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So you want to stand up your own instance of DEV? (help thread)

Ben Halpern on September 11, 2018

Ever since dev.to went open source, we've had people interested in working with this codebase to build dev.to for music, dev.to for book clubs, dev...
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edgnets

This initiative is amazing Ben! Many hands makes light work. I'm an experienced Java developer but a newbie on Web development ecosystem. Dev.to is amazing and I hope to use its code base to learn.

The first step is to build the development environment, due some,restrictions I had to use Microsoft Windows as the main S.O so I'm reading how to use Docker to create containers to support this environment.

Do you have some tips on how to create a development environment to Dev.to using Docker containers ?

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Ben Halpern

Dockerization PR here: it’s close but it’s sort of stalled. github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/...

We need to give it fresh eyes.

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Joe Hobot

Once PR is done, ill throw it on my k8s cluster and see to create a helm chart. :)

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Balkrishna Pandey

Do you want to collaborate @joe . I can also help you if you are interested.

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pranay rauthu

While most developers are trying to monetize their work you are making it for betterment of the community.

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Ben Halpern

Well we also monetize our work. Those sponsor slots ain’t free! And we do other biz stuff, but yeah, all in the name of the community. If we just wanted to make a bunch of money we’d have started some SAAS company so it could be acquired by some tech giant. 😋

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Hagai Luger

Can you please elaborate more about the various business models of this site?

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Ben Halpern

Right now we have monthly sponsors you see on the sidebar as well as some optional paid memberships, which we don't really push that hard.

We're a small team so these basic elements have been enough, but we do want to keep pushing our business model in a dev friendly way, so we're gradually working on some more features to help organizations reach developers in ways which is healthy for the whole community.

Because we have a lot of traffic and pretty low costs, we're able to make money without selling out too hard, but we are continuing to try to build out more additive features mostly in the "career services" space. This encompasses education as well as helpful job placements, but it's all a work in progress.

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DANIEL_LEITE

😀

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Pim • Edited

I have a question that I didn't know where else to ask. How exactly does dev.to produce it's SPA-like navigation? I can see it's getting the document using ajax, handled by the service worker if it's cached. But what mechanism loads the new doc body? Is it just a vanilla JavaScript injection? How are the navigation actions intercepted on the client-side?

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Ben Halpern

Here's where the code is, which is quite crappy and messy to be honest:

github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/...

We basically take the server response and replace the page, but we only take the body element. The nav bar and footer and basic template. But as far as the app's logic outside of this context is concerned, it's pretty much a server-rendered app.

We basically use a hacked up version of InstantClick to make this happen.

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Benjamin Spak

I'm interested in helping :) Was going to build something for spak.co, then after using Dev.to I realized it was everything I wanted and more haha

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Ben Halpern

We still need to roadmap this out more, but a start would be to begin replacing instances of "dev.to" with ApplicationConfig["APP_DOMAIN"] wherever possible. Symbolically, at least, it's a big first step. If you want to chop away with some no-brainer PRs along this line, go for it!

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lazidoca

hi @ben , I can run DEV platform on localhost. Is there any documentation for deploying it to an Ubuntu server for example?

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Benjamin Spak

Love it! Will make a note to dig into it tomorrow or this weekend at the latest :)

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lazidoca

hi @benjaminspak , did you deploy DEV platform?

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Ameed Jamous • Edited

I would love to contribute to this goal. is there a tracker for what exactly we need to get knocked out. for this to work it needs to be easy to install, rebrand and deploy to cloud. I can see millions of companies and entrepreneurs that can use this code base internally and externally to create awesome experiences for different communities (e..g. Dev.to PaaS)

Let me know what's the current status for this and I will send a follow up of what I can exactly contribute with.

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Patrick Waivers

Hi Ben, I am interested in helping on this particular project. I want to make my own movie/book review website, and Dev.to is a great example of what I want to build. Are there any GitHub issues open for this? How can I contribute?

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Muhammad Arslan Aslam

I've been thinking of building a forum for a community in the college but can't find a suitable software. I guess, I'll give dev.to a shot.

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Ben Halpern

It will be a while before we’re fully baked, so it will work best for long term projects. But if we work closely we might be able to make it happen soonish in some capacity.

Future is definitely bright though.

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Muhammad Arslan Aslam

Yes exactly.

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Ali Spittel

That would be super cool -- maybe a Mastadon-esque blogging platform?

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Ben Halpern

Yes, it has a lot of the same qualities. Distributed-but-compatible.

The interfaces can be pretty highly variable too. The platform could like a bit more like Instagram or Pinterest or otherwise if that was appropriate for the platform.

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Allboosters • Edited

Trying out dev.to on localhost, so goood!!

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🍌🍌🍌

Hey Ben, is this still the best way to contact you if one wanted to spin up a dev.to instance for a community? Twitter DM is good too ! Cheeers!

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Balkrishna Pandey

Hi, @ben if we want to contribute what is the best way to collaborate with your team? Do we have any slack channel or any other tools so that we can discuss it?

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Johann Philipp Strathausen

Just saying hi and thank you for the awesome work on the github repo! Setting up dev.to locally was super easy and fun. I'm thinking to turn this into a network for cooking enthusiasts.