> A story about the idea, development process, and **tech-stack** behind [swapp.ro](https://swapp.ro/)

## First of all, who are "we"?

I'm a Full-Stack developer with more than 20 years of experience, nearly half of them as an independent contractor.

My wife is a former highly skilled interior-designer, writer, and lately an aspiring UX/UI developer.

## Secondly, what is [swapp.ro](https://swapp.ro/) and why did we build it?

I'll try to keep the background story short, but I have to explain.

I've been working as a registered sole trader / self-employed / individual service provider (or "PFA", as we call it in Romanian) for some years and, at some point last spring, I came to the conclusion I was in dire need of a custom workflow management and simple accounting solution. Something that, without being overly complicated, would give me the ability to manage my customers, contracts, projects, worked hours, and — very important — provide the feature to issue detailed invoices for my customers based on the worklog. Preferably in PDF format, because some of them like to experience the feeling of plain old, officially-looking "printed paper" on screen. The ability to quickly and painlessly issue the mandatory accounting documents and basic data for fiscal statements was also a must.

```cv
gallery
{"layout":"hscroll","images":[{"src":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/maitake-project.appspot.com/o/pages%2FKeB6GRKtlGdcG58eTaXdmDL9NC33%2FMZn93xY9iygDI9tbS3Iz%2F84e8b33b-1882-4b85-bc08-3481babb5388.png?alt=media&token=af12927a-7d87-47b8-876e-1dfb03e4e314","id":"84e8b33b-1882-4b85-bc08-3481babb5388","width":1473,"height":977,"filename":"swapp.ro-1.png","type":"image/png","caption":"swapp.ro - Issue invoices based on worlog items","border":false}]}
```

did study quite a few solutions that were available on the market at the time, but unfortunately none of them were exactly what I was looking for. Some of the best known were simply too much, bloated with features I had no use for (and I don't like to pay for stuff I don't use), while the ones advertising themselves as "the perfect solution for lone wolves" were sort of... well, not looking good enough, and therefore not to be trusted. From my perspective, at least. Though I'm, first and foremost, a software developer, over the years I've learned to pay attention to visual details — not only do they **sell** your product, but they also tell a story about **you**. You as a service provider and you as a person. And I've learned not to trust people or companies who show carelessness in their products, especially when they're asking money for them.

The solution came to us one morning, over a hot cup of coffee: **we should build one**. I mean, why not? Between the two of us, we had all the necessary background. I had [more than the required technical expertise](https://www.linkedin.com/in/icflorescu/), and my wife had [more than the required artistic skills](https://www.behance.net/iflorescu) to give the front-facing website an attractive look. Plus, she wanted to learn coding in order to make the magic happen on screen by herself. She had an impressive portfolio of ArchViz projects and some UX/UI experience with Figma, but none with code. So it was up to me to put my "mentoring hat" on and help her with it. I'm not sure I did the best job, but somehow she managed to overcome my mentoring limitations with lots of personal effort and perseverance. And, judging by people's reaction, it seems we did good as a team.

There were also many *sane* reasons **not to build it**. We may both have had plenty of experience single-handedly carrying out projects from start to finish for our external customers, but this time we were looking at no less than six months of *hard work and no pay* (and hard work it was). However, we are both somewhat *insane*, we had some cash stashed aside, so we said: "**What the heck, let's do it!"**

And, slightly more than six months later, we ended up with a pretty good MVP. One which, I daresay, would be a useful tool to other people like us as well.

```cv
gallery
{"layout":"hscroll","images":[{"src":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/maitake-project.appspot.com/o/pages%2FKeB6GRKtlGdcG58eTaXdmDL9NC33%2FMZn93xY9iygDI9tbS3Iz%2F891ef7dc-853d-4ae7-8e6b-c0fdf8ec3970.png?alt=media&token=d8968b87-8cc0-434b-9a8f-977598ed859f","id":"891ef7dc-853d-4ae7-8e6b-c0fdf8ec3970","width":1414,"height":932,"filename":"swapp.ro-2.png","type":"image/png","caption":"swapp.ro - Application welcome screen ","border":false}]}
```

Now, let's get to the technical side of story.

## What we used

We had our requirements drawn up, most of them coming from personal needs and/or experience, which, according to some people, are always good assumptions to build a product on.

Some of the technical decisions I made come from experience, others are the result of constraints such as being a small team of two with an inexistent budget.

```cv
gallery
{"layout":"hscroll","images":[{"src":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/maitake-project.appspot.com/o/pages%2FKeB6GRKtlGdcG58eTaXdmDL9NC33%2FMZn93xY9iygDI9tbS3Iz%2F0f99a169-df97-423b-b4f9-45ac0f93bd68.png?alt=media&token=afdd1f80-8a63-480a-bd1a-bfc0c64ff5ba","id":"0f99a169-df97-423b-b4f9-45ac0f93bd68","width":1280,"height":378,"filename":"swapp.ro-3.png","type":"image/png","caption":"swapp.ro - Tech-stack","border":false}]}
```

Node.js, [React](https://reactjs.org/) and [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/) came to mind naturally — it was my tech-stack of choice, and perhaps the most widely used by startups today. So, we ended up with a so-called server-side-rendered React application. We cared a lot about SSR especially on account of the front-facing website, which we needed to be as SEO friendly as possible.

Speaking of which, our initial design mock-ups were built in [Figma](https://www.figma.com/), and we used [SASS](https://sass-lang.com/)/[CSS modules](https://nextjs.org/docs/basic-features/built-in-css-support) to bring the magic into code. We used simple .svg images almost exclusively, because we wanted a sharp look and fast loading.

The web application is quite a bit more complicated. From the get-go we agreed that our product (at least the MVP) should be usable on desktop/laptop, because, like us, our target customers are heavy computer users who spend a lot of time typing on real keyboards and would not risk fat-fingering their sensitive invoice and/or other financial data on mobile phones. We also decided upon [Typescript](https://www.typescriptlang.org/) over plain JavaScript, because we were anticipating a code-base large enough to create trouble without proper strong-typing.

```cv
gallery
{"layout":"hscroll","images":[{"src":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/maitake-project.appspot.com/o/pages%2FKeB6GRKtlGdcG58eTaXdmDL9NC33%2FMZn93xY9iygDI9tbS3Iz%2F81e656b9-e2e6-4722-acce-60e9ea58f50f.png?alt=media&token=92469e0f-126c-416a-9da6-40622e26487e","id":"81e656b9-e2e6-4722-acce-60e9ea58f50f","width":1400,"height":921,"filename":"swapp.ro-4.png","type":"image/png","caption":"swapp.ro - Figma prototyping","border":false}]}
```

### The Front-End/UI

Which led me to a quest in itself, namely finding a reliable React UI framework suited for the task. I had enough previous experience with [MaterialUI](https://mui.com/), and a number of other fancy and playful-looking frameworks; I even built my own for some projects. The closest thing to what we needed that I knew of was [Blueprint.js](https://blueprintjs.com/), built and supported by some great guys at Palantir, a US-company best-known for earning lots of money from contracts with [Big Brother](https://www.nsa.gov/). My previous experience with Blueprint was satisfying, to say the least, however I found it a bit too resource-intensive. Ultimately, I went for a lesser-known (in the US/EU), yet equally impressive alternative, and with a more modern codebase to boot: [AntDesign](https://ant.design/). If the name sounds somewhat strange to a westerner's ear, it is because this framework was developed by a Chinese company, which, right before raising a shitload of money in the largest IPO of all times, ended up as a financial holding company overseen by China's state-controlled central bank. In other words, who knows, the name might have more sense in Chinese. But I digress. AntDesign seemed the perfect choice, and not just because it happens to be an open-source project (thumbs up for that). It is simply fabulous. The amount of code and effort behind the plenitude of UI components is mind-blowing. The only drawback was that some of the GitHub discussions around the issues were in Chinese. Fortunately, there's Google translate.

**So, AntDesign it was,** and a good bet too. It gained quite a lot of traction in the Western Hemisphere since last year, which makes the experience we acquired with it worthwhile. And, of course, we didn't just used the basic components "out-of-the-box"; we built our own on top of them — such as an abstract DataTable with filtering, paging and row actions, capable to work directly with API routes.

The React application state management ecosystem is full of options. There's the already classic Redux, heavies like Redux-Saga, plus many Redux-wrappers like Eeasy-Peasy; there's also the new quickly-becoming-old Context API, and there are many others, some of them better suited for Next.js SSR applications like ours. I chose one that I particularly liked for its simplicity and painless integration without boilerplate code: [Valtio](https://github.com/pmndrs/valtio).

```cv
gallery
{"layout":"hscroll","images":[{"src":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/maitake-project.appspot.com/o/pages%2FKeB6GRKtlGdcG58eTaXdmDL9NC33%2FMZn93xY9iygDI9tbS3Iz%2F614690f3-6587-4121-97bd-59e062ea0eb0.png?alt=media&token=30b92cb9-9ba3-4e14-9425-1a7522736d75","id":"614690f3-6587-4121-97bd-59e062ea0eb0","width":1488,"height":936,"filename":"swapp.ro-5.png","type":"image/png","caption":"swapp.ro - Prisma-based filtering","border":false}]}
```

### The Back-End

Back-Ends can be at least as complicated as Front-Ends, from the perspective of the overwhelming possibility of choices one faces, and I'm only talking about the ones surrounding the Node.js ecosystem, or ones that would work fine with it. And sometimes tech people tend to over-engineer their solutions, even when building small projects. In some cases, because they only worked in larger teams, they just don't know how to set up simple solutions. In others, they simply like to try new things and use many PaaS/SaaS tools and toys. I do that too, but it's less of a temptation when you're building your own MVP and you want it to "just work" on a plain, simple VPS you can spin up yourself on a low budget.

From my perspective at the time, there were two possible good choices: we could either use [Next.js REST API routes](https://nextjs.org/docs/api-routes/introduction), or go for GraphQL provided by [Hasura](https://hasura.io/). I've used Hasura recently and I highly recommend it for larger projects, but many of the decisions in this particular case were heavily influenced by the tightness of our operational budget, so we went with the "classic" REST API routes.

What made sense behind the API routes, considering the project's scale, was an SQL database, of course; and that database was going to be PostgreSQL: open-source, reliable, easy to host in a Docker container on our own VPS. But how would we access it? I've used [Knex.js](https://knexjs.org/) a lot in the past and I'm quite proficient at writing SQL, but let's be fair: there's not much fun in it. I've also used [Objection.js](https://vincit.github.io/objection.js/) and a few other classic ORMs. Nowadays, though, all the cool kids go for Prisma. I'm not exactly a kid anymore, though I like to think of myself as still pretty cool 😎, so [Prisma](https://www.prisma.io/) it was, and a good decision too. They do measure up to the promise of being "*the next-generation Node.js and TypeScript ORM*". One can't do everything with it, of course. I still had to write a bit of SQL code by hand, some of it even in stored-procedures for speed (as I said, fairly comfortable with SQL), but Prisma cut our back-end development time and complexity at least in half.

It also integrated perfectly with my chosen authentication system — [NextAuth](https://next-auth.js.org/). We wanted *passwordless authentication* that would still be secure, and there were a few possible alternatives to pick from: I could either "roll my own", or use Firebase. Rolling your own can be a fun and challenging task, but by no means trivial, and security is not something to play around with when you want users to trust you with sensitive data. Although I'm a big fan of Firebase — and they have a generous limit of 10,000 SMS-based auth operations per month — I chose NextAuth in order to minimize our project's dependencies on external 3rd party service providers. Our users can quickly sign-in with their Google, LinkedIn, GitHub, GitLab or Facebook accounts, or using "magic links" sent to their custom email addresses.

```cv
gallery
{"layout":"hscroll","images":[{"src":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/maitake-project.appspot.com/o/pages%2FKeB6GRKtlGdcG58eTaXdmDL9NC33%2FMZn93xY9iygDI9tbS3Iz%2F0ec876ef-4ece-4954-a1f2-42f0ba4bf772.png?alt=media&token=e38060ca-fded-4a49-a3bf-0a7a301e3c2d","id":"0ec876ef-4ece-4954-a1f2-42f0ba4bf772","width":1465,"height":1000,"filename":"swapp.ro-6.png","type":"image/png","caption":"swapp.ro - NextAuth screen","border":false}]}
```

The invoice PDF documents are server-side generated *on-the-fly* and eTag-based cached for performance reasons, and I used a fabulous library called [ReactPDF](https://react-pdf.org/) for that. ReactPDF gave us the ability to build and style our documents in a familiar "react-ish" syntax, and allow our users to customize them with their own logos and accent colors, for a bit more personality.

Choosing an online payment gateway was also an interesting process. Working with a local (as in Romanian) payment processor would have been nice, but unfortunately the ones we assessed ([PayU](https://romania.payu.com/en/), [Netopia Payments](https://netopia-payments.com/) and a few others) are still stuck in the past century regarding their APIs, documentations and *modus-operandi*. In my previous projects for external customers I've used [PayPal](https://www.paypal.com/ro/webapps/mpp/partners-and-developers) and [Stripe](https://stripe.com/en-ro), but in this case we had to take into account some specific considerations, and after playing around with test accounts from [Viva](https://www.vivawallet.com/ro_ro) and [Paylike](https://paylike.io/), I finally decided to go with [Paylike](https://paylike.io/).

> **Advice:** If you're a Romanian developer looking for an easy-to-integrate payment gateway in your modern, custom-built Node.js/React application, do yourself a service and don't waste time with [PayU](https://romania.payu.com/en/) or [Netopia](https://netopia-payments.com/). They're stuck in the mindset of PHP-shop plugins. Try [Stripe](https://stripe.com/en-ro), [PayPal](https://www.paypal.com/ro/webapps/mpp/partners-and-developers), [Paylike](https://paylike.io/), or [Viva](https://www.vivawallet.com/ro_ro).

They have many GitHub repos in their organization profile, setting up an account is really easy and the integration process works like a charm — though they should really add typings to their Node.js library.

## What's next for [swapp.ro](https://swapp.ro/)

As I said, [swapp.ro](https://swapp.ro/) is a project that started out of a personal ambition and it's still in its MVP stage. So far the reactions are positive. If you're a self-employed Romanian resident, by all means, give it a try. And don't hesitate to drop me a line at [ionut@swapp.ro](http://mailto:ionut@swapp.ro/) or in a LinkedIn message. Right now we're looking for beta-testers and are more than ready to grant them free use for a generous period of time. There are still many things to be done, many improvements to be made, some bugs to iron out, and we could use all the help and support we get.

Speaking of which — we're really considering the idea of partnering up with a *business enabler*. It's a fun project and we put a lot of effort and passion into building it, but we are perfectly aware that we need a lot more resources to turn it into a true business. We're more than able to handle the technical side of things, but we don't have the time, skills and connections to do the necessary advertising, networking, to discover funding avenues, etc. So, if you see potential in our endeavor and think you could help it grow, then, by all means, we're more than happy to talk to you.

How we've built swapp.ro without external financing

React/Svelte/Node.js Developer

A simple Node.js asset packager inspired by Rails, released in 2013, when Webpack didn't exist

ASPAX

A back-office fleet purchase management system built for AJM Business Services automotive trading company.
Built with React/Next.js, Blueprint.js UI library, Hasura, PostgreSQL, and deployed on Amazon Lightsail.

AJM-Fleet-Purchase

Move fast and break nothing.
End-to-end typesafe APIs for your SvelteKit applications.

tRPC-SvelteKit

A component that brings right-click functionality to React web applications built with Mantine UI.

If you're a React developer and use the Mantine UI library, this cool little library enables you to design your applications for productivity and meet your users’ expectations by enhancing your UIs with desktop-grade context menus.

LIGHTWEIGHT YET CUSTOMISABLE
Features a succinct API, respects the Mantine dark mode and can be easily customized by providing your own content instead of using the default generated menu items.

TYPESCRIPT-BASED
The entire codebase is written in TypeScript, options are well typed and documented with JSDoc, so you can build type safe applications with confidence.

FREE & OPEN-SOURCE
This package is released under the MIT license, same as Mantine library, so you can freely build fantastic data-rich applications with it.

USE ANYWHERE
You can use it in any modern React framework supported by Mantine, such as Next.js, Vite, Create React App, Remix or Gatsby.

Mantine ContextMenu

PocketBaseUML is a free, open-source UML diagram generator for PocketBase.
You can use it online at https://pocketbase-uml.github.io or run it locally as an npm package.

PocketBaseUML

Beta-reading, consulting on and co-editing the King's Host implied a lot of work but at the same time was really fun. Finally getting the book published on Amazon Kindle, Google Play, Apple iBooks and Kobo Rakuten in May 2018 was really a dream come true.
The author invested countless hours and a tremendous amount of energy for more than a full year in bringing this book to life and supporting her was truly a privilege.

The technical tasks included editing the book content in Calibre, exporting and tweaking the output formats, submitting the results for review to four of the major ebook stores and setting up the main product website.

On a strictly technical note, I've built kingshost with Node.js / React / Next.js, dressed it with styled-jsx and crafted a workflow to host it on GitHub Pages. The code is opensource - please refer to my GitHub profile if you're curious to learn how it was done.

On a less technical note, if you're into fantasy novels, don't hesitate to give King's Host a try (and a nice review on any of the stores ;-). It will take you to a fantastic dream world, delight your senses and make you forget about your troubles for a while.

King's Host

A beautiful website built for a very special travel agency.
Designed from scratch using Figma, entirely coded with JS/React/Next.js.

BoutiqueTravel.ro

An automotive sales web application built with React/Next.js, MaterialUI, ObjectionJS, KnexJS, PostgreSQL and deployed on Amazon Lightsail.

SELLCARBUYCAR

Developing & maintaining our website to help us advertise our design, modeling and architecture vizualisation services.

InteriorDelight

Many years ago I performed a cool little experiment on how one could create and apply the leanest possible text-diffs in browser-based text editors such as CodeMirror, which materialized into two small utility NPM packages: textdiff-create and textdiff-patch.

I was recently surprised to discover that the two packages are still making between 3 and 3.5k downloads per month each!

textdiff-create & textdiff-patch

A simple tRPC transformer based on superjson with Decimal.js support.

tRPC-Transformer

Node.js, MongoDB, PostgreSQL & MySQL cartridges for Redhat's OpenShift, released in 2014-2015, when Docker wasn't yet a wide-spread tool.

Node.js: https://github.com/icflorescu/openshift-cartridge-nodejs
MongoDB: https://github.com/icflorescu/openshift-cartridge-mongodb
PostgreSQL: https://github.com/icflorescu/openshift-cartridge-postgresql
MySQL: https://github.com/icflorescu/openshift-cartridge-mysql

Node.js, MongoDB, PostgreSQL & MySQL cartridges for Redhat's OpenShift

Expose-WSL is probably the simplest way to expose apps running on WSL to local network devices.

Expose-WSL

Mantine DataTable is a lightweight, dependency-free component that brings datagrid-like functionality to your data-rich user interfaces. Features context-menu support and intuitive Gmail-style additive batch rows selection out of the box.

FEATURE-RICH
Supports asynchronous data loading, pagination, multiple rows selection, column sorting, custom cell data rendering, row context menu, row expansion, nesting and more.

TYPESCRIPT-BASED
The entire codebase is written in TypeScript, component properties are well typed and documented with JSDoc, so you can build type-safe applications with confidence.

FREE & OPEN-SOURCE
The package is released under the MIT license, same as Mantine library, so you can freely build fantastic data-rich applications with it.

USE ANYWHERE
You can use it in any modern React framework supported by Mantine, such as Next.js, Vite, Create React App, Remix or Gatsby.

Mantine DataTable

A simple, yet practical command-line utility enabling .NET developers to test web applications served by IIS Express on remote devices.

IISExpress-Proxy

Developed/managed various web projects using open-source technologies (Linux, PHP, MySQL).

Web Developer & Webmaster

Exposure Recruitment was a Dublin-based recruitment agency whose aim is to "make great things happen" by helping quality businesses and professionals find each other in the global market.

Our extensive "hands-on" technical background enabled us to do things a bit differently than the usual recruitment agencies. We "knew people" but we also knew technology.

Co-Founder & Executive Search Consultant

edesigning and rebuilding from scratch the entire third version of the codebase and managing the PaaS infrastructure of one of the best automobile marketplaces in Romania.

Technology key-points:

• ES6/7 on both the server and client-side;
• Server application built with Express.js/Node.js, running on a custom-built PaaS infrastructure hosted on ArubaCloud;
• Data persistence layer built with Bookshelf.js/Knex.js on top of PostgreSQL, with a custom-made FTS engine to fully support Romanian language;
• Data caching on a dedicated Redis server; 
• Views built with Jade and styled with Stylus;
• BLOB storage on Amazon AWS;
• PWA elements built with VanillaJS/DOMTastic/Riot.js, without jQuery.

Senior Full-Stack Developer

Capitalizing on previous experience gained while working for financial institutions, I was part of a private-equity investment group focusing on Bucharest residential RE market.

Real-Estate Investment Advisor

Part of a core-team of software engineers laying out the foundation of what was to become one of the best insurance software system based on Microsoft .NET / Oracle Database technology up to date.

Software Developer

SWAPP is a workflow management and accounting application built for Romanian freelancers and small-business owners, enabling them to keep track of customers, contracts, projects, work effort, invoices and check-register entries. It also produces "real-time" accounting and financial reports. 

Our small team of two people built the entire platform and website "from scratch" over 7 months - from hand-drawn UX/UI concepts, through Figma artboards, countless lines of code, to production deployment on a custom VPS.

The universally-rendered React/Next.js application code is written in Typescript and styled with SCSS modules. We're using Next-Auth to manage the user authentication workflow and Prisma with PostgreSQL for data persistence. Most of our business logic is handled within Next.js API routes and we've also used some advanced PL/pgSQL functions to be able to quickly generate "real-time" reports data. The UI is built on top of a slightly customized version of Ant Design - the most complete framework of UI components for React to date, perfectly suited for high-productivity desktop interfaces with heavy data density.

Our users' invoice documents are generated on-the-fly using a fantastic library called ReactPDF.

We've built a custom (bash-scripts based) scenario to reliably manage our production-deployment workflow, and be able to operate a low-cost production environment on a couple of Docker containers residing on an Ubuntu Server VPS.

We've using Paylike (by LUNAR) to accept online payments from our users, and since our application was custom-built, we've rolled our own integration using their Web SDK APIs.

Owner & Senior Full-Stack Developer

Internet Café Ltd. was the first publicly-open Internet Café in Bucharest.
This was my first "real" job and my duty involved providing the technical support to build and maintain the infrastructure of the Internet Café.

Network Administrator

Having significant practical experience in developing modern web application front-ends, I got involved in the UX/UI design process and especially JS coding for various exciting projects developed by Drift Data Systems.

UX Developer

Consultancy agreement to build & manage a website for the Public Administration Ministry of Romania.

Software Developer & IT Consultant

Co-founded a design/visualisation studio offering professional services for:

• 3D modeling, rendering and architecture visualisation;
• interior design for commercial/retail & residential spaces;
• custom furniture design;
• digital graphics;
• custom web development.

Co-founder

Consultancy agreement to build the database architecture for an e-commerce system.

Database Architect

Developing and managing the online presence of ANEVAR, the National Association of Romanian Valuers, a member of TEGoVA (The European Group of Valuers’ Associations) and IVSC (International Valuation Standards Committee).

Webmaster & Network Administrator

Senior Full-Stack Developer at @icflorescu
Bucharest, Romania
Having more than two decades of practical experience in web/software development with various tech & financial industry companies ranging from small technology start-ups to large enterprises, I’m working as an independent developer and technology consultant.

Current tech-stack:

- Typescript/JavaScript
- Node.js
- React/Next.js, but I'm also interested in Svelte/SvelteKit and Qwik/QwikCity
- tRPC — I'm a contributor and also the author of tRPC-SvelteKit and tRPC-Transformer
- NextAuth
- PocketBase — I'm the author of package PocketBaseUML
- Firebase (mostly firebase-auth)
- Prisma, PostgreSQL, Hasura
- SQL in general; I have experience in designing enterprise DB architectures while working for multinational companies in the past
- I have a few CSS tricks up my sleeve, a good understanding of the DOM, I'm fluent with CSS-in-JS, SASS/CSS-Modules, Emotion and I'm even good-enough at creating website/application designs from scratch

React UI Frameworks I've been working with:

- Mantine — I'm a contributor and also the author of Mantine DataTable and Mantine ContextMenu
- Ant Design
- MaterialUI
- Blueprint.js

Building a PHP/MySQL-based custom online content management system (similar to Joomla or Wordpress).

Web/Software Developer

Beta-reading, consulting on and co-editing the King's Host implied a lot of work but at the same time was really fun. Finally getting the book published on Amazon Kindle, Google Play, Apple iBooks and Kobo Rakuten in May 2018 was really a dream come true.
The author invested countless hours and a tremendous amount of energy for more than a full year in bringing this book to life and supporting her was truly a privilege.

The technical tasks included editing the book content in Calibre, exporting and tweaking the output formats, submitting the results for review to four of the major ebook stores and setting up the main product website.

On a strictly technical note, I've built kingshost.github.io with Node.js / React / Next.js, dressed it with styled-jsx and crafted a workflow to host it on GitHub Pages. The code is opensource - please refer to my GitHub profile if you're curious to learn how it was done.

On a less technical note, if you're into fantasy novels, don't hesitate to give King's Host a try (and a nice review on any of the stores ;-). It will take you to a fantastic dream world, delight your senses and make you forget about your troubles for a while.

Co-Editor, Technical Support

Part of a 5 engineers team developing the company core insurance system based on Microsoft .NET / SQL Server technologies.

Business Analyst & Software Developer

Logic D&D Advertising was a subsidiary of Logic Telecom, a leading Romanian ISP.

During my presence there I've practically "grown" with the company, stepping-up from an initial Web Developer position to becoming the IT Dept. Manager.

We've build quite a number of great products/websites and my involvement varied in time, from building the actual DB architectures and frantically writing thousands of lines of code to managing a team of 5 software / content developers / designers.

Ionut-Cristian Florescu

2023