Spanner Spencer 🔧

Hi there, I'm Spanner Spencer. Yep, it's my real name, and a long but regrettably uninteresting story.

Here we go...

1) Technical Guideline

I've picked the Linux Upskill Challenge, and written a few words about why on this page.

2) What Do You Want to Learn at Work?

Ah, so much! Hopefully this doesn't ramble on too long!

3) Temporary Redirect Task

Here's the temporary redirection task. To accomplish it, I just added just a .json file with the redirect code found here.

https://vercel-portfolio-od7u7c9wo-graffitiwriter1.vercel.app/hello-vercel --> vercel.com

4) GitHub Redirect Question

Q: "How do I do a redirect from /hello-vercel to https://vercel.com?"

A: The good news is that Vercel gives you several options depending on how you've built your app. There's an excellent support article that covrs your various options here: https://vercel.com/support/articles/does-vercel-support-permanent-redirects

But let's give you the short version that I find to be quick and easy, to get you moving.

Create a new file called "vercel.json" in the repo's root, and open it up for editing. Here's the snippet you'll need to add the redirect (and any other redirects you might add in the future).

  {
  "redirects": [
    { 
      "source": "/source",
      "destination": "https://github.com/", 
      "permanent": true
    }
  ]
}

Swap out "/source" for the subpage you're redirecting from ("/hello-vercel", in your case), and change the destination to the URL you're sending people to. Once that's deployed, you should be good to go!

Always good to hear other people's methods too, so please share any other solutions in here. And if you get stuck, you know where to find us!

5) Using a Custom Doman in a Project

Q: "I have a custom domain which I purchased at GoDaddy and I want to use it on my project"

A: You can add a custom domain to any of your Vercel projects, which is handy as it means you can mangage multiple domains and their apps all from one account. On your dashboard, open up the project you want to add the GoDaddy domain to. Click the "Settings" tab, followed by "Domains" in the left hand menu lower down.

There you'll see an option to add your custom domain. You can do that now, and don't worry about the error you'll see. That's just because the domain isn't pointing at Vercel's nameservers yet. Before you head back to GoDaddy, click the "Nameservers" tab and take note of the entry in the "Intended Nameservers" box.

The first task in your GoDaddy hosting account is making sure your domain is unlocked. This will allow you to point it somewhere else, like your Vercel project. Now you need to swap the current nameservers GoDaddy is using for the Vercel ones you took note of previously. It might ask you to confirm by email, to make sure you're the account owner.

Once that's done, the domain is now being pointed at your Vercell project! There's a more detailed guide on custom domains in the docs, or take a look at Kirsten Swansons's excellent walkthrough here.

It can take a day or two for nameserver changes to propogate through the Internet, so don't worry if it doesn't instantly work.

Keep us posted on how it all goes!

6) What does Community mean to you?

I've thought a lot about this over the years!

7) How would you improve this response?

I'm reluctant to say the response is wrong; I have no doubt at all that Sam is way more adept with Vercel than I am. I think padding the answer with a short, but concerete example of how the user would employ the Ignore Build Step function in this specific case would be good. At the very least it'd be useful going forward, for anyone else who encounters a similar issue. Give Google something to grab hold of.

8a) What do you think is one of the most common problems which customers ask Vercel for help with?

Deployment would seem to be a stumbling block for a lot of users, based on what I've read on searches, Reddit and the GitHub discussions. Integration with other platforms and systems also seems to be quite common, although I didn't notice a particular pattern in terms of specific third-party tools causing support queries.

It's not too hard to find people asking domain related questions, either.

8b)How would you help customers to overcome common problems, short-term and long-term?

This is an excellent question where the short answer is "build a healthy, thriving community." But let's break that down a little into something that's more useful.

9) If you could make one change to our flagship community, what would it be and why?

As extreme as this might sound, I'd like to see it find a new home. GitHub is great and undoubtedly popular among the Vercel demographic, but it's not a community platform. It's really more of a tech support platform. For instance, you don't go into GitHub discussions to show off a cool new app you've built, or a feature you spotted on someone else's website, to publish a video you made demonstrating a cool technique, or even to share a stupid, funny meme.

Nor is GitHub a particularly welcoming platform for newcomers. That's less of a problem for a business with a very tech-savvy audience, but it's still not somewhere people go to have a chat or see what the hot topics are today.

I'm a little concerned that the Vercel community will struggle to grow beyond a tech support platform if the focus remains on GitHub. Even shifting to a Discord server would be an improvement, as people go into Discord with a more social mindset than they do with GitHub. Not that I'd scrap GitHub discussions - not by a long shot. It's the perfect place for tech support, but I'd look to bring those members to somewhere more dynamic to nurture the community into something more than a troubleshooting and problem solving arena.

10) How could we improve or alter this familiarisation exercise?

Adding a little formatting and branding to the PDF would make it a bit more digestible, and less a wall of intimidating text :D

From an outside perspective there might be a bit of repetition in the tasks too, but I'm conscious there could be a reason for that of which I'm just not aware at this point.

Thanks for taking the time to look through all this, and I hope I haven't rambled on excessively! If there's anything you'd like to discuss, or would just like to chat, please feel free to get in touch at any time.

Best regards,

Spanner Spencer. | info@spannerspencer.com | +44 7913 148613