Weekly backlog 07.
23 December 2019
2019.12.09-13.
Short summary:
- 🤖 Someone is working really hard to hack my server
- 🎉 The maker report got 50+ responses
- 🏗️ Started to work on my yearly review
2019.12.16. Monday
I registered more than 1000 failed ssh login attempts on my server in the past few days. Previously, there were about 5 every day, now there are 5 every minute. The location of the attempts (based on the whois information) is various. A bunch of them came from China, Uruguay, India, Australia, etc. So basically from all over the world. I also saw some DigitalOcean servers in the logs. I don’t know if this is normal, but first, it seemed pretty scary. So I spent the first half of my day hardening my server. I implemented most of the recommended security settings right after I created my VPS, and now I tightened the rules.
I implemented reCAPTCHA protection on CreativeDevJobs. I started to work on this last Friday afternoon, but I couldn't figure out how to set it up properly. It turned out that I overthink it (as usual) because it was easier than I thought.
It isn’t the best feeling to work on a site that almost no one is visiting, but I had to do it to avoid getting locked out of my Braintree account again. And I could use this knowledge later on with other projects.
2019.12.17. Tuesday
After implementing reCAPTCHA on CreativeDevJobs yesterday, I started the day by collecting and uploading new positions to the site. Finding the right positions is still hard and time-consuming, I wish I could find a better way to do it. I spent almost 2 hours to find 2 great positions.
I spent a few hours searching for makers on twitter for the Maker Report, and I also posted about the report to the IndieDev community on Reddit. The number of responses slowed down a bit but I haven’t used all the available channels to reach my target audience.
At the moment, Twitter seems to be the most effective to get new responses and the comment I made on a Product Hunt Makers discussion. I thought that I would give a chance to Twitter ads but it looks like I can only target Hungary and I’m afraid the number of makers is not the highest here.
2019.12.18. Wednesday
Today I started to collect all the necessary information for my yearly review “microsite”. I decided to work on this instead of starting a last-minute project because I realized that I won’t have enough time to complete it before Christmas.
So I deep dived into Google Analytics, Namecheap and Gumroad dashboards, PayPayl account, etc. Based on the number of products I launched, I would say this was a great year but financially… Well, I don’t want to talk about that :D You’ll see the numbers on the microsite.
I also worked on the Maker Report. I posted about it on a different subreddit and followed a few makers on twitter. The number of daily responses decreased again, so I have to find other distribution channels to reach more makers.
2019.12.19. Thursday
I started the day by hunting new positions for CreativeDevJobs. Now I’m following a different strategy. Instead of searching for positions I’m looking up creative agencies on job listing sites and then I check the available positions at the selected agency. This seems to be a bit more efficient.
Btw, some kind of brute force attack is still going on against my server (about 10 login attempts every minute). It seems like the number of login requests increased after I made some changes and rebooted my server. Maybe they think that the reboot was the result of the attack and that’s why they started to push harder.
I was also working on reaching more makers with the Maker Report. Reach 100 responses is the goal for this week, at the moment it’s standing at 50. Still looks doable.
I spent most of the day working on my yearly review site. I’m almost ready with the mobile version of it, there is one more section I’d like to add before I start to work on the desktop layout. Oh, and I have to write a summary blog post as well because I don’t want to add a huge amount of text on this review page.
2019.12.20. Friday
Today I moved my projects from Notion to Trello, because I realized that I used Notion as a kanban board and Trello is way better to do that. I’m still using Notion for other notes but my feeling is, that managing my projects in Trello will be easier. Btw at the end of every project I always return to my notepad to take short notes and it’s also a great feeling to “physically” complete a task and I can do that by crossing the item in my notebook with a pen.
I finished the mobile layout of the yearly review site but some copy is still missing to go live with it. Oh, and of course the desktop optimization. I'll start next week with these and I'll spend the rest of the day eating a bunch of cookies 🍪 under the Christmas tree 🎄
Todo for next week:
- Publish yearly review microsite
- Eat cookies and chill under the Christmas tree