Hello and welcome to TTL!

My name is Ethan Marlatt and I am the creator of this magnificent website you now have the pleasure of perusing. The original intent behind building this website came from a desire to create long-form content. I felt that existing social media had taken a downward trajectory and I wanted something new. This website doubles as a portfolio to showcase my technical knowledge and writing skills. While creating this, I realized, "what could be better to showcase technical knowledge and writing skills than creating the very means and platform in which I showcase those skills?"

If you are an employer, or just curious about the more technical aspects of this website check out (insert here: link to location of consolidated technical posts).

With that out of the way, what is TTL?

TTL Overview

TTL at it's core is a blogging platform. You can create an account, publish your own blog posts, and reply to other blog posts. What makes TTL unique is the publishing process and the profile customization.

TTL is geared toward long-form content and as a result has a number of features in place that make that process as smooth as possible. The markdown editor allows one to really focus on the writing. Formatting is great and that is why previewing your formatted post is so accessible, but when writing, it can often distract from the content itself. Especially with images, it is easy to get lost in the aesthetic. Markdown lets you take note of the formatting in a way that is conducive to productivity by seamlessly integrating it as plaintext. Markdown may have a steeper learning curve than other rich text editors, but I personally find that it makes me a more efficient writer after spending a lot of time with it.

Even compared to other markdown editors, TTL is unique. This is due to the custom markdown engine—Marquis—working behind the scenes to convert the plaintext into formatted text. Through Marquis, the footnotes system implemented for images is made possible. The standard way of inserting images through a markdown editor can leave your content messy as it has to have the full URL right there in the middle of the page. Furthermore, as the images increase with larger posts, it is easy to get confused about which image is being referenced where. TTL tackles this by relegating the url to a footnotes section below the editor and replacing this with a label that can be edited by the user. If you decide to add a label later on, you can simply hover over the url for a preview of the image to remind you what you uploaded.

TTL also features versions in the publishing process. Versions is the name given to the feature that allows a blog post to have multiple versions that can be edited simultaneously and easily swapped. If you are creating a blog post and can't decide if a paragraph should be omitted, or if you should reference figure_1.png or figure_2.png you can create a version where that paragraph is omitted or where figure_2.png is linked instead. This gives users the flexibility to create long-form content in an environment with multiple ideas in a unified way rather than having to create multiple drafts of the same post.

Lastly, TTL allows users to customize their profile in ways not available on other social media. You can add your custom biography, relationship status, current obsession, profile picture as well as change the colors of your profile all the way down to the text color.

Parting Note

TTL began as an experiment. I had no idea how it would turn out. I had never done any front end development at all, and never attempted a project of this scale. With that said I could not be happier with how it turned out. I learned so much from doing this and am still learning things every single day. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I do.

Now... GET TO POSTING!