dervalp

Heroku and node.js

Just a hint, if like me, you struggled deploying a node.js application in heroku. Do not forget to set the engine of node.js and npm in the package.json file. If not, you will end up with the version 0.6 of node.

“engines”: {

      “node”: “0.8.x”,

      “npm”: “1.1.x”

  }

Godaddy, heroku and the wildcard nightmare

So, if like me you have bought a domain name in godaddy and try to setup it with heroku, you will end up to this page : https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/custom-domains#wildcard-domains

Saying you should point your wildcard domain: *.domain.com with a CNAME record to the name of you app (whatever.herokuapp.com).

Problem, godaddy does not support CNAME record for wildcard domain. So what’s the solution? To use 3rd party services (you do not need to transfer you domain).

So, I end up using amazon 53 to manage my domain (as you know heroku is based on amazon cloud), so it appears to me to be the good choice. Unfortunately, it is not free :( But at least, you will have, imo, a good service to manage you DNS.

If like me, you use godaddy for your email, do not forget to point your mx record to the correct addresses. (10 mailstore1.europe.secureserver.ne, 0  smtp.europe.secureserver.net). Please, do not do the same mistake as me, point the APEX record (which mean domain.com) and not mail.domain.com.

Hope it will help you :)

cph day-to-day - free city guide

Just little blog post to talk about a new project I am involved with. A blog about Copenhagen (currently mainly in French and English). By creating the theme and having discussions with the creator of the blog (my girlfriend :) ). We had the idea to create a free city guide about Copenhagen.

So, I wrote a node.js app and it’s available at this address: http://guide.cph-daytoday.com/

There is currently not a lot of content but it will come with the time :)

By doing it, I realized that I could make it generic and create a platform which provides free high quality city guides. These guides should be done by people who currently lives in the city and enjoy blogging. Hope I could come to you with good news in the next weeks.

A+

Migrii Team and open source

The Migrii team decided to refocused on open sources projects.

We are always working on our core product but as we all have full time job, it is quite hard to create a core product, contributing to open source projects, working for your day-to-day job and learning Danish (in fact, I am the only one who is learning danish). Anyway, you should face the same problem as us.

So, in order to stay motivated and to keep the process of being better Front-End Developers, we decided to act as a team even for our open source projects and gather all the projects we are working under the same banner, “The Migrii Team”.

So far, it works well, we are releasing a first alpha version of our seamless javascript code coverage tool: http://migrii.github.com/blanket/

And I am currently working on an opinionated css SDK : https://github.com/Migrii/LessSdk/blob/master/README.md

I think we will also “repatriate” our own project under the Migrii Profile (gmaps, Jquery.Decorate, Jquery.Dropdownlist,…).

So, stay tuned ! I think we will come up with good news in the next few weeks !

Betagroup coworking in Brussels

So today, I went to my trial day in the beta co-working group in Brussels. I was received by the very friendly and smart Ramon Ramirez. I have spent the day there working on Migrii. I’ve met nice and interesting people and I wish I will have the opportunity to go back there in the next weeks.

The karma is very good and you have everything you need to spend a good time  (coffee and soft drinks available, good location near a metro station). The building is brand new and impeccable and the neighborhood is very quite.

About the price, it varies from 80€ (1 day per week) to 250€ (24/7 access) per month which is quite cheap for the quality of this co-working space.

I highly recommend it!

Here is some pictures and a 360º view.

Migrii - status 1

As you know (or not), I am currently looking for a new challenge in Europe. Having some free time helps me to focus on an application called Migrii. I created this app with my fellow friends and ex-colleagues (Alex.js and our mobile hacker).

Migrii (http://angel.co/migrii) is a social platform helping you to share, create and attract members to social projects. I won’t be too specific for now about it as we are always in discussion about core features.

We have developed about 30% of the application and if you have already built an application alone or founded a startup, you should know that coding is the smallest part of the journey (creating mockups, writing contents, think about a marketing strategy,…).

Currently, our focus is set on providing a nice demo for potential investors. As soon as we will have something working on a production environment, I think we will open the application in private beta.

So, not too much to say about it, stay tuned for further information…