Author
Jan 18th, 2021
Shortly after my daughter was born, I started emailing her. I wanted to share stories with her before I would forget them. I made her a website so friends and family can also share stories with her.
About The Project
One of the reasons I enjoy Jamstack development is decoupling. The idea of separating services, selecting the right stack for the project I'm working on is invaluable. For this build, I wanted to accomplish was a landing page for my daughter, a few pictures that we can share, and most importantly, a way for our friends and family to send her a message.
During the research phase of this project, I came across Kwes.io. Kwes.io is developer focus, they handle the heavy lifting, and implementation is pretty straight forward. I talk about the reasons why I went with Kwes.
VercelGraphCMSTailwindSome Project Details
Why I decided on Kwes.io for this build
While planning this build, I had one prerequisite, a contact component that would allow friends and family to share stories with my daughter without sharing her personal Email address. It was also a significant constraint, and I wanted to box myself in early in the process. The main reason is that such a small subset of people will never get to this website, and I wanted to build and push it to production quickly.
After spending an hour brainstorming and researching, I stripped away much of my original design. I got rid of my image carousel idea and decided to use a form service (free) to manage the contact component for me.
Kwes.io is an excellent example of decoupling your build. The way Kwes works is, your user fills out a form on your app, submits it, and Kwes takes over. The submit request is routed to Kwes.io, it then gets saved to your dashboard, and you also get a message from Kwes.io letting you know someone has submitted a form on your website.
Although I love the service, Kwes doesn't come without its faults. As of writing this, the biggest is you have to keep your form's default state, meaning your app will refresh once the form is submitted. The free version doesn't offer a redirect, so your users will be back at the root of your app after submitting the form.
Kwes.io might not work for most developers, but for me, it's okay. I wanted to keep in my constraints and build this as quickly as possible. The tradeoff was worth it.
Brainstorm, Research, Prototype, and Build.
Conclusion
I learned quite a bit with this project, and there are also so many things I want and have to change. I started giving myself constraints, so I don't spend days fixating on one component of one project. That mindset has improved my workflow. I'm still learning software development, and repetition helps cement concepts for me. When I get stuck, I'll try and fix what's broken, but I'm patching what's broken in most cases.
I set a goal to build one project a week, and I knew it was a loft goal from the start. The only way to see it through is to move quickly and be as efficient with my time as possible.
Working with constraints helps me hone in my projects, develop more concisely and thoughtfully. When you're starting your next project, set rules for yourself, it'll seem counter-intuitive, but see it through; I think you'll see the benefits your build at the end.