Set This to Auto

The power of automating a task is one that I often overlook. Given the industry I am in automation is what I do. Day in and day out, automate this then automate that. But when you can quickly automate away some of the friction that you have been living, is such a freeing experience.

When I wanted to post a blog, the process required a commit to source control. Directly to the main branch, or merging a branch into the main. Both were attempts at making the process easier. Then an idea sparked to make everything driven based on a date. Why couldn't the publishing of posts be scheduled? The only hurdle here was mental. Following the desire to reduce friction, this was a great friction that could be eliminated.

Taking 5 minutes to evaluate where the changes would have to be made, then an hour of development in the project. 15 minutes configuring a scheduled build. Viola! Blogs being posted based on the desired day came to life.

A new problem arose from this implementation. Visibility into what blogs will be published and when. Since I already had the queries to locate the posts that should be on the site. Querying the inverse was just a quick modification of the other query. Taking that data and writing it to disk that can be recalled by an admin is now the tool to view all upcoming posts.

These changes have been out in production for around a month now. The ability to write a post and not have to come back to publish it has been liberating. So much so, that I have had more ideas to automate the go-live of a blog post via multiple channels. Such that all the content/copy can be written while in the brain space of the post. Making all copy cohesive and building on each other.