A Big Week for Writers Grove
This week marked a significant milestone for Writers Grove. We’ve moved from a simple landing page to a functional reading platform on our beta environment. Here’s what changed.
Database Migration: PostgreSQL on Neon
We migrated from Turso (LibSQL) to PostgreSQL hosted on Neon. This gives us:
- Better tooling - PostgreSQL’s mature ecosystem and excellent full-text search capabilities
- Simpler queries - Native support for the features we need without workarounds
- Scalability - Neon’s serverless PostgreSQL scales with our needs
The migration included setting up proper URL slugs as indexed database columns, making our URLs cleaner and lookups faster.
The Reading Experience
The core reading flow is now functional on beta.writersgrove.net:
Home Page
- Browse series with cover images in a responsive grid
- Tabs for Latest Releases, New Authors, and Most Popular (all showing latest releases for now)
- Click any series to dive in
Series Page
- View all books in a series
- See the series description and author info
- Click a book to see its chapters
Book Page
- Book cover and description
- “Start Reading” button to jump to Chapter 1
- “Latest Chapter” button for returning readers
- Full chapter list for easy navigation
Chapter Reading
- Clean, readable typography optimized for long-form reading
- Breadcrumb navigation - easily jump back to the book, series, or home
- Previous/Next buttons at the bottom of each chapter
- Arrow key navigation - use left/right arrows to move between chapters
- Responsive design that works on mobile
Technical Highlights
- HTMX-powered - Smooth page transitions without full reloads
- Server-side rendering - Fast initial loads with Go templates
- CDN-ready - Image URLs are environment-aware (beta vs production)
- Indexed slugs - Clean URLs like
/u/classics/frankenstein/volume-1/letter-1
What’s Next
- Placeholder images for series and books without covers
- Author profile pages
- The author dashboard for creating and managing content
- Search functionality
Try It Out
Head over to beta.writersgrove.net to explore. We’ve seeded it with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein courtesy of Project Gutenberg.
As always, join our Discord to share feedback or just say hello.
Questions or feedback? Reach out at steven@writersgrove.net
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