Techformist

Automatic Dynamic Sidebars in Vuepress

📅 Jan 8, 2020 · 📝 Sep 17, 2020 · ☕ 6 min read

How can you get automatic sidebars to be generated in Vuepress depending on the page? The Situation Vuepress is simple. Being simple is rather difficult. In the case of Vuepress, the difficulty can show up in unexpected places. Starting with Vuepress is simple enough. Equally simple is enabling navigation on your site at multiple levels through a “sidebar” and/or a “navbar”.

Refer Project Folder from NPM Package

📅 Jan 1, 2020 · 📝 Apr 30, 2020 · ☕ 1 min read

You can refer to other files/folders using a simple require or using basic node libraries. But, how can you do that with npm packages? The Problem When creating a bunch of Javascript files, here’s what you can do to refer other files - 1 const awe = require("../plugins/awesome.js"); This fetches awesome.

Summary of Posts

📅 Jan 1, 2020 · 📝 Jun 9, 2020 · ☕ 1 min read

This is a summary of the site that lists categories, tags and what not alongside the number of posts. Not quite useful for anyone other than the publishers.

Fastify and its plugins are great

📅 Dec 25, 2019 · 📝 Apr 30, 2020 · ☕ 3 min read

I had been meaning to use more of Fastify for work, but only made that a reality recently. So far I have had a great experience on the server framework. What is Fastify? Fastify is a low-overhead server framework built on top of NodeJS. Fastify was started in late 2016 and jumped to v1.

npm run does nothing at Svelte startup

📅 Dec 18, 2019 · 📝 Apr 30, 2020 · ☕ 2 min read

I was getting back to Svelte for a small project and ran into a strange issue. npm run dev did not run the svelte app as expected - no output or errors. First I create a new project. 1 2 3 4 npx degit sveltejs/template awesome-project-1 cd awesome-project-1 npm i npm run dev And, I get greeted with nothing.

Enable SSL for your VPS using VestaCP

📅 Dec 11, 2019 · 📝 Apr 30, 2020 · ☕ 2 min read

VestaCP is an easy to use control panel. You just need to know where to go for what! The Problem SSLs are de-facto standards for web applications of today. How can you enable SSL for your own web app, preferably for free? The Solution I am no Unix Guru and for the life of me, cannot enable domains, mails, etc.

Using Vuepress and other stories

📅 Dec 4, 2019 · 📝 Aug 29, 2020 · ☕ 9 min read

I am a big fan of Vue and cannot breathe without static sites. So, it is only natural that I play around and implement Vue-based static sites for fun and profit. Here’s a distilled-down version of my experience with Vuepress. The Situation I create static sites that are “real” websites. Typically the following factors in a static site generator help -

Simple Site Summary in Hugo

📅 Nov 25, 2019 · 📝 Apr 30, 2020 · ☕ 3 min read

Here’s a simple way to organize your taxonomies and have a bird’s eye view of the number of posts per category/tag in Hugo. The Problem As techformist.com grew, I became more and more disorganised in maintaining taxonomies. I had some interesting situations - a “static-site” category coexist with “static sites” category confusion b/w why I chose a few terms to be tags rather than categories in their own right the recurring need to “rethink taxonomy structure” depending on the flavour of the month and time of the day This often required me to go back and change a few taxonomy terms, or to reorganize site structure in order to provide better visibility to chosen topics.

Host your own site - 2020 edition

📅 Nov 18, 2019 · 📝 Apr 30, 2020 · ☕ 2 min read

Medium, Dev.to, Hashnode, Wordpress? Or, why should you invest in yourself rather than in platforms? The Problem Developers should write and write often. It may be anything - code snippets, ideas, thoughts, design principles, standards and what not. I have found that writing down things often forces me to solidify abstractions and get more clarity.

No Tracking Information Error in Git

📅 Nov 11, 2019 · 📝 Apr 30, 2020 · ☕ 2 min read

Aren’t you following the right way to git? Are you frustrated with the message “There is no tracking information for the current branch”? Keep calm and read on. The Problem I create new Git repositories all the time - just like any other developer. I am too stupid to notice the small things and learn my lessons - unlike any other developer.

Design Emails Using Bootstrap

📅 Nov 4, 2019 · 📝 Apr 30, 2020 · ☕ 3 min read

Wondering how you could apply modern UI design to emails? Here’s the answer. The Problem I don’t know about you - but emails are the last thing that I want to design. I end up sending plain text emails for most of my apps, and that works just fine. However, a few projects have more complex requirements.

Valuable Site of the Month (Oct '19) - Online HTML Editor

📅 Oct 31, 2019 · 📝 Apr 30, 2020 · ☕ 2 min read

We back with a valuable site of the month after a not-so-brief hiatus. Here’s presenting this month’s pick - an online HTML editor. No.. Not another editor HTML editors are aplenty. Anyone and everyone can whip up a quick site using TinyMCE, CKEditor and the like, provide a preview and call it a day.

Email for NodeJS app using separate server on CPanel

📅 Oct 25, 2019 · 📝 Apr 30, 2020 · ☕ 3 min read

Configure email server on a third party host using CPanel, while continuing your app server on your favourite VPS. Background Typically I configure email server to be on the same server as my NodeJS / PHP app. Bad practice? Sure. But, it works just fine for the kind of applications that I write.