Case study one: pawketz.com
background
I launched pawketz.com to back up my Twitch streaming profile called Pawketz where I broadcast video games live online under the same. Being a new face in the streaming scene makes it tough to stand out on Twitch with the flood of lesser known streamers making it hard for newer channels to get noticed. The website is designed to introduce myself and my adventure in streaming.
problem
There is no singular hub to view all of the Pawketz content that is easily discoverable to new users via a google search for gaming and live streams.
process
When I started out I needed my Twitch user ID to access my video streams via Twitch's API. I hit a roadblock because Twitch doesn't offer a way to locate this information on their site directly. After looking into it I stumbled upon a handy tool that can change a Twitch username into the matching user ID, which helped me move forward with my plans.
After that step was done I managed to hook up the Twitch API with my code to fetch and showcase the video from my latest stream. This involved tweaking the URL right, with the user ID and a ?parent="" query that indicates the approved website for showcasing the embedded video. I utilized LiveServer to give the page a trial run on my device with localhost set as the parent. Once I made sure that the video was located and played correctly I switched the parent to my domain, www.pawketz.com, to guarantee that the stream would show up on the website.
Building on the skills I acquired in IFT 458, I dockerized the website to create a portable deployment environment. To host the dockerized application, I found helpful YouTube tutorials that guided me through deploying the app on Heroku. I then modified the DNS settings in my Cloudflare dashboard to point users to the Heroku deployment, connecting my custom domain to the hosted application.
results
Since deploying the Pawketz website, I haven’t seen much traffic yet, mainly because I haven't added text content for SEO. Moving forward, I plan to fill out my “about” section to attract users interested in my hobbies, such as coding, cooking, and gaming. I also intend to redesign the site using ReactJS to enhance functionality and learn real-time rendering. This change has the potential of increasing my discoverability on the web and engaging more viewers. This project was my first experience with what felt like real web development and hosting. It taught me the fundamentals of deploying a website on a custom domain, helping me build confidence in my skills.