8 | The Tech Behind jamesqquick.com (Gatsby and Sanity)

COMPRESSEDfm

In this episode, James and Amy discuss the tech behind jamesqquick.com. This site was built on top of Gatsby and Sanity. They discuss the decisions James made along the way and the things he might do differently.

SPONSORS

Pathwire / Mailgun / Mailjet

Pathwire is a powerful email API and intuitive email marketing solution that delivers over 250 billion emails a year for 400,000 companies around the world.

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Vercel

Vercel combines the best developer experience with an obsessive focus on end-user performance. Their platform enables frontend teams to do their best work. It is the best place to deploy any frontend app. Start by deploying with zero configuration to their global edge network. Scale dynamically to millions of pages without breaking a sweat.

For more information, visit Vercel.com

ZEAL is hiring!

Zeal is a computer software agency that delivers “the world’s most zealous” and custom solutions. The company plans and develops web and mobile applications that consistently help clients draw in customers, foster engagement, scale technologies, and ensure delivery.

Zeal believes that a business is “only as strong as” its team and cares about culture, values, a transparent process, leveling up, giving back, and providing excellent equipment. The company has staffers distributed throughout the United States, and as it continues to grow, Coding Zeal looks for collaborative, object-oriented, and organized individuals to apply for open roles.

For more information visit their site.

Show Notes

0:00 Intro

3:05 Context in building jamesqquick.com

4:46 Deciding to rebuild the site on Gatsby

• Gatsby - https://www.gatsbyjs.com/

6:29 Upgrades and improvements from moving off WordPress

8:28 The Gatsby Plugin Ecosystem

9:03 Sending your RSS feed to Dev.to for cross-posting

• Tutorial: Publishing a Post Pulled in via an RSS Feed

12:18 Hosting

13:00 Sponsor: Vercel

13:49 Moving from Markdown to Sanity

21:35 Email Marketing

• MailChimp
• ConvertKit
• Podia

22:25 Serverless Functions

23:14 Sponsor: Pathwire

• MailGun - http://mailgun.com
• MailJet - http://mailjet.com

25:18 React Ecosystem

26:12 React Awesome Reveal

26:37 Font Awesome for Icons

27:14 For styling, using Scss

• Difference between Scss and Sass

30:45 Sponsor: ZEAL

31:19 Things you'd do differently

• Styled Components
• Tailwind CSS
• Next.js

35:14 Grab Bag Question #1: If you are the only updating Sanity, can you host it locally or does it need to be accessible online?

36:12 Grab Bag Question #2: When will you migrate your site to Next.js?

36:24 Grab Bag Question #3: How do you like Sanity as an authoring experience?

37:29 Picks and Plugs

37:40 James's Pick: Tripod with a Selfie Light

38:34 James's Plug: James Q Quick on YouTube

38:55 Amy's Pick: Hunt a Killer (30% off)

40:30 Amy's Plug: SelfTeach.me on YouTube