MoneyCoach Diaries is my ongoing journey to turn my indie app into a more sustainable part of my business. First time reading? See what happened until now by tapping this link.
Hey you, It’s me again.
I hope you are doing alright and are getting ready for a relaxing weekend. These first 2 weeks have been insane. I needed to step out of my comfort zone and tinker with web technologies.
Wanna know why?
Old Website (as of March 2023)
Wordpress, bulky theme, 1000s css files and js files that we don’t use. Tens of plugins we don’t use. It served us well, or maybe not. We will never know.
What I know is that I took a screenshot last month and it made me furious AF. I used Google’s PageSpeed tool and I saw on mobile a score so low, even lower than the spring temperatures in Berlin.
15/100. Unacceptable. Time for a change.
New Website (This one 🚀)
I started the project last month, on March 20th, while under Ibuprofen. I thought to myself how hard could it be? It reminds me of Jeremy Clarkson (Gran Tour & Top Gear). In my bones I knew it would take longer, but it was something I wanted to do... like always.
April 09th
Finally finished the update post for March.
April 10th 01:50 AM
Just pushed the first official version of the brand new website.
Brand new design. Brand new technology stack. Blazing performance.
April 11th
Apparently I didn’t set up the metadata correctly. Or better, I didn’t set up them at all. Then I had to set up the Open Graph configuration for every single page and for every blog article. For those non technical, open graph links are rendered as rich links in social media and in messaging apps.
And as with pretty much everything in life, you don’t get them for free.
They need a title, description, the url (duh) and an appropriate image. Or a fallback one. I used Github copilot to help me with the copy, since every page needs to have a description. Then I submitted like 100 times the sitemap to Google.
Here are some tests with links that I sent to myself to see how they render.
I used also this web tool to help me out, OpenGraph. Check it out if you want to preview your links.
Just 3 hours later, we had new rich links and Krist created new images for my personal posts (like this one).
And migrated all the old one, for the world to see them.
Apr 12th
I had to help my wife with an app I made for her. It is called Feat and it is about creating personalised meal plans by a specialised nutritionist (she).
On the website side, we had to do minor improvements here and there. Add them up and you see an entire day of work (or even more) evaporate in an instant. The upside is that we now an amazing website that is fast and beautiful. And scales as it should on different form factors.
Apr 13th
I got a message from my iOS indie friend Kevin, saying that he fixed the CloudKit sharing in one of his apps.
As you maybe recall from my previous posts, we use CloudKit sharing in MoneySpaces, our other financial app for couples and families.
One month ago we had to completely remove sharing, because of some deep OS bug. Long story short, Kevin found a way to implement sharing using the old way recommended in iOS 14 and 15. He then passed me the code and I implemented it within a couple of hours.
Boom. Done. App live in the App Store.
If you want to manage your money as a couple and create shared budgets, take a look at MoneySpaces.
Apr 14th
I came to the office completely tired and feeling sleepy. I watched Ted Lasso until 03 AM, because I couldn’t sleep. I drank a cup of Cappuccino at 6PM, which was a big mistake. Oh and it’s Friday.
This was a short week because we had Easter Holiday here in Germany. Kids at home, yelling, playing and sucking all your vital energy.
So for the parents out there, you can imagine how I feel.
That was it for the first half of April. Talk to you soon.
Perjan
