Virtual Coffee is a laid-back conversation with developers twice a week. It's the conversation that keeps going in slack. It's the online events that support developers at all stages of the journey. It's the place where you go to make friends who all just happen to be in tech.

Anyone can join! Whether you're just thinking about getting into tech or have been in it for decades.

We know that growth comes at all levels and that no matter what stage of the journey you're on, you can teach and learn.

So come with a question or a topic to discuss, ask for feedback on your portfolio, answer another developer's question, or just sit back and listen to others talk about tech.

Our mission is to form community, allow room for growth and mentorship at all levels, and to provide a safe space for everyone interested in tech.

Please take a moment to read our Code of Conduct.

See you there!

Working on the site:

• This site is built using Remix.
• Check out our CONTRIBUTING guideline to make contributions.
• If you're new to open source, check out our Git & GitHub 101 and Contributor Guide resources.

Table of Contents:

• Local Development Setup
• Commands
• Loading data
• Adding content

Local Development Setup

Steps to run the site locally for development or curiosity

1. Fork and clone the repository

Follow these steps to create a fork of this repository and clone it to your local machine.

2. Navigate to the repo directory

If you have just run git clone ... , the next step would be to move into the cloned repo:

cd virtualcoffee.io

3. Install dependencies

This repo requires node, pnpm, and the Netlify CLI to get started.

Installing node:

The best way to install node is to download the installer from their site. This repo requires node version 18.16, which is the latest LTS version.

If you already have a different version of node installed, but don't want to update globally, you can install a package called nvm, which will allow you to easily switch node versions. Once you have nvm installed (or if you already have it installed), you can run nvm use in the main directory and it will install the proper version of node.

Installing pnpm:

pnpm is a package manager that is used to install the rest of our dependencies.

Read more about pnpm on their docs site.

The best way to install pnpm for this project is by using Corepack, a new feature bundled with Node.

Install pnpm via corepack with the following commands:

corepack enable
corepack prepare

Setting up your .env

Use the following command to create a local .env file. Then open the new file (.env) and adjust any settings that are needed.

cp .env.example .env

Installing package dependencies

Once you have node, pnpm, and the Netlify CLI installed, you're ready to install the local dependencies! Run the following command:

pnpm install

At this point you're ready to roll! Run the following command to get rolling!

pnpm dev

Read more about what pnpm dev does in the following section.

Commands

The following commands are available for your use. Most of the time you'll only ever need pnpm dev.

pnpm dev

pnpm dev

This is the only command you need to do normal local development.

Starts a local server and watches your source files for changes. Use this to preview local development.

Once you run this command, a local server is running at http://localhost:9000! Any changes you make to the src folder should also re-build the site and re-load your browser.

You should see something like 'Server now ready on http://localhost:9000' below, which means the watcher is waiting to build your awesome changes!

Use ctrl-c to quit the server when you're done.

---

Note:

Depending on the speed of your computer, you can get a TimeoutError - Task timed out after 10.00 seconds message when the localhost renders the home page (http://localhost:9000) on the browser.

If the feature you are working on is not on the home page (the newsletter or monthly challenges page, for example), you may still be able to load the page you need. After you see the notification of Server now ready on http://localhost:9000, go to your browser. Then add the path of the page you need (like http://localhost:9000/newsletter for the newsletter or http://localhost:9000/monthlychallenges for the monthly challenges page) to see the page.

---

pnpm dev actually runs three sub commands, which can be run independently if you wish:

• pnpm dev:sass - compiles sass styles found in ./styles. When in dev mode will re-run when a file is changed. The files are compiled to the ./tmp directory to be processed by the next step.
• pnpm dev:css - processes css files using PostCSS. The resulting files are saved in ./app/styles
• pnpm dev:remix - starts up the local Netlify dev environment and starts the Remix server.

pnpm build

pnpm build

Builds a production-ready version of the site. This is what Netlify uses to build our site.

pnpm build actually runs three sub commands, which can be run independently if you wish:

• pnpm build:sass - compiles sass styles found in ./styles. The files are compiled to the ./tmp directory to be processed by the next step.
• pnpm build:css - processes css files using PostCSS. The resulting files are saved in ./app/styles
• pnpm build:remix - compiles everything needed to run the site for production.

pnpm format

pnpm format

Runs Prettier on all of our files. This happens automatically via husky and lint-staged, so there's usually no need to run this manually.

pnpm lint

pnpm lint

Runs ESLint on all of our files, so you can check for errors or warnings. This happens automatically at build time.

Loading data

A lot of the data loaded on the site is from APIs that require private keys or tokens. Unfortunately we can't publish these or distribute them too widely.

All of the data points have mock data that is used if the required API key isn't present, so contributors should be able to make UX-related changes without needing them.

If you'd like to work on a feature that requires an API key, please reach out to a maintainer and we can probably get that going.

Adding content

Resources

Our VC Resources are created using MDX. MDX is basically a combination of Markdown and React.

Any files added to app/routes/__frontend/resources will be automatically loaded and added to the appropriate index page.

A good way to start adding a new page would be to copy one of the existing pages, then edit the details and content.

Newsletters

The newsletters (for now) are simply jsx files, and can be found in app/routes/__frontend/newsletter/issues.

When you add a new issue, make sure to add it to the index. Here's how:

• Open app/data/newsletters.js
• import the new issue
• Add the new issue to the newsletters array.

So, if you have created app/routes/__frontend/newsletter/issues/2022-03.jsx:

+ import { handle as issue202203 } from '~/routes/__frontend/newsletter/issues/2022-03';
import { handle as issue202202 } from '~/routes/__frontend/newsletter/issues/2022-02';
import { handle as issue202201 } from '~/routes/__frontend/newsletter/issues/2022-01';

const newsletters = [
+ 	{ handleData: issue202203, slug: '2022-03' },
	{ handleData: issue202202, slug: '2022-02' },
	{ handleData: issue202201, slug: '2022-01' },
];

Monthly Challenges

Every month, our monthly challenge page will need to move the current challenge to the main portion of the list, and add the new challenge to the current challenge section.

To make the updates, go to app/routes/__frontend/monthlychallenges/index.tsx