Site News #16: New dashboard, and more

Hi graceful devs! Long time no news post, once again. And oh boy is there some news…

Content Updates

I’ve been mostly focused on site improvements, so we only have one new video since the last news update:

• RUBYOPT and the Sneaky Shim – an exploration of how to sneak temporary code patches into Ruby programs even when there’s no obvious point of insertion. This is the first episode to really show off some of the upgrades I’ve been making to my video production capabilities.

I’ve been digging into some Fediverse coding lately. Along the way I’ve been exploring Roda, Rodauth, and various applications of the Oauth2 spec. I’ve made notes for half a dozen topics along the way, so I’m looking forward to writing and producing some new episodes soon.

Site Updates

This is where I’ve been spending the bulk of my time, when not messing around with cameras and green screens.

• All-new member dashboard: Up until recently, the site had a single home page which served double-duty as a landing page for visitors, and a starting point for subscribers. In trying to serve two disparate purposes, it served neither well. But now there’s a brand new member dashboard page. It includes starting points, a quick way to resume the last course you were working on, site news, and more. And for new site visitors, there’s now…
• …a dedicated front page, whose only job is to explain Graceful.Dev to new visitors and invite them to check out the content. Tell your friends! 😁
• Complementing the new dashboard is a new Detailed Course Progress page, which will give you an in-depth look at all the courses you have access to and your progress in each.
• Site slimming: In pursuit of better site responsiveness, I’ve stripped out over ten site plugins. In some cases I consolidated overlapping functionality; in others I pushed features out to an external service; and in still others I identified ways to do without the functionality entirely.
• A new blog category for new content: Previously, I was only announcing new content via emails, and then periodically summarizing new content in these news posts. From now on, new content will be announced on the site blog under the New Content category–including links to which course(s) the content has been added to. New content notification emails will now be generated from these posts.

I know I’m probably leaving something out, but that’ll do for now. I hope you enjoy the site improvements! Stay graceful…

— Avdi