[00:00:00] Katherine Druckman: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Reality 2.0. I am Katherine Druckman. Doc Searls is traveling and having an interesting life this week, unlike Shawn and I, [00:00:09] Shawn Powers: No so grownups. No grownups, [00:00:13] Katherine Druckman: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The grownup has, has, has left us alone and, uh, we're gonna have fun. So, not that we don't have fun with Doc here, it's also fun, but we're gonna have a different kind of fun that involves, um, [00:00:24] Shawn Powers: Far less intellectualism, [00:00:27] Katherine Druckman: Oh, that's not true. Okay. Maybe it's true. So I, as you may have guessed by now, Shawn Powers has joined me for this episode this week. I might link to your tweet for some context, but basically Shawn and I had a conversation last week because we're both playing around with some personal projects that we want to put on the internet. And a website. So I actually, last weekend I redid my personal site. For a long time I had just had a static site and I decided to revisit WordPress cuz it's been a while. I'll talk a little bit more about that later, but, but what we really wanna talk about is why we love static websites and static website generators. So as part of this conversation that Shawn and I were having, I threw out the idea of using Hugo to generate a static site, and Shawn loves it. So, you know, maybe, maybe you can tell us a little bit more what you wanted it for and what you're. [00:01:22] Shawn Powers: I'm gonna shamelessly plug why I, I even was trying to set up a website. So I'm doing this, uh, 90 days of mayhem.com and basically I have to make a video every day for 90 days, which happens to be through the end of 2022. and I, that seemed like a good reason to have a website, you know, to like a central landing place. Cause it's not all on my YouTube channel, you know, it could be a TikTok video, it could be a alternate YouTube channel video. Anyway, just wanna have a central, uh, clearinghouse. That's the, that's the phrase. So intellectual. We can be without doc. Um, and I. I wanted it to be easy because I'm lazy. And so, because I didn't wanna do work, I spent half a freaking day to get like, uh, like they make, uh, flat file database content management systems. I don't, you've probably seen some of 'em, like Grav is one of 'em and, and there's like, there's like of 'em that are named simple or some variety of like super simple I mean, there's [00:02:24] Katherine Druckman: Easy get things on the web. Dot com. [00:02:26] Shawn Powers: Yeah, and they're all, they're all like, Oh, flat file, easy to, you know, just to folder full of files. And like I said, I spent half a day trying to get 'em going and then like half the time they, you can't. Like customized. I don't know. It just sucked. It was horrible. So at the end of the day, I just did what I should have done in the first place. Well, for that day, what I should have done in the first place, and I should, I just installed a WordPress site, right? I didn't wanna have to spin up a database just for a stupid, like 90 day website, but I did, and I found a, you know, I hunted way too long for a theme that I thought looked okay, and it looked fine. It wasn't. And I put it up, but then was whining about it, you know, in, in one of our like little, uh, private group chats and, and Katherine's like, Oh, that sounds like something you should use Hugo for. And I'm like, I tried all this stupid, like flat file database. And she's like, Oh, no, no. This is a, Oh, what is the, what is the term? Is a static site generator? Yeah. That, that's the thing. And I'm like, I, I don't know what that even means. And so I Googled it like any nerd would do. And oh my goodness, is that It literally, literally just makes a folder full of files and pictures, and your entire looks like it's this dynamic content management system. Um, it's just so cool. It is. And there's theming and, Yeah. [00:03:48] Katherine Druckman: So, let's talk about a couple things. One is, why is it perfect for a blog or a very simple blog? Two, what's so great about static websites? I have thoughts, but let, I wanna hear yours. [00:03:59] Shawn Powers: Um, I like it for the simple blog because at the end of the 90 days, it's literally a folder that will. Work forever. it, you know, it doesn't have to change. It doesn't have, I don't have to query a database. I don't have to, you know, make sure the database is kept up to date. I don't have to like, update my PHP stuff. It's just HTML files. There's nothing to hack, there's nothing too keep updated. It's just like perfect forever. And that, that means I can be ultimately lazy uh, just put it in a folder somewhere and be happy. Um, [00:04:39] Katherine Druckman: you never have to worry about, oh, that five year old WordPress site, I forgot about that. I wonder how many security [00:04:46] Shawn Powers: Well, and that's the thing, and it kind of goes into your second question, like, you know, you know, what is it and why? Why is it beneficial? And I think that's it, right? I mean, not only do I not have to worry about like, Oh wait, what server was this on? And, you know, do I have credentials to, you know, do, do my database credentials work on a secondary server? Does it have to be in the same server? You know, what if I. know what, if it migrates to another one of my VM platforms, how do I make sure that I don't lose connection to the database? But yeah, also the security things. I mean, uh, you know, when there's no SQL to inject, you don't have to worry whether or not you know you're vulnerable. I mention it's just HTML files? [00:05:23] Katherine Druckman: Yeah, [00:05:24] Shawn Powers: I mean, you build, Okay, that's not true. That's not true. whole Hugo infrastructure, I guess is this folder and there's like config files and they're either toml or yaml or, you know, and then the actual posts are, uh, written in markup markdown, not markup in markdown, just, you know, dot MD files. And, um, so you create your site that way, but then you build it, it generates. Folder, literally a folder called public and then it's full of the HTML files with folders and images and CSS and all that stuff that you need to make for the site to render. And then you can take the that public folder and put it on your web server. I actually don't build it on my web server. I build it on my local then I are sync this stuff over to my web server. So [00:06:09] Katherine Druckman: And there are a lot of really kind of nifty things you can do also. I mean, it's really, really, really easy to integrate with GitHub pages, [00:06:17] Shawn Powers: Yeah, [00:06:18] Katherine Druckman: think makes it great for like a little open source project maybe you've got going, you wanna promote. [00:06:23] Shawn Powers: Yeah. Because you can literally just like, so like you do it locally, mean, it's, it. It is a GitHub repository, right? Your, your website becomes a, repo, and then you make your changes, you Hugo. Like that's literally the command line that does the generation of the static part. And so you run Hugo and then yeah, you get push and it goes tune GitHub and apparent. Yeah. And then it's already deployed, right? Uh, so your whole website is, is deployed because I, I'm assuming I'd have never set up a Google or a get hub pages or whatever it is, website, but you just tell it what folder to serve out of, and I assume, because that's how Hugo works. And you can manage it. Like there are back ends from managing like the, the markdown files and stuff. I mean there's no, no fancy like how you have to create them and stuff. You just literally make sure you're creating them in the content folder, uh, in the proper way. You know, they do have like, each markdown page has like a header with information for Hugo, so it knows what to do with it. Like should this page have a table of contents for your whole site or should it nod? And there's a bunch of things that you configure. But you can manage those with whatever tool you want. Um, X there was one, I think you mentioned it. Maybe somebody else. I, I googled a lot, so I don't remember how much. [00:07:45] Katherine Druckman: Forest, [00:07:46] Shawn Powers: Yeah, that was, that was one of them. Yeah. Like forestry.io or something, or forest.io. [00:07:50] Katherine Druckman: Yeah, you, it's a backend nice admin interface for, for, you know, creating a, a real quote unquote real CMS that will generate, that will connect to Hugo and generate your nice static pages, and then you still don't have to worry about people trying to log into your WordPress site. [00:08:07] Shawn Powers: Yeah. And there are, so there are things that a dynamic site will get you, you know, that's, that's nice. comments if you want people to comment, obviously if it's a static site, what, what are they gonna do? But, [00:08:18] Katherine Druckman: Well, you could, You could have comments on a Yuko site. You could, [00:08:22] Shawn Powers: So what, there's, there's tons of ways you can integrate comments using something like discuss, dis discuss that site is. Um, or if you wanna, if you don't want them to host it, there's like some cacti program, not cacti. That's the. Graphing tool. It's like cactus something where you actually host a matrix server and comments become like chat on the matrix server that you're hosting. and then it just, know, the static site points each post to the proper place and the comments actually take place over on the matrix server, but they appear and render on the static site because it just pulls that information from somewhere else. So, I mean, it kind of sounds like you're taking. Wonders of a static site in making it dynamic. But again, the site itself is still, you know, still static. So I don't know, I just, I just liked it. [00:09:17] Katherine Druckman: Yeah, it's great. I, so it's been, oh gosh, it's probably been a few years since I played with it. I first played with it because somebody mentioned it over lunch at DrupalCon, and I don't remember what we were talking about, but I remember, you know, obviously Drupal isn't the best solution for every single type of site, right? And so sometimes you wanna create something simple. And this person I talked to was really enthusiastic about Hugo, so I thought, Well, I should go home and give it a try. And it was so easy. I had something up so quickly. Um, I, I didn't actually have a use for it particularly. I just was playing. But, but yeah, it was fantastic. It was, um, it was kind of eye opening of , like, wow, could, could the making websites really be this easy? [00:10:00] Shawn Powers: It's cool. Yeah. And it comes with a built-in server, which I, some people use the built-in server to host the webpage. Uh, I. I, I don't like that idea. Um, but what the, so you type like Hugo Serve and then it will serve on local host port 13. 13 or 1717, port. so you see what the completed copy of or the completed website will look like once it's generated. And if you make changes. The server for changes on files and updates the site that you're looking at in real time. so it's basically like while you're editing whatever updates you want to your page, you can run Hugo Serve, see the, you know what it's gonna actually look like, and then when you're happy with it, you just type Hugo and it will export the static site that will actually go live wherever you're hosting it. So it's, it's, you don't have to like keep, like, Okay, I think I got that Send it to the website. Look, see how it looks. You know, you get like this real time, how things are going. It literally changes, refreshes the page itself. If you make a change in a markdown file, it'll change, you know, on the screen. So it's a, it's a convenient way to. Make changes and not have to, like I said, go through the process of like exporting and uploading and then looking, you know, every time you make a change, you get to see the changes in real time. And I feel like, like, uh, I'm trying to sell it and I'm not. was just really cool and it, it, while it's so incredibly, can be so incredibly complicated, all the things you can do, it doesn't have to be, you know, I just got like a really simple template that came with, Is it template? Is that the word? Yeah, I guess So. that, was available. and, you know, I made a couple changes to the included config file, uh, that, you know, the template came with the site. Was great. You know, I didn't have to, I didn't have to do anything with or html and I mean, back in the day, uh, Katherine was literally you, I would message periodically when I was, you know, I worked at school district and I'm like, okay. And it was literally a Drupal site. Um, and I'm like, Okay. you go to this website and I'd give you a link and I'd say, See how that looks stupid? How How, do I make make this not look stupid? And you would like say, Oh, change this to this, and I did and it would be fine. thankfully, you, yeah. Um, I did not have to contact you one time, with this Hugo site. It was, that theme was clean. [00:12:23] Katherine Druckman: Part of it is the, the sort of out of the box ready made template, themes, whatever your, whatever your tool you're using calls them, there're so many good ones it's, you [00:12:32] Shawn Powers: Yeah, Yeah. There are. [00:12:33] Katherine Druckman: with a static site, you kind of feel like What am I looking for? You're less concerned with using the wrong template or theme from the wrong source. Or maybe [00:12:45] Shawn Powers: Yeah, I absolutely, Again, I, I've said it 18 times now, it just, it's a folder of HC on the files. I mean, that's literally all it is. And yeah, it uses JavaScript, but I mean, it, it's just, you know, your server is just hosting. Html. In fact, I turned off, um, on this virtual host, you know, 90 days of mayhem.com. I literally turned off PHP because I didn't need it anymore. Right. I mean, I, I don't need but the ability to serve out HTML and that's it, which is just really awesome. [00:13:13] Katherine Druckman: I mean, you could, you could add some JavaScript if You [00:13:16] Shawn Powers: Yeah. Oh, it uses JavaScript on the whole thing. I mean, yeah, if you go to this site, there's like all sorts of [00:13:21] Katherine Druckman: mean you don't have [00:13:21] Shawn Powers: things. No, no, but I mean, the, the. [00:13:23] Katherine Druckman: very, simple JavaScript free side if you want. [00:13:25] Shawn Powers: The theme or the template, whichever the term is in Hugo, uh, uses JavaScript pretty heavily. Um, but I mean, I don't have to, I don't have to render php, [00:13:34] Katherine Druckman: have Yeah, Or connect to a database or any [00:13:37] Shawn Powers: Yeah. Yeah, it's just pretty slick. So, so I, Oh, and fast, that's the thing too. So fast, [00:13:43] Katherine Druckman: Yep, [00:13:44] Shawn Powers: you [00:13:44] Katherine Druckman: My next was going to mention. [00:13:46] Shawn Powers: There's no database calls, there's no nothing. And, uh, I use for my web server. I use Caddy, which is not super popular, but I love Caddy as a, as a web server just on a Linux box. the thing I really like about it is it does SSL certs automatically. Like if you set up a virtual host and. Caddy will just do everything. It will, fetch, install, and keep updated. You don't have to run cert bot or anything like that. Uh, it's just built into this super fast and efficient web server caddy. So, because, uh, Hugo just exports html, know, you don't have to worry about what that looks like as far as like, uh, you know, is it secure? Is it not secure? What about, you know, is it gonna redirect to this or that? I just do all that with my web server and it's just, It's just the HTML in a folder. [00:14:41] Katherine Druckman: I know it's blissful. So that's, so that's, you know, I went back to WordPress last weekend just because I wanted to play with WordPress because I hadn't in so long and I felt like, I don't remember how to, I don't remember how to internet . And, uh, so I decided to spin up a little WordPress, and it was also very, very quick and easy, obviously. [00:14:59] Shawn Powers: It is, Yeah. [00:15:01] Katherine Druckman: it's a great user friendly piece of software. Um, but, and I'm probably, you know, full disclosure, I'm probably gonna add one of those little static site generator plugins eventually because it's, it's kind of nice because already I'm getting so many of these, um, You know, stats, notices on my dashboard saying how many people tried to log into my site. I'm like, Come on, really? I've had a static site there for so long because again, I got sick. I, I just didn't wanna deal with any software updates or, know, I didn't post new content enough to need any kind of real cms. So I just, you know, I literally just had a static HTML website as my personal site for the last several years. And I would just manually add stuff as necessary because I, I wasn't writing blog posts or, or doing any of that over there. And, and so it just wasn't necessary. So now I'm remembering, oh, right, this is what it's like to have, uh, that type of live personal site . It's not super, uh, [00:15:59] Shawn Powers: Yeah. You know, [00:16:00] Katherine Druckman: super convenient. [00:16:02] Shawn Powers: and, because I tend to. You know, down, go down rabbit holes with this sort of a thing. I'm thinking, oh, I could move like my main WordPress site, you know, brain of sean.com. I could, I could convert that to a Hugo site cuz there's ways, you know, you use, like you said, the simply static plugin for WordPress where you convert it to a static site and then you convert all that into marked down files and it's possible to do, um, I, it's, it's, it feels like a lot of work, right? My blog's been around since like 2005, That seems like a lot of work, so I probably am not gonna do that. I'll just keep maintaining the site. And also, I don't know how my podcast would work because my podcast is hosted on there, uh, while blog, whatever you call it, where I read my blog posts all on. It's, you know, it's with a plugin and I don't, I don't So I, I, no longer wanna do that. [00:16:51] Katherine Druckman: it's always a different question when you're talking about starting a new thing from scratch, [00:16:56] Shawn Powers: Yes. [00:16:57] Katherine Druckman: than migrating an old, an old thing, especially something that's been around that long, um, yeah, my migrating can be painful. [00:17:04] Shawn Powers: was impressed [00:17:06] Katherine Druckman: all about that. [00:17:08] Shawn Powers: So when I, when I was looking at like the flat file database versions of cms, you know, like Grav and stuff like that. The thing is, I don't think they scale well. I mean, the reason we use like my sequel is because it's, performant and it can scale and that sort of a thing, but if, If the flat file database, it's still, you know, querying a text file, know, every time it like dynamically builds the page. And I, I think that not only wouldn't it scale well, but I, I. I don't think that has the same, uh, sex appeal as, you know, a statically generated folder full of html. I feel I'm pressuring you to name the podcast folder full of HTML [00:17:46] Katherine Druckman: I think I might. think that's the [00:17:48] Shawn Powers: Uh, because it's, it's just so and so simplistic and it's, it's awesome. And I heard [00:17:56] Katherine Druckman: the lazy person's way to make a website really, because then you, you know, if you forget to check on it for a little while, it's gonna be just fine. [00:18:03] Shawn Powers: And you know how to back it up the same way you back up any other file because whether it's the Hugo Repository I, they probably have a special name for like the folder full of Hugo stuff, the website, that's just config files and markdown files and images, right? So I mean, you just back that up with, uh, whatever you would back up other stuff the. Statically generated website. I mean, you technically don't have to back it up as long as you're backing up your Hugo folder because you can, you know, recreate it at any moment. Um, but there's no database to worry about backing up. And, you know, I made videos on how to make and backups of databases, but it's, you know, another step and it's like, uh, restoring it as a pain and, and all that stuff. Whereas just a bunch of text files pretty. [00:18:47] Katherine Druckman: It is very awesome. So, you know, I kind of thought maybe we would go into, so what is it not good for? And obviously like we wouldn't have made Linux Journal with Hugo. That would've been weird, and not the right tool for the job. I've been reading a lot about headless CMSs and you know, I've, well, I've participated creating headless CMSs. And you know, again, there are, there are. So many different solutions there, depending on what the type of work that you're doing, but it just seems to me that this solves a specific type of problem that a lot of different applications have. So a personal blog, a a project site, a temporary site, something that's going to change a lot and you know, for a certain period of time, for example, 90 days like yours, it's going to change quite a bit in that time. But then after you're done with it, do you expect to update it or won't it just be an archive? [00:19:42] Shawn Powers: Yeah. it's gonna be an, I'm literally gonna put it in a folder, uh, you know, like 2022. Maybe I'll do it again next year. Maybe I won't, [00:19:49] Katherine Druckman: And, that, that's really common. Use case events. I don't know, elections, , um, you know, lots of things happen for, you know, there's, there's a lot of activity for a very brief period of time, and then you wanna just park it. Now, you could do that obviously with a cms, and you could, you could, you know, convert it to static at the end of it. why not start? [00:20:08] Shawn Powers: Yeah, I, and I, what I don't know is how, well it scales. I, I suspect it scales better than like a flat file database. know, CMS would scale, but I don't know. I mean, you mentioned, you know, we wouldn't have done Linux Journal on it. I, I wonder if we had to start from scratch, you know, at what point does it not make sense? I, I think there are definite use cases that are not good, and that would be multi users. I mean, it, this is a, this is a one person. [00:20:37] Katherine Druckman: Mm-hmm [00:20:38] Shawn Powers: mean, you certainly could accept that, you know, like, posts or articles and mark down and put them in the appropriate place. And I guess you maybe could share a GitHub repo and, manage the sites with, you know, commits and polls and pushes. And just, I don't know. I mean, so maybe it would scale that way, but, um, it feels like a multi-user environment begs. Something with, you know, a database and that sort of a thing where you're gonna mon people are gonna need to change their passwords for security sake and that sort of thing. This doesn't have, this doesn't have Right? The only security on the content part would be, you know, if it's, if it's a get repo, I guess that would be the, It's treated like source code [00:21:21] Katherine Druckman: Mm-hmm. I think actually, as I recall, the original reason I heard about this was somebody who did a lot of, let's say, small. Web web development work in addition to more complex web development work. And it was, you know, creating brochure sites for small businesses, for example, [00:21:40] Shawn Powers: Oh yeah. [00:21:41] Katherine Druckman: you know, major enterprise gazillion dollar sites. Um, and in that case, that's where where something like forestry, forestry.io, comes in because it, you can, you can hand this over to a completely non-technical person that doesn't know how to write and mark down, or, you know, even know what GitHub is, right? You can create a site for a client, for example, if you're a developer who does that kind of work. Um, and it's, it works perfectly well for that too, because then they have this nice little user interface log in, write their thing, very simple and clean from what I understand. I've never actually tried it myself, but uh, I know it's quite popular and I've looked at the demos and yeah, it's, um, I don't know. It's interesting. I, I, I. Follow people doing this type of work as much anymore. So I don't really know what's out there and what, you know, what, what tools are are very popular today. But I don't know. It's, if I were, this would be a, a place that I think I would start. [00:22:40] Shawn Powers: Yeah. What, You know, the next time I have to create a website, for, I'm going to at first through my head. Okay, does it make sense to this with Hugo? And there's a, there is a kind of a, I mean, it's easy to start, but to make something as beautiful and elegant as a, you know, a premade WordPress. It. There are pre-made, again, I don't remember if it's templates or, or themes with Hugo, but they still require, um, some work to make them exactly how you want. And I guess there, that's true with WordPress two, you know, this, configuration that, But the configuration is done in a config file. Um, and if you want to get, you know, uh, more. Elaborate, then the, then the template provides, you know, you have to actually start doing some code. Uh, but [00:23:33] Katherine Druckman: That's why. But if you're a developer, that, that, that's your [00:23:36] Shawn Powers: yeah, don't know. [00:23:38] Katherine Druckman: a front end developer is perfect [00:23:40] Shawn Powers: I wonder if there, you know, there's like paid WordPress themes, right? I mean, I literally bought a paid WordPress theme, you know, I own It's a very simple WordPress theme, uh, because I wanted all the professionalism that comes with paying for a product. You know, I didn't want to tweak it for, you know, six weeks only to have it break if I upgrade. And so, um, you know, I paid for that. I don't know if that exists for the Hugo environment or not, but anyway. [00:24:06] Katherine Druckman: sure it does. It must, But, uh, yeah, I don't know. I think it's, I I, I think the, I think what you, what you said a second ago though is, is kind of spot on is, is my thought process anyway. It's like you, you might now wanna start with, but if I can avoid using a database maybe I should just try that, right? [00:24:25] Shawn Powers: and, and not that it's difficult. [00:24:27] Katherine Druckman: Why put that vulnerability out there is you don't have to. [00:24:30] Shawn Powers: And like, you know, when I was talking about like, you know, does, does this user that's accessing the database, you know, does that user have access from this particular network address? what happens if it moves, can it reach it? I mean, all of those things are, if you just have one small site in the, the on the same server the server, you know, it's a little simpler, but I don't, it's still such a pain to do all that stuff and keep it updated. That's, that's really the, the unpleasant part. [00:24:59] Katherine Druckman: And can I just point out also in your case, you have a lot of websites going on, you have a stuff going on. is the tool, I can't remember the, the thing that you used to generate your, your sort of a online bio [00:25:11] Shawn Powers: Yeah. Yeah, that's called Little Link. Um, and it's actually, it's on the techno, Tim. He's another YouTuber in his GitHub repository. He's actually, Little Link is like this, uh, I'm sure to create one of those little like mobile sites. It's sean powers.com with a zero for though, and. He wrapped it inside of a simplistic web server. So it's a docker container now. So literally you just like edit environment variables and spin up the docker container and it runs, know? And then I just use caddy to reverse proxy, so I get SSL on it. But anyway, it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's one of those, it just generates a static site, you know, when it with the config file. So yeah. [00:25:56] Katherine Druckman: So, okay. I'm gonna go look. Sorry. We're gonna have, we're, we're shifting the focus now apparently to, uh, Sean Powers has a lot of sight. I'm pulling up Sean powers.com at the moment. Okay. For, since this is not a visual, sadly. [00:26:12] Shawn Powers: Well, we can, well, we can provide links. Yeah, we can provide links. And then, uh, I'll give the, you know, I'll make sure that you can put the link to techno Tim's, um, GitHub repo where he hosts the docker version of because that's really simplistic. [00:26:26] Katherine Druckman: where I'm going with this though is like, so you are, you're a creator, you're a creative guy. I've known you a long time and you're, you are a creator. It is what. Drives you, you create a lot of things. You write, you, you talk, you, you, you record video, you do all sorts of things, right? So you have, what's it, one, two, Okay. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, A store, Patreon, which you also actually post a Patreon, which not everybody does. Discord, a newsletter, a comic, a blog. Um, yeah, that's it. So, I mean, so you're managing a ton. stuff you're managing all these different platforms, which all have their own little idiosyncrasies and need to, you know, content formatted in a certain way or, you know, styled and, and so you're putting out all of this massive amount of content, which is challenging to everyone and you're also running the technology behind it. So, so let's just quickly , you know, cause seriously, this is actually. I think that's something that I think a lot of people would be curious about. Um, so, okay, we've already established, so this, this new project actually isn't linked here because it's not a dedicated, it's a temporary thing, Yeah. [00:27:32] Shawn Powers: I guess I could put it there. Uh, [00:27:34] Katherine Druckman: But we would find it linked from your blog. Probably. Maybe your Patreon. [00:27:38] Shawn Powers: uh you, bring up a good point. I haven't put it in lot places, Okay but 90 days. 90 days of mayhem.com. Yeah. 9-0 days of mayhem.com. [00:27:50] Katherine Druckman: So you've got that and that's, that is now a Hugo [00:27:52] Shawn Powers: It is, and it's the fastest of all the sites, uh, that I, that I host. And you know what? I probably, uh, you don't have to, you click on it, Yeah. [00:28:02] Katherine Druckman: Oh, that's cool. Um, so yeah, so let's talk about the tools that you do you use for these other [00:28:07] Shawn Powers: Yeah. So, and I [00:28:10] Katherine Druckman: you're using a, a lot of [00:28:11] Shawn Powers: I do WordPress for most things, right? Like, so I have, um, mybigroundworld.com is hosted on WordPress right now, but that is kind of the perfect, like absolute perfect thing for aesthetic site generated place because there's no comments on it, I don't think. I don't even have comments turned on. You know, it's, it's just a place to host the comments and if there's not, uh, a prebuilt theme slash for, uh, a comic. A web cartoon kind of thing. That would seem like something that would be pretty easy to make. only thing that I really want is something where I can click like a random button and have it go somewhere random. It seems like that would be something that could be done. I don't have to look into that. Um, [00:28:52] Katherine Druckman: That can't be that [00:28:53] Shawn Powers: and then I have, yes, I have the comic. Um, my blog brain of sean.com is on and that'll probably stay there cuz that's so, [00:29:00] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. [00:29:01] Shawn Powers: so big. And. [00:29:03] Katherine Druckman: I don you kind of wanna just for, for nostalgia, even just remember how to use WordPress. [00:29:08] Shawn Powers: Sort of, but [00:29:09] Katherine Druckman: kind of how [00:29:09] Shawn Powers: but that thing, [00:29:10] Katherine Druckman: a weird thing. I just, I feel like it's a basic skill one should have being [00:29:14] Shawn Powers: been moved, It's been moved so many times. And the database has been, you know, I've, I've taken a snapshot and re-imported a database on so many different servers, and now I'm hosting it myself. And, you know, I hadn't been hosting it for a long time. Um, it doesn't do auto updates on plugins. It. I have auto update turned on, and if you like, if you follow me on Twitter, I actually posted a screenshot every now and then because I find it so amazing. It's like this will auto update automatically in eight years, so I don't, At some point the database must have like not formatted correctly during an upgrade, and it thinks that the date of now and the date of when it will update is eight years away. So if I don't ever. Manually update plugins. Uh, my website won't update automatically. [00:30:03] Katherine Druckman: now you've just shared that vulnerability [00:30:05] Shawn Powers: Yeah. And I I, already did on Twitter. [00:30:09] Katherine Druckman: soul who's listening is going to be like, Oh, Sean, I know exactly why [00:30:12] Shawn Powers: Yeah. And I know, [00:30:14] Katherine Druckman: email, email, Sean, [00:30:16] Shawn Powers: And I. I know a guy who like does WordPress for a living, and he is like, Oh yeah, that's, it's a weird thing in a, in a database. Uh, they make plugins to like, Yeah, I don't remember the terminology he used, but it was like zap the gremlins. But that's not the terminology. Um, uh, yeah. Or like there's this weird like date field or something, I don't know, but I, I haven't fixed it yet. [00:30:37] Katherine Druckman: eventually, [00:30:38] Shawn Powers: And then I like have a review site that I kind of stopped using that's also running WordPress and I have. [00:30:43] Katherine Druckman: Which site was that? [00:30:44] Shawn Powers: It's reviews dot nerd links.net. [00:30:47] Katherine Druckman: Oh, okay. [00:30:48] Shawn Powers: Um, [00:30:49] Katherine Druckman: Like, I don't remember. Oh, no, I do know what that one is. I know where that is. [00:30:52] Shawn Powers: Um, and [00:30:53] Katherine Druckman: So, and where your newsletter is, Subs Stack. [00:30:56] Shawn Powers: it is, I don't host that one myself, so yeah, that's sub [00:31:00] Katherine Druckman: Stack is so easy to use. I mean, the, the newsletter that we occasionally send out for this podcast is SubsStack, and it's, it's incredibly user friendly. It's, [00:31:07] Shawn Powers: It is. And I, you know, they do have the option to have paid newsletters. And I know like, uh, Phil Plat, the bad astronomer, a bad astronomer, that's what he calls himself. I'm not saying he's like a not astronomer. Um, he has a, a paid version of his newsletter and you know, it, it makes for a nice monetization platform. But even if you just are doing a newsletter and you just. Host it. It's, it's, their free stuff is pretty nice. I like that. They also do podcasting stuff. I don't know if you've looked at that. I, [00:31:37] Katherine Druckman: I, I, I mean, I've clicked around and, and read the, it looks like a pretty, a nice way to start up something, especially if you started with a newsletter and then wanted to launch a podcast. It seems like a pretty easy to use [00:31:49] Shawn Powers: Yeah. [00:31:50] Katherine Druckman: Let's see, what else? The store, what Is that [00:31:53] Shawn Powers: That's Shopify that's, I pay for [00:31:56] Katherine Druckman: Of course. Why wouldn't you use Right. All right, so you know how to use everything. [00:31:59] Shawn Powers: Yeah. Shopify's expensive though. I mean, I should be using what? What is it? WordPress and WooCommerce or something, but I think that costs money too. Now. I don't even know. Everything costs money except Hugo [00:32:12] Katherine Druckman: I think we've already talked in the past about the tools you use to do your comic, but maybe. [00:32:17] Shawn Powers: It's switched on and off. Yeah. Uh, right now I, I use full up Adobe Photoshop. I mean, just, I have the cloud subscription. I use educational discount, which you're allowed to use for commercial purposes, which I looked up to make sure before I started like making a comic, which I actually don't like money from. But, you can, if you have a college email address, you can get. The full Adobe suite for 30 bucks a month instead of 50 bucks a month. [00:32:48] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. [00:32:49] Shawn Powers: you're allowed to use it for commercial purposes still. So, um, don't even need a code. But anyway, I use Adobe Photoshop to draw my comic. I tried to use, uh, what is it? Clip studio paint. That's like what most, uh, web comics use. Uh, clip studio paint is the defacto for, uh, drawing professionals. And I don't think I'm professional enough cuz it does so much that it makes my brain hurt and I just can't figure out how to do simple stuff with it. So. [00:33:20] Katherine Druckman: Have you, have you played anymore with Adobe Character Animator? [00:33:23] Shawn Powers: No, not anymore. I haven't had time and, but that's actually probably the reason I'm gonna keep using the Adobe because Character Animator was so easy to use. mean, it uses your webcam, like you have to string up a puppet they call it. So like, I Drew Blue and like you just, uh, like attach like. Like bones to like legs and stuff, and he doesn't have arms, so that made that easier. Um, and you know, I had to draw a bunch of layers. Like his eyes are in multiple layers where a pupil is one layer, you know, the eye is another layer, all that sort of a thing. But once it's, uh, and it took me a couple hours, but then you, you look at your webcam and as talk, he like his mouth and like gestures and head moves and stuff. So it's really easy to actually make the, the video do stuff. It'll right up with a voice. And even if you're not using webcam for motions, uh, you can use a recorded audio and it will, uh, lip sync up so that you know the mouth part, which is the most difficult part, you know, it will sync up after the fact. So, yeah, it's pretty slick. [00:34:31] Katherine Druckman: I played with it a little bit. It, it was pretty cool. Someday on my to-do list, you know, for some spare time that I get someday is to make a, like a animated trailer for this podcast. Little animated doc and [00:34:42] Shawn Powers: Oh yeah, you could like go to, I mean you could go to Fiber or whatever and have somebody draw characters for you. And you know, as long as you're willing to go through and make the puppet, um, uh you know somebody who draws caricatures, I think that would be [00:34:56] Katherine Druckman: no, eventually that's definitely happening. Eventually being, I don't know when, but yeah, I'm definitely, It just seems like [00:35:03] Shawn Powers: If I was a real artist, I would draw caricatures of you, but I am not. That's why my characters are square with no arms. [00:35:10] Katherine Druckman: we could just be square in [00:35:11] Shawn Powers: Yeah. What color do you wanna be? That's the only, the only option. What color do you wanna be [00:35:16] Katherine Druckman: Oh, too funny. But yeah, I mean that's kind of honestly, Okay, so that's kind of where I'm going with, with all of the seemingly unrelated. Conversation, but I swear I have a point. . And that is, so, so we started this conversation with, it's really easy, you know, with the, there are certain tools now to, to just really easily create a web presence, but that's only the beginning of the battle, right? The, the rest is you've got to have something to put there or else you might as well just have a one page static site with you know your name and your bio and a link to LinkedIn or whatever it's that you do. Um, so, so yeah. So where I'm going with this, How are, how do you do this? I bet I'm not the only person. I bet a lot of people out there, even who listen to us and have talked, heard you speak to us before, are wondering how do you, how are you doing all this? How much content do you produce? I mean, I know that it comes so naturally [00:36:08] Shawn Powers: Not as. much as I'd like, and it, This is funny, maybe I talked about this on, on this podcast, maybe not, but I got Patreon supporters, was more difficult for me to create content because I felt like it had to be worthy. I felt like I, you know, my perfectionist beast or whatever, reared its ugly head and like, Okay, people are paying for me to create content. deserve the best. And so then I never get started because it's never gonna be good [00:36:35] Katherine Druckman: Right. You have like stage fright, performance, anxiety, whatever you wanna [00:36:38] Shawn Powers: Yeah. Yeah. And [00:36:39] Katherine Druckman: I, I get it. I , I'm there with you. Most of the [00:36:42] Shawn Powers: that's why 90 Days of Mayhem born because I, I have to do a video every day so I can. I can't worry too much about, you know, oh, is it gonna be perfect? Is it gonna be everything? Everyone's always expected? And so forcing myself to do it is, how I'm doing that. But, uh, how do I do everything else? I, I don't have a good answer for that. And I think that's something that plagues, you know, creative folks, you know, artsy, fary folks, whatever you wanna call us. Um, Uh, for example, I spent far too long the website, 90 days of mayhem.com, [00:37:14] Katherine Druckman: Not enough [00:37:15] Shawn Powers: could have been making content [00:37:18] Katherine Druckman: I'm, Yep. yeah, yeah. I'm, you [00:37:20] Shawn Powers: you know, I've spent more [00:37:21] Katherine Druckman: down my to-do list and not quite ticking it off. [00:37:25] Shawn Powers: I mean my, to-do, Okay. Next to me. I have all this awesome whiteboard stuff and I spent a couple days which ones to buy and hang up. Have they helped at all? of course not. But I spent days getting ready to be more organized. [00:37:41] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. No, I, I, I actually do spend a fair amount on organizational tools as well. It actually does help in my case. But, uh, yeah, I feel, I feel, I feel your pain on that one. It's, it's tough, you know? It's, um, and so here's a question actually. So you were talking about creating a, a new video every day. This is not the first time you have done this way back. Remember back when we were young, um, [00:38:02] Shawn Powers: uh, [00:38:03] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. When we first met, when we were still young and full of energy and, and, yeah. You produced a video every day for Linux Journal About what? 10 years? [00:38:12] Shawn Powers: Was it every day? remember how often I did it. It was all, it was often [00:38:15] Katherine Druckman: Remember it was called the Tech Tip of the Day. [00:38:18] Shawn Powers: Oh, [00:38:19] Katherine Druckman: You did so much content and it was excellent. Did you not, Did you not have, I mean, we, Not to scare you, you know, after the fact that that's a lot of, that was a lot of traffic. You were getting a lot of eyeballs on that stuff. Back in the good old days. We got a ton. [00:38:34] Shawn Powers: Yeah. Well, I mean, YouTube was, [00:38:36] Katherine Druckman: the spotlight? [00:38:37] Shawn Powers: uh, I mean, YouTube was us and like the Vlog Brothers, and that was about all the people that were [00:38:41] Katherine Druckman: probably true [00:38:42] Shawn Powers: were there. no, I, I don't, So the only, the only thing the pressure bothers me about is, like I said, if, if people are investing, I feel like I owe them, uh, something worthwhile. And so I have to get outta my head a little bit, but I, I. I'm kind of a camera slash mike who I really like to be I really like to be on camera [00:39:04] Katherine Druckman: you have such a nice microphone. You sound [00:39:06] Shawn Powers: That's really, that's the secret. just have to buy a nice [00:39:09] Katherine Druckman: disclaimer about how crappy I sound today. Apologies [00:39:12] Shawn Powers: Well, you are remote. [00:39:13] Katherine Druckman: my nice microphone. I'm remote. Yes. I, I too am traveling and, and having a life ish, but [00:39:20] Shawn Powers: It doesn't sound bad though, to be honest. I mean, you know, nobody will, nobody will know that we tried like two or three different mics beforehand. But, but it, it sounds pretty good. No, [00:39:30] Katherine Druckman: Yep. Well, cool. Uh, yeah, I, uh, yeah, it's, I understand where you're coming from about pressure. I'm having a really hard time creating content now, like right just, just right now, and I'm is part of my job, , and, uh, but it's not, I feel like suddenly just because when you're starting a new thing, when you're starting a new job, a new project, a new website, a new 90 days of mayhem.com. I feel like inevitably you're going to have some anxiety about this. The, is your content going to be f to snuff? Is it going to, you know, is it going to fit the bill? Is it, you know, are people going to realize, Oh my God, she's an imposter. It's true. She doesn't know anything. Um, Yeah. And so I, Yeah, I completely understand where you're coming from. It is, it is a, it's a tough thing. And so, yeah, it's that, that's probably why I'm, you know, I'm asking you these questions because it's, tough force yourself into this mode of 90 days of everyday, know, creating every day. [00:40:30] Shawn Powers: If you think people are, are discovering that you're an imposter, like we all are, I highly recommend dying your hair green because that's all people see, and that's all they'll focus So, you know, just distract them. [00:40:40] Katherine Druckman: a good idea. I should probably do that. Maybe, maybe, maybe not green. Maybe like, uh, I don't know what color I could pull off. Fire engine red. I don't [00:40:48] Shawn Powers: See, I thought about pink because pink is kind of my thing, right? I wear pink hat. I, like pink, but I'm so pale that if I wear pink, I just look like a, like an anemic clown. It's just not great [00:40:58] Katherine Druckman: a bottle of Pepto . . [00:40:59] Shawn Powers: yeah yeah. It's, it's not great. It's not Good [00:41:02] Katherine Druckman: I have the same, I'm already pink enough. Like I can't have my face pink. Um, yeah. Oh, anyway, on that note to content creation. [00:41:13] Shawn Powers: You do have to decide, right? Like, uh, I haven't done a review on my review site in a very long time. Um, my comic has suffered ever since Covid, when I now sleep like an extra four hours every day. And I hope that ends someday soon. Um, but I, you know, you do have to decide I think it's easy to overcommit. Uh, so have to be able to. Uh, I, hate to say prioritize because that makes it sound like I, I have any semblance of how to prioritize things. I just mean that if you have a bunch of different [00:41:43] Katherine Druckman: decide what you're most [00:41:44] Shawn Powers: Something, Yeah. Cause I don't know that my prioritization is a healthy when it's just like, what is the most interesting that I can follow at any given moment. Um, It's good for me to be able to do different things too though. Like, uh, if I'm, if I feel burned out about videos, well for the next 90 days, I'm screwed, but, uh, I can, you write a blog post or I can draw a comic. So it's nice to have not just one thing to do, which makes this whole 90 days thing. Just sounds like a stupid idea. [00:42:16] Katherine Druckman: yep. I, I totally [00:42:17] Shawn Powers: That is. It's a stupid idea. Yeah. Yeah. Here. [00:42:20] Katherine Druckman: No, no, no, no, having lots of different, different, uh, outlets for your, uh, creative energy, [00:42:27] Shawn Powers: Yeah. Yeah. [00:42:29] Katherine Druckman: Sometimes you're just not feeling like talking into a microphone to record a podcast. But you are today. [00:42:34] Shawn Powers: I'm gonna say that I don't, that doesn't really happen to me. I'm always willing to microphone. I could. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't even have to be plugged in. It's like when you give your sibling a a game controller that's not plugged in, just give me a microphone, I'll talk into it. [00:42:48] Katherine Druckman: That's awesome.