Fipamo

Overview

Fipamo began as a personal project because I wanted to consolidate all of the code I had been using to blog into a cohesive package so I could stop duct-taping solutions together. As it came together, I decided to make it an official project and it will serve as the base for a new social media experience. It is open-source and available for anyone to use.

And its core, interactive markdown editor that exports good old HTML, javascript, and CSS that can be hosted anywhere one chooses.

Process

Creating Fipamo was a unique experience because it was born from a need to consolidate code from various projects into a single package. A big part of accomplishing this was identifying the basic features of a blog, i.e. creating/editing/deleting pages, managing assets, publishing, etc, and then finding what pre-existing code I had that accomplished this. If that code wasn't adequate or didn't exist, I created it.

Once basic functionality was in place, a frontend was needed to interact with the system. I mined my previous experience with building UIs and started with a basic wireframe to make sure all necessary pages were accounted for. After that design comps were created to leverage the backend system to be created. The primary goals for the UI were to be simple, clean, and accessible without being boring. The UX needed to be snappy but not overwhelming so users know what is happening in an informative but in a fun way.

Tools/Frameworks

The backend is is built on Rust and SQLite is used to store site data. Page templating is handled by Tera and all pages are built using plain old HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Screens