How Not to Launch on Hacker News

One of my blog posts was picked up on Hacker News, and overnight my humble postcard vending machine on the internet got a whole lot more traffic than I expected. And just when everything was set to take off, the machine got jammed, right at my big moment. Here’s a post-mortem of what went down and how I fixed it while still managing to be there for my kid’s birthday.

Preparing for Launch

My goals for this past sprint were simple: I set out to launch the blog, hook up analytics, and start a newsletter. I had heard that the secret to SEO was to make great content. So, I spent the first week hammering out three solid posts. The first two detailed the backstory of how I came up with and built the project, while the third was a thinkpiece that reimagined Three Kind Words as a vending machine on the internet.

Next, I needed a way to see if my content was actually reaching people. I did not want an analytics tool that tracked every mouse movement or forced cookie banners on visitors. Instead, I was looking for something that respects privacy and still provides useful metrics. That is when I discovered goatcounter.com. It was lightweight and showed the metrics that mattered to me: page views, referrers, and details like browser size and operating system. It turned out to be exactly what I needed, and best of all, it was free to get started.

“It works on my machine”

I published the blogs and sent the links to a few of my friends. Everything still looked and worked perfectly on my end, and I felt confident that we were ready to launch. That is, until a friend reported that the site looked completely broken. A screenshot they shared showed that the words and styles lists were not loading. I couldn’t replicate it.

Strangely, when they switched to Safari’s private mode, the site started working and they placed an order. However, the PDF preview turned out all kinds of wrong. The background color that my friend had chosen was missing. I had not changed that part in ages, so it was obvious that something was amiss. I contacted PostGrid support, but since it was Friday afternoon, I did not expect to hear back anytime soon.

I had spent months building this thing and it was finally ready to launch, but now it was broken and I had no idea why. Looking at a flat line in my analytics, I felt like I was fighting an uphill battle just to catch anyone’s attention. Exhausted and frustrated, I went to bed wondering why everything worked perfectly for me but failed for my friend. And what’s up with the PDF previews?

My Ill-Fated Hacker News Moment

I had no idea that as I slept, my “vending machine on the internet” post would light up on Hacker News and climb to the front page. I woke up to a flurry of unexpected newsletter signups and, believe it or not, random people on the internet giving me money. Checking goatcounter, I saw that the post had already generated about 12,000 page views.

When I clicked on the Hacker News link, I instantly recognized that the issue my friend had pointed out was now affecting a lot more people. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

Not to mention that it was my oldest child’s birthday party that day. In those few precious minutes between party prep and cake time, I skimmed through the comments and logs. More users were reporting that parts of the site were broken. I tried to fix some stuff in a hurry, but didn’t have time to figure out the root cause.

I made the decision to stop obsessing over the site and be there for my daughter’s birthday. There were cinnamon rolls, a massive cheesecake, and core memories being made. I chose to be present, and I have no regrets.

Taming the Chaos

After the party ended and the house finally quieted down, I poured myself a cup of tea and dug into it. Turns out those SEO changes I made had accidentally removed a critical data template from the Hugo configuration. This template was responsible for pulling the available set of words from my backend.

I suspect that either Cloudflare was serving an older version of the site or that some browsers (Firefox, for example) could not find the essential words.json file. Without this file, the rest of the JavaScript would break and leave users with an unusable interface.

Once I identified the issue, I dove into the code, restored the missing template, and pushed the changes. I then cleared the cache in Cloudflare, hoping to resolve the problem. It worked. Orders started coming in again, and I began to breathe a little easier.

Then came another problem: the PDF previews were missing their background color. They had worked perfectly before, but suddenly the CSS wasn’t being applied. Even hardcoding the style did nothing. I reached out to an LLM for help. It confidently explained that HTML-to-PDF rendering can be extremely finicky and suggested I switch from standard HTML/CSS to SVGs for both the background and text layout. Somehow it worked. PostGrid soon began rendering the PDFs correctly, and I regnerated all the postcards in the queue.

Lessons Learned

I should not be manually testing the site after every change. I should have a CI/CD pipeline that tests the site prior to deployment. For that to work, I need to write some tests. With a little help from an LLM, I got a suite of Playwright tests up and running in no time. Next, I can get these tests running in a GitHub Actions workflow, so it tests the site before it is deployed.

Also, I need to ensure that when I am testing locally, I am not using a cached version. From now on, I will use this command to run my hugo server:

hugo server --disableFastRender --gc --ignoreCache

Using all of these switches will ensure that I am always working with the latest version of the site. It is a bit overkill, but it is better to be safe than sorry! Together with a suite of automated tests, I can have a much more reliable system and hopefully fewer embarrassing deployments.

Reflections

With the launch chaos finally behind me, I took a moment to step back. I went out onto the front porch, watched the wind ruffle the treetops, and listened to the calm that a winter evening can bring. In that quiet moment, I reflected on everything that had happened.

I felt a mix of regret, pride, and hope. I regret that things were far from perfect during my big moment on Hacker News. I am proud that I wrote a compelling blog post and shipped a product that people seem to like. I am hopeful that even though the site was down for a while, I still managed to take in nearly 50 orders, which equates to about 150 kind words. This boost alone will bring me past the halfway point of my goal of 300 kind words in 2025. Maybe I should revise that goal?

I have also been encouraged by the feedback I received. One person told me, “I am a corporate software engineer and the things I build rarely affect normal people. Seeing your project, which can bring joy to everyday lives, is incredibly inspiring.” Another developer commented, “As a software dev myself, the idea of a passive income site is intriguing. The concept of a vending machine resonates with people like me.” I think I am onto something with the mental model of a vending machine as a creative catalyst for makerpreneurs. I am encouraged to keep writing about it and see where it goes.

Altogether, this experience taught me about resilience, the importance of owning my mistakes, and the value of staying true to my vision even when the internet is screaming in my face. It is not solely about making money or chasing trends; it is about creating something that reflects who I am, with all my imperfections.

Keep on shining, and as always, stay kind.