I was a little bit under the radar for the last few days,
Didn’t have a chance to stop and update on the progress.
So finally, after a few days of deep working (while having the kids with us at home all day 🙈)
I can tell you about everything that I built over the last few days.
So, between customer support, bug fixes, and tracking features requests from users for ExtraDock and DockFlow
I managed to finish my new product, ExtraBar.
This app is a big challenge for me because it is so hard to explain, but after you start using it, you can’t stop 😅
So I am working hard on the website copy, creating some guide videos, and using cases to explain the app and how to use it.
The short explanation is that I built a way to create new menu bar items with custom actions, which unlocks so many options and improves productivity and efficiency while working on your Mac.
As soon as the website is live, I will share it with you and will be glad to have some feedback (hope that will be on Monday)
Attached the Hero section on my dev env 😃
BUT the most exciting thing that I built this week is a new blog system for all of my products 🤩
I will explain.
Today, for each product I have:
1. Homepage built with simple HTML with optimized assets, for fast loading.
2. WordPress website to manage the blog for the website serve the static home page using a custom functions file.
This setup evolved from building the home page with Elementor first for fast results, but it became unusable to work with Elementor and make changes as the website grew, so we built this override for the homepage to improve SEO and page results.
We had a few issues with this kind of setup:
Hard to maintain and update the homepage
Different WordPress versions, multiple sites to maintain, various plugins, slow load times, premium plugin dependencies, and limited customization options.
Managing the blog for each one of them in a separate admin panel, without any option to see all the blog schedules for all of them in one place.
These issues drive me to develop our own blogging system, and the result is amazing 🤩
From zero to a fully functional homepage with a blog system in 10 minutes,
Follow simple installation instructions using the CLI.
All the websites use the same blog package that I built, so when you need to add more features, publish a new version of the package, and all the websites can get the updates.
Advanced SEO tools built into the system with unlimited customization,
And the most helpful feature for us is full integration across multiple sides into a single Admin system that can manage the blogs for all the websites without the need to log in to each one and update them separately.
With a shared calendar, we can get the complete blog scheduling.
And the most exciting and geeky part of this project is that I built my dream programming environment setup using a simple CLI tool installer.
So for each new website installation, I get all the linting, testing, type checking, and the default packages I love to use out of the box, with all the configurations.
All the AI tools I use are installed by default, making it super easy to share with my team and ensure we are all using the same best practices and advanced tooling that make development faster and more efficient.
This post become too long already, but if you are interested, I will have more deep dive posts about this system 😅
We have a few days left until the end of the year,
I am going to push super hard over the next few days to launch my new product, get four products live, and start sales for the new one already this year. 💪