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+Document: WM-031                                                 P. Webb
+Category: Project                                             2018.04.17
+
+                           Socii Dispatch 04
+
+Abstract
+
+   If you want something done right…
+
+Body
+
+   In the almost two months since my last dispatch I moved my life from
+   New England to Tennessee, started working on a new product, and
+   learned of a couple other social networks in development. This might
+   be a long read, make yourself comfortable.
+
+   1. Why Move?
+
+      The rent was too damn high! Also, with my skills I can work
+      anywhere. Why not live in a place where the weather is (generally)
+      better and the price of living is more agreeable?
+
+   2. New Product
+
+      While working on Socii, I made the conscious decision not to add
+      an analytic script for two reasons:
+
+      1) *I* use ad blockers and it is safe to assume that the people
+         who would join Socii do too. Therefore, my analytic script
+         would be blocked. Why bother adding one in the first place?
+      2) Gauges (the analytics provider for all my other sites) has been
+         sold at least three times. They could get sold to Google or
+         Facebook at some point and I am fundamentally opposed to using
+         their products.
+
+      However, this became a hindrance at some point because Socii would
+      error on a route and crash (unhandled promise rejections are
+      bad!). I started thinking about having a service that could plug
+      into my codebase with *minimal change* while also showing me where
+      things happen.
+
+      Enter Chew (analytics you can count on)!
+
+      📸[Homepage of Chew][IMG1]
+
+      It works by capturing the request object in your (Express 4)
+      middleware and sending the relevant data to Chew. I spent a couple
+      weeks working on this and it's *just about* ready for private
+      testing (basically, me using it on my own sites and fixing bugs
+      that occur). All you need to get started is a free Chew account
+      and two lines of code in your Express-based app: importing the
+      Chew npm package and a single line in your middleware.
+
+      As usual, I learned some things along the way and I look forward
+      to applying these new learnings to Socii. I tend to refactor (and
+      write more code comments) as I develop so I can help my future
+      self when something needs fixing (or removal, I love when I can
+      remove code).
+
+      Naturally, I used Socii as a base for Chew and came up with a very
+      basic SaaS boilerplate:
+
+      📸[My SaaS boilerplate, 1.0][IMG2]
+
+      The left side refers to self-explanatory services while the right
+      side shows you the URLs each service would be reachable at.
+
+      The admin console is new to me and I haven't actually created one
+      yet but I like the idea of a master interface being made available
+      to admin users, instead of embedding admin controls inside the
+      app. Separation of concerns, yes. More stuff to manage? Of course!
+      The tradeoff is worth it to me.
+
+      Thanks to the power of Nginx and reverse proxies, you can run all
+      of these on the same physical server! Probably shouldn't have the
+      CDN there though. For Socii, I have a service that optimizes
+      images before placing them in storage (DigitalOcean Spaces, their
+      version of Amazon S3).
+
+      Once I have Chew launched and the notifications feature launched
+      in Socii, I'll start working on open-sourcing my SaaS boilerplate.
+      I just realized this is a great time to segue.
+
+   3. Social Networks
+
+      I frequent HackerNews and commented on a post[1] where someone
+      listed their social network feature wishlist. Of course, I plugged
+      Socii because it will match (most of) what they want when it is
+      feature-complete. I fully expect downvotes and was pleasantly
+      surprised to see the opposite occur! Furthermore, other people
+      working on social networks reached out to me via LinkedIn and
+      email. Unfortunately, aside from initial introductions I haven't
+      conversed with these folks. I hope that changes soon, we could all
+      learn from each other.
+
+      It is quite obvious that "social" is on the mind of everyone and
+      I'm glad that people are trying their hand at improving
+      the Internet. 🕸
+
+References
+
+   [1]    <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16821172>
+   [IMG1] <https://🔥.pixels.wtf/blog/image/2018/socii-dispatch-04-a.png>
+   [IMG2] <https://🔥.pixels.wtf/blog/image/2018/socii-dispatch-04-b.png>