Tech & Lifestyle Blog

There's a new website in town

Oct 21, 2016

Hello there... Long time no speak...

Finally. Today is the day. The next version of yearofmoo is here. Yes the design, the frontend and backend code and the entire persona of the website have gotten a giant revamp.

Today is a good day.

It sure took forever

Yes good ol' YOM has been out of commission regarding Angular and front-end web development material for close to two years now. Sorry that it took so long to build. Really. I have had the deep-rooted need to get back into blogging, but I kept forcing myself to wait until the website is done and to channel that blogging energy into building the website.

Guides/Videos & Blog Posts

The website learning material is broken up into Guides/Videos and Blog posts. This split allows for the formal, knowledge-dense material to be in its own area. Information residing in this area of the website will be a collection of rich guides (much like yearofmoo has always done) and videos (conference/meetup talks, in-house and outside videos).

Other areas

There's a kick-ass about page that tells about the website and who I am and where the world of web-development, Google and Angular have brought me. Spend some time and browse the website and see what you think. And please ofcoarse to subscribe to the newsletter and shoot me an email if you want to connect.

How the website is built

The website uses a wonderful nodeJS-based static-site generator called Hexo. Hexo does the job of packaging everything so that the site can be developed in a dynamic, DRY kind of way but still be shipped as a fully-static website. If Jekyll is familiar then hexo should be a nice alternative to check out.

The internal bits of the website are just low-level JavaScript (actually TypeSript) code without any framework to power the front-end (besides jQuery). Sass is used to make managing the CSS code easy and the only CSS framework that is used is flexboxgrid which is a great choice when it comes to handling responsivity for desktop and mobile clients.

The website runs off of a cloudflare cache that sits infront of Google App Engine. GAE is mostly used to handle the newsletter and contact form page submssions--everything else is static! Oh and yes it's HTTPS friendly!

Mobile Friendly!

Another special feature of the website is that it's 100% mobile friendly? What does 100% mean? Well just try and drag the side of the window and see :)

There are special behaviours in place for this website that make browsing via mobile faster and easier. Each of the guides are condenced to make mobile scrolling less of a requirement, everything collapses into a vertical plain nicely (thanks to flexboxgrid) and lots of mobile-level, fine-tuning has been put into the design, look and feel of the website as well. Cloudflare also does an awesome job of optimizing for mobile.

Always try your best to finish what you start

It's really important to pay attention to the things in life that are "in progress" and do your best to make sure that it gets finished. Sure it's enticing at times to have a lot of things on the go, but if nothing gets done then life may feel fustrating and unfulfilled. If something has been dragging on for a while, just sit down give it everything you have to power through it. Even if it's a tiny accomplishments in the sea of pending endless tasks, small victories are always a step forward and hard work never goes unnoticed. And once things are finally finished then it sure as hell is nice to tell yourself, your parents, family, peers & followers that you did it!

Back into the blogging effort of things

With the the topic of hard work and accomplishments, let's talk about the important stuff: writing Guide and Blogs. There is no schedule in place just yet, but the giant excuse of a missing website is not valid anymore. Stay tuned and visit often please. The new wave of information will include in-depth material on Angular, Css, Animation, OpenSource development and stuff on other programming-related topics.

A mega special thanks

Erika Lucivero A super special thanks to Erika Lucivero whom has helped design, storyboard and invision the new website from start to finish. Without her none of anything on this new website would be here. The entirety of the website look, cartoons, colours, font choices and design are because of her endless collection of talents and skills.

If you love the way this website looks, be sure to send @erikalu a giant thank you!

And thank you to you guys too!

For everyone browsing this website now and back in the day, for everyone on twitter/facebook whom follow @yearofmoo, and for all the developers contributing to the front-end, web-development blog-o-sphere ... Thank you. You guys have hugely motivated me to power through many late nights to make this website work.

I promise I won't let you guys down!

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