Hasty Treat - New Level Up Tutorials Site

Feb 1, 2021

Discover the tech transformation of a popular web development site! Delve into the journey from Drupal to modern frameworks like React and TypeScript. Learn about the rapid development benefits of Snowpack, ESBuild, and custom GraphQL plugins. Explore the role of MongoDB and Mercurius in enhancing performance, along with a fresh take on application hosting using Caddy web server. Tune in for behind-the-scenes insights and the decision-making process driving these innovations!

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ANECDOTE

Level Up Tutorials Iterations

Scott Talinsky's Level Up Tutorials website has undergone multiple iterations.
It started with Drupal 7, then moved to Meteor and Blaze, and finally landed on Meteor with Apollo and TypeScript.

INSIGHT

Moving Off Meteor

Scott decided to move Level Up Tutorials off of Meteor, despite its strengths.
He wanted more control over the build process and wasn't using Meteor's real-time features.

ADVICE

Split API and UI

Split your site into separate API and UI projects for better organization.
Remove Babel for faster builds unless absolutely necessary (like with Webpack).

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In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about the new Level Up Tutorials website — some of the new tech powering the site, behind-the-scenes decisions, previous iterations, and more!

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Show Notes

02:55 - Previous iterations

Originally on Drupal 7
Full re-write to Meteor + Blaze
- Two sites — store.leveluptutorials.com and leveluptutorials.com
Meteor + React
Meteor + Apollo
Combine store and site
Move to TypeScript
NOW

05:30 - Big choices

No Babel up and down the stack
UI
- Mostly unchanged — React + Styled Components + SCSS
  - Moving more to SCSS, CSS vars
  - Build and dev done via Snowpack
    - 50ms hot reloadin’
    - Mega fast development workflow has been a huge plus
    - Errors in the UI via Snowpack
    - Wrote a custom GraphQL importer plugin
API
- ESBuild
  - Insane speeds
  - Wrote a custom GraphQL importer plugin
- Mercurious / Fastify
Codegen
- GraphQL code gen to create everything we need for a fully typed codebase
- Auto-generated React Hooks
Hosting
- render.com for both
CLI
- Custom avalanche CLI that removes the guesswork and makes bulk operations easy
Caddy server for easy leveluptutorials.dev in local environments
Testing
- Jest → API
- Cypress → UI

Links

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LevelUpTutorials Instagram
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Wes’ Twitter
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Scott’s Twitter
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