I’m building 12 products in 12 months, this is how week two went

The first of January I took on this challenge, to complete twelve products in twelve months. I had read about these challenges from others and wanted to give it a go myself. Last week I started my first product, my own website. This week I continued working on the website and took a great step towards finishing this first product.

I ended the first week with the design on the homepage and after I’d written the blog post about week 1 I continued working on this. Without actual designing skills it took me longer than expected, but I’m happy that I can use Bootstrap as this makes my life a bit easier. I’m already noticing that I can solve issues quicker as I better understand the possibilities of Bootstrap. Throughout the weekend I worked on the homepage during the limited time I had. I was satisfied enough to leave it for now and focus on other parts of the website.

The most important thing I focused on next was the admin area. Without the possibility to add blog posts and/or projects the website basically won’t have any content. I kept the entity models pretty simple, right now is not the time to add a lot of complexity. I can always improve the entity models in a later stage, when more functionality is needed in the website.

The first version of the admin area allowed me to create blog posts in the most simple way without even having a WYSIWYG editor, but it did the job. I was thinking of leaving it there and entering all the HTML I wanted directly into the textarea but I quickly realized this was going to be a pain later on. Although a MVP should contain the bare minimum, this wasn’t going to work so I added TinyMCE as my WYSIWYG editor. I have used TinyMCE before in projects at my job, so I know a thing or two about it and could configure the setup quickly.

I might be repeating myself, but when building a MVP I strongly believe you should use the tools you already know. I could have spend some hours figuring out what the leading/best/newest/coolest WYSIWYG editor out there currently is, but that would only slow down the process. It would also have meant that I had to study some documentation, install it, test it. With TinyMCE I already knew how to set it up, so it saved me some time.

During the week I had my booster vaccination and the day after I didn’t feel too well. I focused on creating and updating the blog posts and I managed to get it all working like it should. I started everything really small, but as the development continued I realized I probably kept it too small as the blog posts could not support all features I wanted to have in the first version of my website. Therefore I added several properties to the blog entity models.

The next day I felt much better and was determined to get much further with the admin area. I got a few hours to spend, so I was able to add the create and update functionality for the projects as well as the project milestones. I’ve added the milestones entities while I was working on the projects as I was thinking about a possible design for the project details page. After that I added the migrations and updated the database.

With the milestone functionality added basically all admin stuff was done. I am able to add blog posts, projects and milestones and maintain these. I chose not to have the delete options as implementing this would take additional time and I don’t believe I will be needing this functionality any time soon. Even if there comes a time I want to delete something, I can still do it manually.

After the work on the admin area was done, I still had some time left before I had to start my full-time job. I had a goal to complete the design for the homepage, but I struggled yet again. Before starting this challenge I knew that design and CSS would be a pain point in which I had to improve a lot. I know the basics, but applying them has been difficult. But by doing these kinds of projects I force myself out of my comfort zone, which is backend, and learn a lot more front-end design & development.

At the end of the week I managed to complete the design for the homepage, but I still have to do the other pages. I’ve sketched out a rough design using plain old-fashioned pen and paper, so now I have to try to translate it into CSS and HTML.

The last day of this week has been busy with a lot of things except this project, so I ended up writing the first part of this blog post. I also had a chat about Google Analytics and implemented it. Right after I’d done so I read an article stating that Google Analytics basically acts illegal for websites in Europe. Next week I’m gonna find out what to do with this, perhaps use a different tool to track my website visitors.

I will also be focusing on the designs of the other pages. Once those are in a stage that I’m happy with publishing I will publish my website for everyone to see. I can’t wait for that to happen.

Habits:

After two weeks of working on my first of twelve projects I can already see some patterns and habits forming. My work schedule is depending a lot on the responsibilities I have for my little daughter. On Sunday, she sleeps at my parents-in-law so Monday mornings I’ve got about 2 hours time to work on the project. On Tuesday I have to bring her to my parents, so I usually have about half an hour before I start work on my day job. On Wednesdays my wife doesn’t work, so I only feed my daughter in the morning and after that I can start working on the project. That gives me a good 1,5 hours as well. On Thursday I have to bring my daughter to daycare, so again I’ve got around 30 minutes to work. Friday is basically the same as Wednesday, although I tend to start earlier at my day job, so I can quit earlier and spend time with my family. The weekends are mainly family time, but I manage to work about two hours when my daughter is sleeping.

Besides working in the morning, I’m trying to work as much as I can during my lunch break. I usually have about 30 minutes to work on the project. The evenings, after we brought our daughter to bed, are a mix of working and relaxing. These two weeks I’ve been able to work about 6–7 hours a week in the evening.

All in all I’m able to spend about 18 hours a week. I don’t know if that will be enough for future projects, but we will see.

Online presence

Last week I managed to grow my Twitter following to over 100 followers. A first milestone, because before these two weeks I wasn’t really using Twitter at all. I’m really grateful for these followers and I already had some nice conversations through DMs.

My second Indie Hackers post performed not so well as my first but still I managed to get a good 400 views. Not only my posts were read, I also gained some followers on Indie Hackers.

The growth of this online presence really motivates me to continue building in public. I want to provide even more value, but I feel that I’m still learning to use Twitter and Indie Hackers. Staying active socially also takes up some of the time, time I don’t always have. In order to make this a success, I have to do it, so I need to find a way to get even more out of this.