Penny Post

Penny Post aims to fix online communication by removing its most pernicious aspect — instantaneity.

Modern messaging optimizes for speed: read receipts, typing indicators, notifications the second something lands. That speed comes at a cost — we write faster than we think, and we feel pressure to reply before we've had a chance to. Letters never worked that way. You wrote when you had something to say, sent it, and got on with your life until it arrived.

Penny Post brings that rhythm online. Write to someone whenever the moment strikes — draft it, come back to it, take your time. Once you seal a letter, it waits with everyone else's until the next delivery: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at noon UTC, all at once. No inbox to refresh in between, no indication anything is coming until it's there. (The schedule lives in config/pennypost.php.)

Seed local database

php artisan migrate:fresh --seed
php artisan db:seed --class=DemoCorrespondenceSeeder

Run tests

composer test

Run locally

php artisan serve

To deploy

Penny Post is deployed to a VPS managed by hetzner. Messages are stored in a SQLite database. Only Victor Elgersma can deploy this app, because he has the SSH keys.

Note to self:

Make sure to commit build files as I cannot run npm run build on the server

ssh hetzner
cd /var/www/laravel.vjbe.net
git pull
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
php artisan migrate --force