A quick update on this glorious hump day, just in time before I head out to the Atlanta PHP meetup (https://phpxatl.com).

Tomorrow, May 21st at 11:30am EDT I’ll be chatting with Brian Casel (https://briancasel.com) about his recent launch of Instrumental Components (https://instrumental.dev). Join us in the stream and if you have any questions for Brian or myself you can get them answered live!

Subscribe and join the stream: https://youtube.com/live/LyMjPhkHk3k

I am also going to be streaming to https://stream.place, a new streaming platform geared towards the Bluesky/ATProto community. So it should be fun adding another destination to consume the stream from. And, I floated the idea out on LinkedIn to see if people would be interested in watching the stream there, but just waiting to see if I can get a good signal from there or not to justify adding it.

So, with that said, hopefully you can find the stream wherever you prefer to consumer your streaming content and we look forward to seeing you there.

And, on the Starter Packs front, https://www.starterpacks.net, I ended up getting a pretty big hosting bill last month that would make the project unsustainable if it were that high moving forward, so in an attempt to reduce costs, and because I was meaning to explore it anyways to make navigating the site potentially faster, I converted all `/profile/...` pages to use ISR (Incremental Static Regeneration). My hope is that by rendering and caching these pages indefinitely, I will serve more cached versions of the pages and reduce some of the edge requests and function invocations previously required to serve those pages. It does introduce some complexity when it comes to revalidating those pages in the future, but this is just a means to try to cap costs, and if it works I can figure out how to keep everything fresh, while still being optimized. So stay tuned...

To follow along, you can find me at https://www.ryanhefner.com, follow me on Bluesky @ryanhefner.com (https://bsky.app/profile/ryanhefner.com) and keep up with the show on https://www.allplay.fm and @allplay.fm (https://bsky.app/profile/allplay.fm).

Help yourself, while supporting the show, by trying some of the services that I use, and highly recommend:
Transistor FM (https://transistor.fm/?via=allplay)
Fathom Analytics (https://usefathom.com/ref/EKONBS)

#buildinpublic #podcast #startups #webdevelopment #webdesign #bluesky #indiedev #bootstrapping #indiehackers

I listened to a podcast episode back on January 30, 2025, and there are 3 little words that have been bouncing around in the back of my head ever since whenever I turn on the mic to stream or record, "oil your chair".

The podcast episode was from Justin Jackson (https://justinjackson.ca) and Jeremy Enns (https://jeremyenns.com) on their Podcasting Marketing Trends Explained (https://podcastmarketingacademy.com/podcast-marketing-trends-explained) podcast. Here’s a link to the specific episode:

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-10k-timeline-how-long-it-takes-to-reach-10k-dl-ep/id1725822754?i=1000651165287
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/0ojnaFU34BTMzAUEaJpLB9?si=75f58475b5824473
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbT9Z-glsrM&list=PLSbtUoUeEbPIsWA2_cM91SN3HJuUnEOz9&index=16

What's wild is that when I recorded this episode I had thought that it had only been a couple weeks since I had listened to that podcast episode, but it turns out it has been almost 4 months 😬, and it took me that long to oil my chair.

This episode digs into the little things that I (we) have a tendency of putting off. Things that you know exist, and could be easily addressed, but yet the task goes uncompleted, and consumes some of the cognitive space in the back of the head, throwing off wasted cycles whenever it resurfaces, instead of using those for things that really matter.

I’ll get back to sharing some project updates in the next episode, but just wanted to share a little thought piece about procrastination, or clearing the mind.

To follow along, you can find me at https://www.ryanhefner.com, follow me on Bluesky @ryanhefner.com (https://bsky.app/profile/ryanhefner.com) and keep up with the show on https://www.allplay.fm and @allplay.fm (https://bsky.app/profile/allplay.fm).

Help yourself, while supporting the show, by trying some of the services that I use, and highly recommend:
Transistor FM (https://transistor.fm/?via=allplay)
Fathom Analytics (https://usefathom.com/ref/EKONBS)

#buildinpublic #podcast #startups #webdevelopment #webdesign #bluesky #indiedev #bootstrapping #indiehackers

Some quick updates on the status of https://www.starterpacks.net and announcing the new project that I am working on!

Since the last update, the crawlers have been crawling—HEAVILY—accessing the site over 24M 👀 times. Needless to say, my Vercel bill is going to be a little higher this month, but 🤞 it will be worth it. Since the last update where the number of indexed pages jumped from 3k to 17k, since the last episode that number rose as high as 45k indexed pages, but recently dropped a bit to 34k.

I think the indexes is going to be a bit of a cat and mouse game, but my hope is that more indexed pages will generally be better for driving more organic traffic to the site. As the crawlers are crawling, I am working on some articles that will showcase some of the features, and also focus on some keywords that I am going to try to start ranking for. So, no new feature development for now, but going to see how traffic to the site goes over the next couple of weeks as I focus on SEO and content.

On the development front, new things are in full swing on a new project that is also focused on the Bluesky platform and community. The project called, Skylounge, and it can be found at https://www.skylounge.social. The goal is to build a X/Twitter Spaces alternative for Bluesky, that also embraces all the things I love about the open web.

Over the last week I have been streaming the development of the project, with the goal of sharing the process and approach that I am taking for the app, along with trying to multiply the return on my effort of building. So far it has been going pretty well, but I am really looking at these live streams as an opportunity to do some co-working with people, so if you have a project you are working on and want to share what you are doing during the live stream, I am down to share your work and even have you jump on the stream—if you want!

My goal is to launch the initial version of the site on Release Day, happening Friday, May 30. If you have something you have been working on—or putting off—maybe you want to use some social accountability to fuel getting it down. You can find out more about Release Day here: https://www.creativequests.world/releaseday

Ok, I have been rambling on. If Skylounge sounds interesting and you want to be one of the early people to sign-up and help me test it out, please go to the site and sign-up to be included on the mailing list I will be using to share updates: https://www.skylounge.social

To follow along, you can find me at https://www.ryanhefner.com, follow me on Bluesky @ryanhefner.com (https://bsky.app/profile/ryanhefner.com) and keep up with the show on https://www.allplay.fm and @allplay.fm (https://bsky.app/profile/allplay.fm).

Help yourself, while supporting the show, by trying some of the services that I use, and highly recommend:
Transistor FM (https://transistor.fm/?via=allplay)
Fathom Analytics (https://usefathom.com/ref/EKONBS)

#buildinpublic #podcast #startups #webdevelopment #webdesign #bluesky #indiedev #bootstrapping #indiehackers