Life on Mars
marsbased
A podcast about technology, entrepreneurship and innovation from MarsBased. Listen to stories of the best founders, investors, experts and celebrities from all around the galaxy.
As a development consultancy specialized in Ruby, JavaScript and Python, we go beyond the code to share our real-world experience running a lifestyle business, remote work, company culture and digital transformation. From Barcelona to the world, bringing value to the global tech and business community.
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Troy Hunt: 12 years of Have I Been Pwned & the truth about AI scams
Agency Q&A: Recruiting "Champions" and optimizing for answer engines (AEO) Building MarsBased #6
Scaling a remote team: Lessons on trust, productivity, and firing | Building MarsBased #5
Generalist or specialist? Inside our biggest business debate: Building MarsBased #4
Episode 032
Building a CMS from scratch, with Didier Lafforgue (LocomotiveCMS)
We had the pleasure of hosting Didier Lafforgue, creator of LocomotiveCMS and CEO of the development agency NoCoffee.
In 2016, we compared all the Ruby on Rails-powered CMS systems out there to pick one with which to build sites for less tech-savvy clients who wanted an alternative to Wordpress. We picked LocomotiveCMS, and we have been using it ever since to build any size of projects, like the one we did for Startup Genome.
We talk for an hour with Didier about the following topics:
- Why he decided to build another CMS when there were a lot of them already.
- How to balance product vs. services.
- Why he picked its techstack (Ruby on Rails + Liquid).
- How to create a product roadmap.
- Building first, finding clients later.
- Bootstrapping a tech product.
- How to balance client requests vs. gut feeling.
- His vision for the CMS market.
- Comparison with Wordpress.
- Fuckups and lessons learnt running this project.
These topics, salt peppered with our seasoned Catalan and French accents, in a heartfelt episode that will satisfy both techies and product people.
It might also upset Wordpress lovers, but to be honest, who cares.