Francis Rubio
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Antares Programming

Empowering Filipinos in web development

Official Website
Made for
The public
I worked as
Writer, designer, and developer
Duration
November 2018 to present
Antares Programming

Antares Programming is not intended to replace all of the existing resources; it just augments them. It is intended to support existing educational resources by curating learning materials from around the Web and creating resources that explains what other sources have missed.

Antares Programming provides this service in three ways, all provided in Filipino:

For these solutions, a prominent online presence is essential. For this, I created a Facebook page for Antares Programming to reach the highest demographic possible. I also created a website to host the written articles for people interested in getting into the details. And finally, I have created a Youtube channel to host the videos.

Design

Design for this project is an ongoing process. At the time of writing, this project is in a process of rebuilding its brand after I have taken a hiatus from working on it in 2019.

The whole project is separated into three phases to make it easier for me to manage over the longer course of time.

Phase 1: Facebook Page

The Facebook page was started early on in the project. It serves as a marketing tool in building the audience and getting a wider reach. It also serves as an information hub for loyal fans of this project. It hosts all of the information about new articles and videos.

The Facebook page also serves as a channel of communication between Antares Programming and its fans. People send messages to the Facebook page to inquire of details about certain topics or just generally ask about a concept they don’t really get. This is also the main business model, if you will, as people get informed that Antares Programming accepts financial donations from its fans.

Phase 2: Website

The development of the website started a few weeks after the Facebook page was published. Initially it was just a simple blog where I write articles about web development, particularly about Intrinsic Web Design, which I felt really needed to be announced to Filipino developers.

The first iteration of the website was built with Hexo, a blogging engine. It was hosted on Github Pages. It has gone through different iterations in terms of its aesthetics and user experience, which also reflected my growth as a web designer during the time.

I built the second iteration of the website when I came back to working on it after taking a hiatus in 2019. I decided to rebuild it from scratch. This time I used Jekyll, a blogging engine built with Ruby, and again, hosted on Github Pages. I chose Jekyll because Github Pages supports it natively, and it allowed me to use Sass for CSS. It also didn’t need a database or CMS since all articles can be written in Markdown, just like in Hexo.

Phase 3: Youtube

It took about 4 years to open a channel for Antares Programming and post videos for it. I tried producing videos in the past, but none fit the standards of how I wanted it to look like and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it. In 2023, however, I produced the first video for Antares Programming and opened the YouTube channel. The current plan is to post videos at least once a month.

Results

At the time of writing, Antares Programming has more than 2,000 4,000[1] fans on its Facebook page, and it is still increasing. I have disabled analytics on the website since I have reservations on using Google Analytics (data privacy) and the alternatives are quite costly for my needs. However, quite a few people sent their messages of thanks regarding the website.


  1. As of February 2022 ↩︎

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