Update for the week ending on Friday, Oct 25, 2019

What Got Done

Developers can now run a local instance of What Got Done in a few commands:

git clone https://github.com/mtlynch/whatgotdone.git
cd whatgotdone
echo "USERKIT_SECRET=YOUR_USERKIT_SECRET" > docker-secrets.env
echo "VUE_APP_USERKIT_APP_ID='YOUR_USERKIT_APP_ID'" > frontend/.env.development.local
docker-compose up

The last remaining nontrivial dependency is UserKit. I’ve been working with @dtq and @truthmast on easing that dependency. Next week, thanks to their work, we might be at the point of launching a local What Got Done instance with a single docker-compose command.

• Added support for user profiles (example) (#332, #333, #335)
• Added an implementation of the Datastore instance that uses Redis instead of Google Cloud Firestore (#346)
  • Refactored all of the Firestore-specific logic to a separate package (#320)
  • This makes it much easier for local development because it doesn’t depend on a remotely-managed database
• Enabled build checks on third-party pull requests (#323)
  • There’s still no way for third parties to run end-to-end tests because those tests require access to What Got Done credentials, but I should be able to add trustless integration tests soon.
• Reviewed external PRs to clean up my handling of CSRF and CORS headers (#344, #348)
• Fixed a break in the login page due to my overly strict Content-Security-Policy HTTP header (#343)
  • Used the opportunity to eliminate a lot of copy/paste code.
  • Added a frame-src directive I was missing (#345)
• Added more rigorous input validation for dates and usernames (#331, #347)
• Fixed a script crash in the frontend that happens when the datastore is empty (#352)
  • Thanks to @truthmast for reporting this!
• Fixed CORS settings and related environment variables so that it’s easier for third-party developers to work with their local instances (#353)
• Renamed the entry submission route to /api/entry/{date} for consistency with other routes (#350)
• Fixing some weird spacing issues on the landing page (#336)

Is It Keto

• Tried reverting to the original sales page I used when I was smoke testing
  • During my smoke test, ~4% of users clicked the “buy” button but there was nothing to actually purchase. With my new sales page, almost 0% of users click the “buy” button.
  • I wanted to see whether users would resume clicking the “buy” button and if any of those would convert to actual sales
  • Results: Inconclusive
    • There were exactly 100 unique visitors, so the percentages work out very cleanly
    • 3% of users clicked the “buy” button
    • 1% of users completed a purchase (33% of those who clicked the “buy” button)
    • This is too small a difference to draw any conclusions, so I’ll continue running the test over the weekend.
• Scaled the self-ads down from showing 100% of the time to showing 50% of the time
  • Hoping to recover a little bit of AdSense revenue.
• Tinkered a little with the spacing on the homepage
• Followed up with a user who completed our survey
• Started working on a dedicated Meal Plans site
  • My hypothesis is that people are uninterested in buying meal plans from Is It Keto because it seems like just an upsell from a blog
  • My plan is to spend a day making a basic website on a subdomain like mealplans.isitketo.org and then use that as the sales page

mtlynch.io

• Got all the video examples and screenshots prepared for my next post
• Continued editing my next post

Home Video Digitization

Last year, I digitized about 40 hours of my family’s old home videos and put them on a private media server for my family. I’m in the process of cleaning up my tools so I can publish a guide about this.

• Abstracted all the private information out of my Docker image repo, so now I can use a public, open-source repo
  • branch with my customizations
• Added names for command-line flags in my Python scripts to make usage more obvious

Zestful

• Answered questions from a new customer

Misc

• Hired a local accountant and started working with them.
• Arranged a meeting with a local web development shop to talk about working with local businesses.
• Applied to speak at PyCon 2020

Beekeeping

• Had my state bee inspection
  • This is a free, voluntary service you sign up for through the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources
  • The inspector comes and checks out your hives with you and offers guidance and helps check for diseases
  • The inspection was really fun and informative. The inspector was super enthusiastic and happy about his job.
  • My bees are in mostly good shape, but one hive has a mite infection and both hives are accumulating moisture, so I need to fix those issues

Dusty VCR

• Switched RSS feed to anchor.fm
• Downgraded to the cheapest tier of Libsyn
  • I’ll cancel Libsyn once I confirm everything works smoothly uploading a new episode to Anchor
  • Once this is done, I’ll eliminate a $15/mo cost I was embarrassed to keep paying for a podcast that makes $0
• Got most of the way to reimplementing the website in Hugo
  • Current implementation is GatsbyJS Gatsby’s output is slick, but it’s way too complicated