This was a big week! I started shooting the videos for the Phlex on Rails introduction unit, which gives an overview of the course and answers some basic questions around “Why Phlex?”
Price increase on Monday, July 21
I’ve been discounting the Phlex on Rails course as a small way of saying thanks to the folks who pre-ordered this course before I shot any videos. If you pre-ordered this course, thank you! 🙏
As promised from the discounts in the pricing page, I’m going to raise prices across the board from $249 to $289. That’s still discounted since I’m still shooting video for the course; after that prices will move closer to the full price of $379.
Course demo app runs in production
In the last update I asked what demo app folks would prefer and received feedback that I’d summarize as “anything but another blog!”
I couldn’t agree more, so I’m going to be working with a Rails app I built a while back called Thingybase.
Why Thingybase?
Because it’s a very CRUD-oriented Rails application that currently has a ton of old Rails templates in it. That means I can get into how to convert existing Rails views into Phlex views & components.
Non-trivial form examples
I had some requests from pre-order customers to cover advanced form scenarios in the course, so I asked on Twitter and got a lot of requests for scenarios present in Thingybase including multi-step forms, wizards, variants, etc.
I’m not sure how I’ll license the source code yet since I want to make it available for people who take the course. I might whole-hog open source the app code, maybe under AGPL or some other license, and move the marketing content to a separate repo.
Course content updates
This week I started to get a feel for what it takes to shoot video in the middle of nowhere, edit, and upload.
Introduction unit
I picked a less substantive unit to shoot for video so I could get a feel for how the script translates into video. Overall I’m pleased with the quality of the audio and video. I’m sure it will improve as my workflow improves and I get in more reps.
This unit is still a work in progress, so you might notice that not all the videos are done yet this week. I am hoping to have this wrapped next week so I can move on to the next unit.
Forms
As I mentioned earlier, I had a nice discussion on Twitter about annoying things people run into with forms in Rails. I haven’t updated the forms unit yet, but I plan on incorporating more of these ideas in this thread into the course.
Quality
My approach to quality in this course is going to be “shoot the video as close to the script outline as possible”. I do multiple takes of it until I have something that I think is cohesive, then publish it.
Just like writing, it’s never done. I always think after a shoot, “I could have done that better!”, but I don’t want to let perfect be the enemy of you getting videos so my approach is going to be to publish videos as I make them and let you be the judge. If you need clarification or have questions, reach out to me and ask. I might be able to add clarifications to the text or reshoot the video.
What’s next?
More content! I’m feeling a very strong urge to finish these videos out. That said, there is some infrastructural work I have to do including locking down the videos on a per-account basis, respond to any technical feedback customers have about the videos, and automating my video production & encoding workflow.
In fewer words, I think videos will continue to trickle out for a week or two, then it will speed up as I automate more pieces of the video production workflow.