Fret Candy

A coding-in-public blog documenting my journey from zero to indie hacker, with a focus on building music apps and tools for string players in the practice room.

Music meets code, let's go! 🎸

About

Welcome to Fret Candy! This blog chronicles my adventure as a musician and developer turned music-app maker. My goal is to share all of my experiments, discoveries, and weird ideas - from initial concepts to (hopefully) successful MVPs.

What You'll Find Here:

• Coding Journey Posts - Raw, unfiltered updates on learning new technologies and tackling development challenges
• Project Deep Dives - Detailed breakdowns of app ideas, from initial concepts to implementation struggles
• Music Tech Experiments - Quick prototypes and weird ideas that may or may not work
• Indie Hacker Insights - Lessons learned, failures celebrated, and small wins documented
• String Player Tools - Progress updates on apps designed to make practice time more efficient

Tech Stack

Keeping it simple:

• Static Site Generator: Hugo
• Theme Template: Papermod
• Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript with Hugo templating
• Deployment: Netlify
• Domain: fretcandy.com(https://fretcandy.com)

Development

If you like my blog layout, feel free to quick start one of your own by cloning my repo.

Prerequisites

• Hugo (extended version recommended)
• Git

Local Development

1. Clone the repository:

   git init
   git clone https://github.com/stcybrdgs/fretcandy.com.git
   cd fretcandy.com

2. Start the Hugo development server:

   # serve the blog site with published posts
   hugo server
   
   # serve the blog site with published and draft posts
   hugo server -D

3. Open your browser to http://localhost:1313

Building for Production

hugo --minify

The site will be built with minified files to the public/ directory.

Content Structure

If you clone the repo, you'll find the interesting stuff at these locations in the project structure:

fretcandy.com
├── content/
|   ├── posts/ # blog posts about the journey
|   └── tags/ # navbar tags page
|       ├── archives # navbar archives page
|       └── search # navbar search page
├── layouts/
|     └── shortcodes # embedded micro apps
└── themes/ # hugo themes
    └── PaperMod/ # fretcandy.com blog theme

Deployment

Because the blog site is setup on Netlify, the site is automatically deployed by Netlify whenever changes are pushed to the main GitHub branch. Netlify handles:

• Automatic builds using Hugo
• Custom domain configuration
• SSL certificates
• Form handling

You can learn more about using Hugo with Netlify at Hugo on Netlify

Following the Journey

• Blog: fretcandy.com
• Twitter/X: @stcybrdgs

Current Projects

Fret Charts

A web application for string players to create custom:

• Musical staves
• Tablature lines
• Practice charts
• Shareable and downloadable PDFs

Status: In development - follow along for updates!

Contributing

While this is primarily a personal blog documenting my journey, I welcome:

• Bug reports and fixes
• Suggestions for blog topics
• Ideas for music apps that would help string players
• General feedback and encouragement

Feel free to Contact me on the blog!

License

Content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

Code is licensed under the MIT License.

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"Coding in public, fret by fret."