything for actual publishing.

Lessons Learned (Because Every Post Needs This Section)

1. Build for yourself first: If you're not solving your own problem, you're probably building the wrong thing
2. APIs are lies: Budget 2x the time you think you'll need for integrations
3. The dev community gives amazing feedback: Seriously, some of the best feature ideas came from early users
4. MVP doesn't mean broken: Start small but make sure it actually works well
5. Free beta = best user research: Nothing beats real people using your actual product
6. Modern AI tools are game-changers: The development velocity boost is real, but you still need to understand what you're building ## Want to Try It?

If you're dealing with the same cross-posting headaches I was, I'd love to have you give AllPub a shot. It's free while we're in beta, and I promise I won't spam you or sell your data or do any of that sketchy stuff.

Check it out at allpub.co - no credit card needed, just connect your Notion and start publishing.

And if you try it, please let me know what breaks or what's missing. This thing is only going to get better with feedback from actual users.

I'm still pretty early with AllPub, but I'd love to talk to people who actually deal with this stuff. If you're someone who:

• Writes technical content and cross-posting makes you want to scream
• Uses Notion for writing and wishes there was a magic button to publish everywhere
• Has ever spent an entire evening reformatting the same article for different platforms