👋 Hey I'm Nick!

I'm a software engineer, business owner, rock climber, husband, father, and we travel full time in an RV roaming the U.S.

Follow me @nphaskins on Twitter.

Things I've Built

CG Cookie is a membership-based LMS for teaching Blender. It's my full-time day job. It started on WordPress, then I rebuilt from scratch using Ruby on Rails. Users can sign up for a membership, take courses, track lessons watched, earn XP points, submit work to be graded, participate in community discussions, and use tools to visually track their progress through course material. CG Cookie also features a real-time chat, notifications, user mentions, profiles, and support for both Braintree and Stripe.

Blender Market is a multi-vendor eCommerce marketplace platform that enables creators to sell products for Blender. This platform also started on WordPress, then I rebuilt from scratch using Ruby on Rails. Blender Market is an eCommerce site through and through, and a lot of the underlying tech was a serious challenge to put together, especially the bits that calculate commissions and fees. The Blender Market is now managed by a new developer that we brought on, but the majority of the code base that I authored is still in used (for better or worse).

Sport Keeper is a multi-tenant SaaS that powers climbing gyms. This is a side project which is run by me. There's a lot of great tech in this app including notifications, Stripe Connect, support for multiple memberships and quantities, and Stripe Terminal for physical card processing. It also has some slick features like a dedicated Kiosk mode for iPad and support for members to checkin in with a bar-code.

Mavenseed is another multi-tenanted SaaS application which serves as a content management system for independent creators. This is a new startup that I'm a co-owner of, and sole engineer. It’s the latest application that I’ve built using Ruby on Rails. Users can sign up for their own site to create and sell courses, downloads, recurring memberships, and landing pages. Mavenseed also supports US Sales Tax, V.A.T, and also has a page builder which uses nothing more than Rails and a sprinkle of jQuery. We like to think of it as the next WordPress.

Books I've Authored

Playbook Thirty-nine

This isn't another book on how to build a Rails app. Instead, we'll examine four real-life Rails applications, reverse-engineer what makes them tick, and why certain architectural decisions were made when building the applications.

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Living in a Small RV

Imagine having the freedom to move to a new and beautiful remote location whenever you want, for free. Imagine waking up to the sound of wildlife right outside your door, but still have the modern conveniences of streaming Internet.

It's possible!

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Other Stuff

On Burning Bridges
Whether in front of you, or behind you, a burned bridge can sometimes have an...
Minimally Viable Success
Sharing your blessings with others who are less fortunate, has a much larger ...

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