IndieLogs is going live on ProductHunt next week! 🎉

In anticipation, I am:

• Redesigning some core parts

• Fixing some speed issues

• Fixing double data fetching issue on profile when switching projects

If you want to help me out, please subscribe here: https://www.producthunt.com/products/indielogs

Introducing: Indie Wars! 🎉

You can now compete with fellow makers to see who shipped the best product update of the week, month, and year all while:

✅ Gathering user feedback

✅ Increasing visibility of your products

✅ V1 category section is ready!

Also fixed category issue on edit startup page

OG Image was having errors because I converted all images to .webp

So converting back profile pics + startup logos to JPEG to handle this. Will keep other images as WebP

Planning to launch IndieLogs on ProductHunt soon

So working on some finishing touches:

- Rewriting the entire messaging & copy to be more SEO-based

- Categories page

- New buying modal

- New pricing

Will probably also get rid of the AI generated articles and write some content myself

The plan:

• Get rid of free plan - work with credits instead - allow ppl to upload 3 logs or sth for a project - after that they need to pay

• Get categories page working (started months ago but never finished)

• Change all copy

• Get og-images generator back working (idk why it stopped)

• Start listing on a bunch of directories pre-launch

• All profile pic images should be stored on my own server to avoid fetching/loading issues

Worked a bit on the new free tool.

Should be ready to launch now! Just need to record a small demo.

Made some changes to the hero based on this:

- Shorter H1 tag
- Better/more actionable CTA
- More focus on social proof

Thanks @imudayyyy

New free tool almost ready!

Will probably launch next couple of days & start doing email marketing.

Then will also do Product Hunt launch within the month!

Ok - lot's of updates for IndieLogs! 🚀

1) First, I attempted a hero redesign which got completely roasted on Twitter.

Guess I'm keeping the current one haha.

2) Improved current landing page based on that feedback:

• Changed titles and headings

• Improved the copy

• Added some more color to break between components

• Changed the messaging to put more focus on integration on your own website

• Removed the feed

3) Improved the onboarding flow to make it easier for new users

4) Been working on a new free tool - hopefully to be delivered soon!

✅ Set up Cloudflare CDN (even though I'm not sure if done correctly) + migrated storage to R2.

✅ Some updates:

• New footer design (copy-pasta from InterioresIA)

• Some small design changes to Pricing

• Fixed broken link in Pricing component

• Converted all previous images to WebP to optimize loading times + reduce bandwidth

Next up:

• Categories

• Likes

• New free tool

• Feed - do not load everything at once

• Marketing? Maybe 😝

I'm cutting my monthly costs by more than 80% by self-hosting everything

I started indiehacking a year ago & was using mostly free services for my projects:

- Vercel

- Supabase

- PostHog analytics

- AWS EC2 first year free for micro instance

But over the last year, my projects have finally started getting some more traffic + my free credits on AWS ran out. I am looking to scale even more so I know costs can get out of hand pretty quickly (+ I have seen some scary stories here recently).

Monthly, I would have, on average:

- $50 for Supabase (5+ projects)

- $45 for my AWS EC2 instances

+ variable costs for renting GPU for my AI projects

+ I also just surpassed the limits of the free plan on Vercel in terms of bandwidth, Image Optimization & Speed Insight points

The only project that's (finally) making some money so far is ImagenMIA, and with only 60% margins or so due to high model training costs (+ still early phase).

On the one hand I am super happy that ImagenMIA is starting to generate some money on its own (all organic, SEO-based traffic) but on the other hand, infra costs are starting to climb up and are only going to get worse as it scales.

Luckily I saw a post from @dobroslav_dev mentioning Hetzner and Coolify. So I started digging into it and have migrated the first couple of projects to test everything out.

Here is my setup:

- One small VPS (€3.98) for Coolify

- 2vCPU

- 4GB RAM

- 40GB SSD

- 20 TB Egress traffic

A bigger one (€14.51) to host all my projects:

- 8 vCPU

- 16 GB RAM

- 160 GB SSD

- 20 TB Egress traffic

I will be self hosting everything:

- Supabase

- Front-end

- NodeJS Express API Endpoints

- N8N

- PostHog

I was a bit afraid but tbh, Coolify makes things so much easier (OS alternative to Vercel/Netlify) + now I no longer have to worry about extreme bandwidth costs in case of traffic spikes!

Looking to migrate my bigger projects over there hopefully the next couple of days!

Played a lot around with:

• VPS (Hetzner)

• Docker

• Self-hosting supabase

• Coolify

Looking to start self-hosting everything so that I am able to cut costs!

✅ Integrated settings into the profile page!

You can now edit your profile and select a theme straight from your profile page. Trying to make things as easy and intuitive as possible!

Had neglected image optimization and compression for IndieLogs

This resulted in slow page loading times + extremely high egress bandwidth.

So working on implementing image compression when uploading + webp conversion.

✅ Testing it out now and it works!

Has been implemented across:

• Log image uploads

• Profile pics

• Logos
  
  

Next steps:

• Figure out a way to optimize and reduce size of all images that have been uploaded in the past, without fucking everything up lol

Made some copy modifications to the hero section.

To do next:

• Startup "gallery"

• Categories
  

✅Also started identifying directories to launch and writing copy.

First ones are done:

• DevPost

• HackerNews

Have been neglecting IndieLogs a little bit as I'm focused on ImagenMIA & InterioresIA

The next step for IndieLogs is to basically get more visibility, exposure and traffic. Will start posting on different repositories and also schedule a ProductHunt launch in the next month.

It's all about marketing now for IndieLogs. Have noticed my posts about it on X are barely getting any views compared to early during launch. I guess the 'wow' effect of it is gone or I've just become really bad at X lol 😜

In any case will make sure to find a way to get a good amount of traffic for IndieLogs as well. And at the end of the day, it's something I really like using to document my own journey - so it's always a win.

✅ Fixed:

• Home page redirect issue

• Buy button on landing page

🔥Major update for IndieLogs profiles!

You can now add a custom theme to your profile. Each one of us is unique. Your page should be too. You can now choose between 35 different themes! 🎨

✏️ Other updates:

• 🛑 OKLCH theme colors from DaisyUI are not supported on older browsers. Added a fallback theme in my CSS file to support older browsers too.

• ✅ 4 extra themes added

  • ChainVision

  • ImagenMIA

  • Sunset

  • Nord

  • Dim

IndieLogs updates:

💡 General improvements:

• Restructuring of landing page

• Latest active user card

• Display or hide heatmap on profile

• Landing page UI improvements

• New navbar menu icons

• Changed navbar color scheme to make it more friendly to multiple themes

• Profile background add
  
  

✅ In the pipeline:

• Ability Different themes for user profiles
  
  

☑️ Next on the to-do list:

• Select which logs to display or not on change log of website

• Migrate from iframe embedding to JS snippet

• Improve editor - links, hard breaks not super easy as of now

• Caching

• AWS S3 storage

• Fix log refresh issue

• Start e-mail marketing

• Implement mailing system for new users

Got back to work on IndieLogs!

Next-up on the planning:

• Themes for profiles

• Categories & discovery

Added a second free tool - Business Model Canvas Generator 🎉

What else do you want me to add?

Categories coming soon to Indie Logs! 🎉

If you haven't filled in your category yet, please do, so that you can get featured in category pages & get more visibility to your startups!

Added the free tools section 🎉

You can expect a lot more free tools to drop over here in the coming weeks/months.

Feel free to let me know anything that is useful and you'd like to see!

IndieLogs latest updates:

💡 Landing page:

• New demo videos + bullet points 🎥

• Smaller cards - less room 🔹

• Added changelog + emphasis on the ability to integrate live updates in the overall message

• Upgraded to DaisyUI 4.4

📝 Feeds:

• Cleaner UI - names displayed differently 🧹

✨ Marketing:

• Started running ads (very small budget) to experiment and learn

• Announced Startup Idea Validator, launching this Sunday on ProductHunt.com
  
  

☑️ Next on the to-do list:

• Select which logs to display or not on change log of website

• Migrate from iframe embedding to JS snippet

• Improve editor - links, hard breaks not super easy as of now

• Implement caching

• AWS S3 storage

• Fix log refresh issue

• Fix login double re-direct

• Start e-mail marketing

• Implement mailing system for new users

✅ Public feed that displays all the latest updates from various startups is now LIVE!

The feed is supposed to cut through the noise & only present the key information - no likes, no comments.

The idea is to further drive more visibility into your projects as this will ease discovery of your feed.

My goal with Indie Logs is twofold:

• Help founders build trust by making it easy for them to showcase consistent progress

• Give them additional visibility by rewarding people who constantly ship.
  
  

Click here to go to the live feed!

What do you guys think? Feel free to let me know! 🙏🏽

Travelling today, but still managed to get some work done early in the morning:

• Optimized the logs fetching function

• Editor UI improvements

• Generated 50 blog articles

• Finished working on the feed. Will be live soon! 🔥

New updates for Indie Logs!

💰 Pricing

• Previously: 1 startup free, €4.95/month for unlimited startups

• Now: 1 startup free, €24.95 for premium lifetime access^limited

🏞️ Image compression

✍🏼 New editor

• Add links (https://indielogs.com/rankings)

Center stuff

• Underline, and italic

• Strike and addthingslikethis

• Code highlight:

<html> code </code>

🛣️ Next-up on the roadmap:

• Pin logs

• Select which logs you want to display on your website

• All updates feed

• Add images in editor

• Startup directory browser

• Build 4-5 free tools to use for marketing

• Removed scrollbar for live embeddings - much cleaner effect.

• Feed for all makers going live soon - almost ready.

Working on something new 😎

Done today:

• Generated another 100 blog posts to help with SEO

• Indexed all new profiles

• Improved fetching

• Removed startups without logo's from the rankings

• Recorded new demo

It's been one-week since Indie Logs launched! 🎉

Time for a quick recap.

✅ 3 feature requests implemented:

• Dynamic OG banners per user

• Consistency heatmaps on profile

• Embed live startup updates on your own website (select from 30+ themes)

⚒️ Improvements to Indie Logs:

• New logo

• Added timeline to landing page

• Improved data fetching on server side for SEO

• New ranking page for active founders and startups
  
  

📊 Some numbers:

• 299 blog articles published (AI-generated)

• 240 pages already indexed by Google (blogs + user profiles)

• + 1.200 unique visitors since launch

• 41 startups submitted

• 104 startup updates logged

• 64 users

🥇 Most active founders of the week:

• Nathan Robinson: 11 updates

• Nathan Geckler: 11 updates

• Aurélien Rommelaere: 6 updates

• Sergiu Chiriac: 3 updates

• Áron Csatlós: 2 updates

• Matt Gibson: 1 update

Improved embedding flow - you can now see how the 30 different themes look like before selecting them!

Timeline embeddings for your project is now LIVE! 🎉

You can now embed live startup updates on your site in less than 20 sec. with Indie Logs!

• Share progress from your Indie Logs profile

• Choose one of +30 themes

• Showcase your updates in a timeline that fits your brand's look.
  
  

Easy!

Next on the to-do-list:

• Highlight feature on landing page

• Add theme/style demos when selecting

• New logo - don't like this one tbh

• Figure out S3 storage

Building a cool new feature for Indie Logs today: embeddings!

You'll be able to embed your project timeline on your own website, and be able to select different styles so that it matches the style of your own website.

No need to build your own log updates/timeline system. You can just share everything on Indie Logs and easily embed it into your own website.

Initial MVP done!

Time to build those ranking pages!

Worked on some RPC functions in order to be able to flexibly query stitched data from multiple tables.

Not a lot of visible work for now, but will be implementing it soon across flexible rankings! Should be good.

Added heatmaps + dynamic OG images!

Experimenting with calendar heatmap!

While working on dynamic OG's I realized I was using SSR incorrectly.

It took me a bit longer than I would have liked but managed to:

• Fix SSR issues

• Dynamic OGs almost ready

Working on dynamic OG banners again. Got a good base design that is dynamically generated for each user. However, it still needs to be implemented and correctly read by Twitter and other social platforms.

No idea why, but when sharing, it does not display the dynamically generated OG banner, even though the meta tags contain the correct URL.

Updates:

• Some security improvements

• Improved ranking queries and added flexibility for future use

• Posted on Reddit

• Had multiple conversations with different early users to understand needs & have product improvement ideas

Today I'm (pretending to be) doing some marketing. Will post on Reddit and think about what strategies I can leverage to get more people on Indie Logs.

New logo using DALL-E!

I was able to improve dynamic OG generation, however, it keeps timing out for Twitter.

Therefore I'll make sure to pre-generate them and store in S3 once I have figured that out. So it will have to wait for a bit.

Other than that, I am going to record a new demo video today and publish on Twitter that IndieLogs is now available for everyone!

FYI - here is how the dynamic OG banners will probably look like:

First attempt at generating dynamic OG images 🤣

This log will be used to track popular feature requests:

Feature requests:

• Dynamic OG banners

• Buildstreak

• Like/comments (2x)

• API to link it to Zapier and other automation platforms

• Emojis

• Tag @indielogs on Twitter and automatically display them over here

Done:

• Double redirect fixed (/app)

• Multiselect dropdown for categories

• Added valid URL checks for domain and logo

• Added logo uploads for startups

• Added Youtube video support

Time to get going again!

Will implement some feedback I got yesterday.

Will use this log to track feedback I have gotten from users + stuff I think needs to be added/improved:

To fix/edit:

• Categories -> select instead of free text

• Logo -> Add logo uploads instead of URL

• Fix /app double redirect

• Startup URLs: automatically add https:// if not included

• Add local time + 1 hour difference issue

Other:

• Record up-to-date demo for landing page

It took me way too long to get the S3 image bucket uploads to work. I tried CloudFlare too, but somehow I just couldn't seem to be able to get it working.

So I decided to go for Supabase storage in the meantime.

This is not ideal as egress and storage costs are much higher compared to AWS S3, but at least this buys me some time to figure it out at my own pace and the product does not have to be delayed because of a simple image-uploading feature.

Tried S3 and R2 Cloudflare but could not get it working before going to work. Will try again later.

Implementing image uploads for logs today!

Let's see how this S3 bucket thing works.

Finished the landing page!

Now it's time to start getting some users.

I'm hoping to have the first fully functional MVP ready today after coming home from work.

What's left for the MVP:

• Avatar photo uploads for profile

• AWS S3 bucket image upload for logs
  
  

What's left for the next 7 days:

• Marketing

• Marketing

• Marketing

• Improved ranking (filtering based on category, time, .. )

Done today:

• Avatar uploads

• Programmatic SEO

• Fixed some bugs

• Fixed my laptop

Could not get it working. Time to go to work - will check after.

Woke up at 6:30 today to start working on Indie Logs before heading to my 9-5 - but the Sonoma MacOS update ruined everything. Nothing worked after the update: VSCode, NodeJS, GitHub Desktop, Discord, ...

I spent +2 hours trying to fix it, some things started working again so I can do some dev work, but still lots of basic things like copy pasting something on Finder, formatting VScode etc does not work.

Not a lot of progress made today. Some troubleshooting of an auth bug and added Twitter auth + logo.

Tomorrow should be better.

Done today:

• Implemented subscription model

• Onboarding flow done

• UI/UX improvements

• Blue design color

• Added support chat

• Landing page finished

• Added FAQ

Overall, good day even though I didn't have that much time.

Starting to look more and more like a finished product!

Still not entirely happy with the landing page, colors and hero image overall.

Playing around with some SEO optimizations + layout fixes & i18n implementation, even though this project will most likely be only in EN.

Some ideas to make it fun:

• Founders of the day, week, month, .. (most logs)

• Founder of the year - most startups or most revenue?

• Revenue rankings?! maybe this is a bad idea lol

Anyway, some rankings should make it fun and give some incentive to ppl!

Some good progress:

• Fixed name change issue

• Further landing page improvements

• Implemented onboarding flow

• Created settings page

• Improved ranking component to also display top founders and not only startups

New bugs:

• When changing startup name, logs do not display.

• Difference in time between logs and edit modal - only when you change time yourself in edit modal (displays 1 hour less in logs)

Added analytics. I use PostHog for all my projects. It's free + gives you tons of features!

Since I am using my self-made boilerplate, it is already integrated and all I need to do is change the API key!

Improving copy with ChatGPT like a pro. I used Dan Kulkov's marketing prompts structure to create my own Copy Generator.

Not perfect but after some back and forth with ChatGPT you get some decent results!

Basic landing page mockup is ready. Re-used components I had in my self-made boilerplate. Now time to finetune & improve copy!

Fixed all bugs. Nice!

Up next:

• Add image uploads + avatar

• Landing page

• Home ranking component to rank founders too

• Analytics

• Logo + OG Image

• Onboarding

• Make it mobile friendly

• Ranking pages in table, category

• Add links to logs? Not sure about this one

• Brainstorming about marketing

• Limit number of startups to add based on subscription

• FAQ

• LemonSqueezy store

• Crisp chat

Think I'll be ready with everything within a week! Will be the fastest I have ever built something 😎

Day 3 of working on IndieLogs.

What I did today:

• Improved log page layout

• Started making the landing page - looks horrible as of now

• Build the ranking component - can rank startups based on category, # of logs, latest update etc

  
  

Also, what's a startup without bugs right? I found the following ones so far:

• Updating the date leads to the rest of the info being deleted (this was painful, I had written a long text that I lost)

• Even startups with 0 logs still display 1

• Log count are not updated

• Creating a new log, does not have its actual ID, therefore you can not edit it!

Next on the to-do-list:

• Adding startup details to logs

• Further improve landing page

• Onboarding flow + payment and subscriptions (copy from WorkoutPro)

Allright, second day of working on IndieLogs.com, and I am pretty happy with the progress so far. I feel I have gotten much better and faster at building new products after a year of building consistently.

This is what I have done so far:

• Built the individual project page

• You can add, edit and remove logs from

• You can add, edit and remove startups

• Implemented WYSIWYG editor

• Got a nice UI looking over here

Tomorrow I will continue and hopefully finish the core indielog page. After that, I need to build the following for the MVP:

• Landing page

• Onboarding flow

• Rankings (based on most logs, categories, latest updates, ..)

That's it I think. Will try to limit the scope of the MVP and launch ASAP - my other projects I have worked months before launching. I want to do it differently this time.

The coolest thing would be to make profit with this startup while using it to document the entire process. Fingers crossed!

Started playing and adding a WYSIWYG editor

Not working super properly right now, because I can't see bulletpoints for example. However, I know they are being added, see below:

• Bullet point 1

• bullet point two

• bulletpoint three

Ok it looks like it is working. It's not perfect yet but at least it's not giving errors.

• Bullet points work

The only things that is not working so far is:

• Links

• Adding min height to the description component

So pretty happy so far

You can now edit your logs directly from your page

I had a dream about building a platform that would allow you to easily showcase project updates and progress you have made in an organized manner.

During my dream I dreamt the project was called IndieLogs. I woke up, checked the domain - it was still available! So I took it as a sign to buy the domain and start building it. BUT: this time, I am building a single feature. Not wasting time like in the past. Gotta validate it first.