Welcome to my weekly-ish update about building Bookl.et!
I noticed that a few people had signed up for Booklet and hit a dead end because the software isn’t ready. Oops! If this happened to you - I added you to this mailing list so that you can know when things are ready. (I swapped the sign-up button to go to this mailing list to prevent this from happening again, too.)
What’s Booklet?
Booklet is a better Google Groups. It’s a place to host a community where people can engage in discussions and meet other members. It’s designed as a calm, asynchronous alternative to Slack - which encourages more participation and long-form messages.
What have I accomplished since the last update?
There’s now a setup wizard for new groups that walks you through setting up your profile and inviting members
Members have profile photos, and groups have logos. I did a quick implementation of the file uploader, so it’s not very polished - but it’s functional!
I set up permissions so that you can only access groups that you are a member of, and so that members can have different permission levels. (Here’s the working permissions matrix). The Rails gem Pundit made implementing permissions a pleasure.
I changed how I was keeping track of changes to objects (such as comment histories). I was using Paper Trail, but I changed to Audited. I did this because I preferred Audited’s “model after” structure to the “model before” one used by Paper Trail. Plus, Audited has an associated audits feature that will make it much easier to show all changes related to one group.
Here’s a video of what exists today:
What’s next?
When you get to the group homepage, it’s pretty much blank right now. So, I’m building the core layout of groups. I’ve decided to use a side navigation, and I’m making it more dynamic with Stimulus.js.
How you can help ⬇️
How many Slack groups are you apart of (and stay signed into)?
For non-work Slack groups, such as communities or groups, how do you use them? What makes the good Slack communities successful?
Other thoughts ☁️
I enjoyed listening to this podcast about Web3, and it got me thinking about adding membership functionality on top of Booklet groups in the future.
I’m really enjoying building with Rails and Hotwire. It feels like super powers for quickly building applications as a solo developer. I can build things in a day that would have previously taken weeks.
Thanks 🙏