All Play w/ Ryan Hefner

Watch the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rLRNnlzIOQM

I connected with Vercel this past week to discuss how I could both optimize and try to control the costs that https://www.starterpacks.net was accumulating. I did walk away with some techniques that I will try on the next site I launch on Vercel where I need to try to maintain a consistent bill. Most notably:

Unfortunately I missed my milestone of getting an early release of https://www.skylounge.social deployed during Release Day. But, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. It’s kind of hard to run when it feels like you have a knife in your stomach and you don’t know how to stop the bleeding.

I dig into what attempts I made to optimize the NextJS App for https://www.starterpacks.net to utilize fewer resources on Vercel (spoiler alert, unsuccessfully), what the usage and costs were, and what I ultimately did to try to stabilize the co...

A quick update on this glorious hump day, just in time before I head out to the Atlanta PHP meetup (https://phpxatl.com).

Tomorrow, May 21st at 11:30am EDT I’ll be chatting with Brian Casel (https://briancasel.com) about his recent launch of Instrumental Components (https://instrumental.dev). Join us in the stream and if you have any questions for Brian or myself you can get them answered live!

Subscribe and join the stream: https://youtube.com/live/LyMjPhkHk3k

I am also going to be streaming to https://stream.place, a ne...

I listened to a podcast episode back on January 30, 2025, and there are 3 little words that have been bouncing around in the back of my head ever since whenever I turn on the mic to stream or record, "oil your chair".

The podcast episode was from Justin Jackson (https://justinjackson.ca) and Jeremy Enns (https://jeremyenns.com) on their Podcasting Marketing Trends Explained (https://podcastmarketingacademy.com/podcast-marketing-trends-explained) podcast. Here’s a link to the specific episode:

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-10k-timeline-how-long-it-takes-to-reach-10k-dl-ep/id1725822754?i=1000651165287
Spotify - https://open.spotify.co...

Some quick updates on the status of https://www.starterpacks.net and announcing the new project that I am working on!

Since the last update, the crawlers have been crawling—HEAVILY—accessing the site over 24M 👀 times. Needless to say, my Vercel bill is going to be a little higher this month, but 🤞 it will be worth it. Since the last update where the number of indexed pages jumped from 3k to 17k, since the last episode that number rose as high as 45k indexed pages, but recently dropped a bit to 34k.

I think the indexe...

You can also watch the video on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/ENFM-pQK5iM

A quick update about some recent updates I pushed out on https://www.starterpacks.net. In the last episode, I announced the addition of the Quick Starter Pack Editor to the site. Since then, I have rolled out a few tweaks to make it nicer, like preventing duplicate entries to be added to new Starter Packs—even though those were never duplicated when saved to Bluesky—along with the ability to remove people from the list before saving. I have a few more upda...

After a few weeks away I am back with some fresh updates that have been deployed to Starter Packs (https://www.starterpacks.net). The first—and best feature, imho—is the Quick Starter Pack Editor. This feature makes it easy to add people to your existing Bluesky Starter Packs in as little as 3 clicks (maybe more if you want to add them to multiple packs at the same time). This was a feature that I had wanted to add to the site since I started working on it, and I finally had the time—made the time—to sit down and...

Watch the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/WNmupzrWcAA

What goes into setting and justifying your SaaS (Software as a Service) pricing? I had the goal of getting subscription plans setup for https://www.starterpacks.net before a queued job I had running to backfill data that I needed to support those plans was done processing. I ultimately did get the Stripe integration setup, along with defining the plans and everything that goes into supporting subscriptions on the site, but when it came to actually surfacing these plans publicly is where I got tripped up.

...

The queues are up and running on Starter Packs and I have roughly 2 days before they are done, so my goal is to get all the pricing and subscriptions integrated into the site before they are done. I also dig into some background on getting the queues working in the NestJS app, and how I had to tune them to get them running efficiently—and fast!

Watch the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/DzHzOaR_lDA

To follow along, you can find me at ryanhefner.com, follow me on Bluesky @ryanhefner.com and keep up wi...

While I was working on some updates for Starter Packs, I ran into an authentication bug that I wanted to fix. As I was working through the bug, and deploying the updates, all of a sudden my feature branch on Vercel stopped loading pages properly, but not all pages. In this episode, I dig into facing and overcoming obstacles that get in the way of making real progress on the project you’re working on.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/GEJV6989RwQ

To follow along, you can find me at ryanhefner.com, follow me on...

After last week’s Jam Session with Brian Casel, I was on the fence on which project I wanted to commit to in 2025. After that conversation, and a little reflection, I realized that I wanted to see Starter Packs through to the original vision for the project. Also, the amount of effort to get it there—I think—will be less than I had originally thought, now that some of my client work has chilled out a bit.

With that said, I am excited to share some initial updates that I pushed to the site yesterday that lay th...

Welcome to 2025! I have been kind of having mixed emotions going into the new year, doing a lot of reflecting and projecting what I want to achieve this year. Definitely feeling mostly excited, but also a bit nervous.

I get into creating my new LLC, Commune Software (https://commune.software), looking forward to the live stream today with Mubs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckaGzVTvx98) talking all things side projects and Bluesky with his project https://blueskydirectory.com/ and my https://www.starterpacks.net/, and this podcast going video (right here now!). You can find the...

Tis’ the season for introspection, self reflection, and projections for what the New Year will hold. Today I share some background into my process of reflecting and projecting on the things I need to get done, along with some ideas on how I plan on expanding and refining that process.

If you have a process you use to help yourself get better I would love to hear it. Please, connect with me on Bluesky, or hit me up on Twitter, and let me know what works best for you!

To follow along, you can find me...

So, what do you do when you start to run into walls, or slow downs, on the project you’re working on? I feel like I am at, or approaching one of those slow downs, and am trying to get ahead of it.

Since my last update when I announced Starter Packs, I have been busy continuing to build the logged out experience of the site. Focusing on gathering as many references as possible to the Starter Packs on Bluesky, and coming up with ways to make the firehose consumption more resilient, while baking in some features in...

Wow, it’s been over a month since my last episode. That’s not due to me being too lazy, if anything just the opposite. I have been thrashing around on projects, but I would like to introduce you to my latest project that is piggy backing on the mass migration to Bluesky.

Just after the election, it seemed like the draw for a new platform that was a little less Elon and a little more move on was needed, and a lot of people felt the same way. I know I was pulled over there after I he...

How do you apply and reserve your fuel for the things you are working? That’s what I am wrestling with today. Typically, I reserve these early morning sessions for my personal stuff, so I can take advantage of the fresh tank of brain juice to pull from. I feel like with personal projects there’s always more critical thinking and personal hesitations that get in the way of getting things done that it takes that extra boost from the good morning fuel to break through them and keep going.

Although, today is unlike most of those days...

A quick, long one about trying to maintain momentum as challenges and inconsistencies present themselves.

To follow along, you can find me at ryanhefner.com, follow me on Twitter @ryanhefner, and keep up with the show on allplay.fm and @allplayfm.

Help yourself, while supporting the show, by trying some of the services that I use, and highly recommend:
Transistor FM
Fathom Analytics

Since today is International Podcast Day, I figured it was only fitting to try to get an episode out today. Thankfully I have something very topical to announce today as well, a new podcast! Last week I streamed and posted the first episode of, Jam Sessions: Public Edition, or just, Jam Sessions.

A few episodes back I had announced Jam Sessions: Private Edition, the podcast that I plan on hosting on Ripple.fm. The point of that show was to have more intimate conversations that may include details or information that myself or the guest may only...

During my run this morning I was thinking about all the different projects I have up in the air, and how some of those can help to provide a foundation, or utility, to the other projects that I am working on, but at the same time can feel like a waste of time to work on in the moment. Then, out of no where, I started to think about the construction of a spiral staircase.

At the start of the project, you have the choice to either build up, or build down. Building up seems like a...

Giving into the flow. I feel like I have been getting frustrated with myself for not fully focusing on a single project. After all, that's the only way to build a successful product. Right? RIGHT???

So, I have succumb to my fleeting thoughts and ideas to go where the water is taking me and not wasting time, nor energy, trying to fight the temptation or push out the motivation because I think I should be working on something, when my brain is clearly telling me different.

With that said, I have been working on the...

With all the conferences happening over the past couple of months, it has really got me thinking about the lack of socializing I have had since moving down to Atlanta. I wouldn't necessarily say it’s a fear of missing out (FOMO), but more a lack of social interaction, or engagement to make the acronym better, LOSE.

For 2025, I am trying to create some more margins in my life to allow for more room to both socialize more and create more time to share the personal stuff I am working on. The goal is to do that by...

I did it! I was able to fix LinkCards and stabilize the service. And, to my surprise, it actually looked like some of the traffic was actually legitimate open graph images being generated. Once I was able to stabilize the servers, and finally access the dashboard I noticed that my site pkgstats.com has almost 2 million images generated for it, so I guess that’s what was causing all the issues. One of my sites was taking down the other, kind of, go figure!

As I was thinking about how nice the service is—when it is work...

I just wanted to give a quick update on a new, private podcast that I am starting on ripple.fm. The show is called Jam Session: Private Edition, and it’s going to be a place to put some recorded discussions that are possibly too private for your traditional public podcast that gets blasted out to all the podcast places.

The idea for the show is a bit of a continuation of Jam Sessions, a meetup/mastermind group I used to host when I was back in New York. Jam Sessions was a private and intimate space wh...

Trying to keep the spirits high in this otherwise kind of low week, littered with some Summer sickness and a lot of client work. As much as I had hoped to work some more on Transmits, I ended up getting wrapped up in a lot of client work, along with some maintenance work to clean up some spillage from last weeks publishing of the Transmits Podcast.

With that said, here’s what I was able to get done/am working on:

As I have been working on building Transmits, I started reading Rob Walling’s (@robwalling) book, Start Small, Stay Small. I was originally reading his latest book, The SaaS Playbook, but like he suggests in there, if your business is not at a certain monthly recurring revenue (MRR) you might be better off going back and reading his first book, so I did.

While reading it I realized I was breaking the cardinal sin numero uno, no marketing, nor testing the market to see if people would actually pay for what I am building. Granted, this is de...

After recording the last episode via Transmits, I mentioned that I needed to test recording on playback on mobile, specifically Mobile Safari (since I am an iPhone user), and Chrome on Android. My goal for Transmits is that I can launch the initial version as a progressive web app (PWA), so it’s crucial for it to work when added to the home screen on either iOS or Android devices.

Well, in classic fashion, once I went to test the app on mobile devices, it totally failed in Mobile Safari, and regular Safari for that matter. It tu...

A milestone has been reached! This is the first episode to be recorded in Transmits!! Obviously, these are early days (the official second recording made in the app was this episode), but recordings are being captured via the web app and stored locally via the File System API in the OPFS (Origin private file system).

The goal is to get this early version of Transmits out so people can start playing with it and capturing their Audio Journals* (*the positioning I am playing with for this initial version of the app. What do you think!?)

...

I have finally settled on the project that I will be documenting on this podcast. I would like to introduce you to, Transmits. transmits.io is domain I have been sitting on for the past 4 years. When I had originally registered it I was working on a React Native prototype of an app that I was exploring, which was essentially an iOS Voice Memos app that was going to be platform agnostic. That prototype still lives on my machine, but work and life got in the way from taking it any further than a very rough example of getting...

Just a quick one on a mindset that I have been trying to apply to the things that I have been working on, or committing to, in 2024. The concept revolves around two requirements to meet when committing to a project/client/etc. Those two requirements are, the project either has to be interesting, whether that is interesting to work on, an interesting topic, or potentially an interesting technical challenge. Or, alternatively, but not mutually exclusive, would embarking on this project/collaboration/client engagement generate interest (ie. make money/margins) both in the short-term, but also potentially in the long-term...

Reflecting on Laravel vs. React debate that went down a few weeks back, got me thinking about Context. Context switching. The context that influences the decisions we make. Really, just about context in general.

My focus has been to try to minimize the amount of context switching that I am doing, which is already difficult while managing multiple clients and trying to focus on my personal stuff. I get into some of those trade offs, along with a few other things that have been popping up that have been requiring additional context switching, resulting in ultimate flow...

The struggle is real-ish. In this episode I get into the tension I have been feeling as I am in my -1 to 0 phase, trying to figure out which project/product I want to place my energy towards (first), and some of the technical stuff I plan on incorporating in the projects I am planning on taking on.

Some of those core technology areas include:

During the portion of the episode where I focus on local-first development, I make reference to a...

In this episode I reflect on officially hitting publish on this podcast. The steps that lead up to the release, along with all the excitement and anxiety that builds up before pressing that button.

From creating the cover art, to settling on the format—or lack there of—to writing descriptions, and deciding whether or not to pay the extra $5/month to Transistor for the AI Transcriptions feature vs. rolling my own (note, I just paid the $5, but may explore some other ideas with custom transcripts on the site, since after playing with the diff...

In this episode I dig into why I decided to build a custom site for this podcast vs. using one of the templated sites that TransistorFM offers. Part of it is based on some of my ideas about utilizing platforms to push traffic back to sites that you own. The other part of it was I just had an idea of what I wanted the site to look like, and how I wanted it to function, and I couldn’t suppress the urge from just building it myself.

I also explain how I plan to add a ne...

tl;dr I am not going to be editing these episodes, so please bare with me.

Although, if you want me to reflect on it a bit more, there’s a reason for making the active choice to not edit these episodes. Part of that decision is based on efficiency, as I work through these episodes I am trying to take all the ideas swirling around in my head and pluck a single one that I can try to break down and pick apart within a quick 10 minutes—maybe a little more, or a little less. I coul...

CSS and component libraries, where to begin?

Over the years I have used a bunch of different flavors including, css-modules, styled-components, CSS + Sass and a few other things. But, over the last 3 years or so, I have been primarily using ChakraUI, which is a component library that offers a really nice way to setup your theme—based on styled-system—as well as control the styles and defaults of the components they offer, along with being able to build and style your own components, using the same system, all accessible via the main theme configuration.

But, sinc...

On this episodes I dig into getting back into action and picking a stack to base the action on. In the past, I have built my products and prototypes in Laravel, using an SPA—typically built in React—for the majority of stuff, and I go into all the pros, and a few of the cons, I have experienced with that setup along the way.

Well, now the year is 2024 and as easy as it would be go back to that trusty old cocktail of sorts, I want to push myself to explore something new. I go into...

Hey, I’m Ryan Hefner and I’d like to welcome you to the All Play podcast. On this show I will be sharing my experiences as I build products and open-source software, sharing the highs and lows that go into building a solid product, and hopefully leading to a successful launch and growth of customers.

In this episode I share a bit of my background, moving from Ohio to New York to work at Fantasy. The roles and responsibilities I learned while working at an agency. My transition into working on product at Vimeo, and how I re...