It is all very well, these Phenomenal cosmic powers in an itty bitty Netkernel, but where do you start when you wake up screaming at 3 am in the morning, sweat dripping and a head full with this one plan to conquer the world ?
Note : If the above never happens to you ... you are a lucky person, trust me !
After the obligatory Muhahaha, you fire up your computer, start NetKernel, ...
Fifteen minutes later you are playing Minecraft or Dwarven Fortress and an hour after that you are back in bed, hoping that the alarm will not go off at 6 am (it will).
The problem wasn't that your plan/vision/idea was bad, but that you didn't quite have the tools ready in NetKernel to build it. You got distracted in creating those, next thing you were looking for stuff on the internet ... <fill in the rest of the slippery slope yourself>.
So, this week (and in future posts too) I'm going to provide a couple of common tools for building a service on the web and next week ... we are going to build one.
JQuery is a good place to start. We can debate whether or not it is worth serving it in NetKernel ... I think it is. So here is my module to do so.
Next on my tool list is a framework to build a decent HTML5 webpage. I like Skeleton. And here is my module to serve it.
Typical in a service on the web these days is that there is a free tier or an online working demo. That does open a door to abuse of course and since we - for the time being - live in a dog-eat-dog world, it is best to take this into account and have some kind of protection against it.
My brother-in-law, an excellent web/graphical designer, tells me it is both old hat and annoying for potential customers, but I like to use Recaptcha. Yes, another Google-capt(ch)ure . There is already an existing implementation by Chris Cormack, available on the NetKernelROC GitHub. Alternatively, here is mine (different approach, same result).
There all that is left now is to build a killer application and a teaser website. Come and see next week (or build your own at 3 am) !
P.S. I'll be visiting the Twin Cities again next week. If you want to meet-up, ping me !