I wish you a happy & productive new year! 🚀

So here we go, 2023 started. It is time for new years resolutions, right? A new year, a new beginning - they say. I wouldn't say I like this phrase. Does it mean we only have one chance to change things? Could we only make a plan once a year? No.

I more like:

Every day is a new beginning.

That means you can change your life every day, no matter if it's a sunny summer day or a cold winter.

You should have some goals every time of the year and should work to reach them consistently, not just in a burst of productivity in January (like in most of the gyms 😁).

So I'm not making a new year's resolution. Instead, I still follow the plans that were set in July.

It's been six months since I quit my daily job to be a solopreneur (often called an Indie Hacker) and pursue my dreams. But what dreams, you may ask?

My absolute dream is to have the ability to choose what to spend my time on.

This includes spending time with my family, making applications while sharing my progress with the world, and having fun. It is so simple.

The last six months have been like this. All thanks to you! 💜

But I would like to take the next big step.

The Game Plan

This plan is not new. It changed a bit since the initial one.

I want to focus on you, the community, by making things more transparently, build the most requested features and make open-source applications that helps you in your daily work & life.

The other thing is to make content about interesting new technologies, services, the pros and cons about being a solopreneur, etc.

These two things will help me to reach my goals.

Coolify

First of all, there were a lot of updates for Coolify that I did not share on this newsletter for a few months now.

If you are interested in "real-time" updates, be sure to follow me on Twitter / Mastodon.

• Community templates for Services
• Docker Compose support (beta)
• System-wide GitHub/GitLab Apps (beta)
• Custom SSL Certificates (beta)
• Deploy Dockerfiles with simple copy&paste (beta)
• Import any public repositories from git (without git integration).
• Custom Docker Registries
• Use Private Docker images
• Save Docker images to Docker registries
• Better ARM support

Coolify itself is not self-sustainable (~$200/month from your generous donations 💜).

To be sustainable, I need around $3000/month. That would be more than enough to live happily with my family and do what I love.

That is why I decided to make a cloud (not free) version, where I provide the Coolify instance, but you bring your server. You will have the same functionalities in the free version as in the cloud version, so there won't be paid-only features.

This has been delayed because I need to rewrite some parts to be able to provide such a service.

Technical details incoming ⚠

I'm currently rewriting the backend part from pure Fastify to tRPC based, so I have a separation of frontend and API/remote requests. This will enable you to have a CLI tool to manage your instances from the command line, better integration with 3rd party software, webhooks to include Coolify into your current flow, etc.

This improves a lot the stability of Coolify and enables a lot of contributions from the community. These topics will be the most important things in Q1.

Small Bets

These bets are things I would like to do for a long time, but I was afraid, had no time or had no opportunity (because I worked in a 9-5 job).

But I realized I have everything now to be able to do it (except I'm still scared 😅), I just need to be consistent.

Youtube

I love the process of making videos. Writing a script, thinking of punchlines, editing videos/photos together, etc.

So I will do short videos on my Youtube channel from next week. They will probably be silly ones first, but I would like to get used to making them.

The main topics will be:

1. Share exciting projects, libraries, and services, how they work, how to use them in a short and (hopefully) funny format. If you enjoy them, I will make longer videos with real-life examples.
2. Monthly/weekly project updates.
3. Share my knowledge.

Twitch

I also would like to connect you in live sessions. This idea has been with me for a year now. That is why I will start live streaming on my Twitch channel.

The purpose would be to make our community a bit natural & open, so you can join to work alongside me, ask questions, see how I'm working on my projects, see all my mistakes (😅), and make exciting projects blazingly fast from 0, but the most importantly to have fun.

How will I achieve all of these? With small steps, every day, consistently.
Will I be able to achieve all of these? Let's see in a few months. 🙂

Conclusion

It will be hard. Very hard. But I would like to work towards my dreams.

Happy coding & have a nice day! 👾