Back in 2017, I was invited by a friend of mine, Fadli Mubarak, who at the time was the founder of Jakarta Nyastra, to attend a poetry declamation event.

As the event came to an end, I realized something important: many of the participants struggled to find a proper space to showcase their work online. While a few had set up personal Blogspot sites, most found the technical aspects too challenging. 

I decided to create a platform that could serve as a home for all these creators—a place where they could easily share their works without being burdened by technical hurdles. However, given my limited knowledge of literature and poetry, I knew I needed help from those deeply involved in the literary world. That's when I reached out to Fadli Mubarak, Galeh Pramudianto, and Muhammad Taufik—each of them passionate literary enthusiasts and active figures in the community.

By mid-2018, the website was finally up and running! I built it using pure PHP and jQuery (technologies I was most familiar with at the time) and hosted in shared hosting as my main goal was to launch quickly. Also my knowledge of UX (User Experience) design was quite basic, to say the least—just enough to get the job done! lol

As time passed, I gained more technical experience from my job, which gave me the confidence and knowledge to improve the platform. By the end of 2019, I decided it was time for a major refactor, so I migrated from shared hosting to a VPS (Virtual Private Server) for better performance and scalability. Additionally, I transitioned from using pure PHP to Laravel, a modern PHP framework that allowed for cleaner code, faster development, and more robust functionality.

Also i decided to do a full redesign, will be focused on creating a more intuitive and enjoyable user experience. This time, I paid closer attention to UX principles, ensuring that navigation was smoother and the overall user journey more streamlined.

A lot happened after that on the non-technical side as well. We were given the opportunity to manage a library (a real library, not package library lol) for free and were invited to various literary events, including the Jakarta International Literary Festival. However, those are stories for another time, as this piece is focused on the technical journey behind the platform.

As time went on, I continued to expand my technical knowledge, which led to more significant improvements to the platform. This time, I implemented a client-side framework, Nuxt.js, to enhance the user experience, making the platform faster. I also integrated PWA (Progressive Web App) functionality, allowing users to install Penakota directly on their mobile home screens, providing a more app-like experience.

For better monitoring, I integrated New Relic to track logs and monitor the VPS resources, such as CPU usage, memory, and other critical server performance metrics. This helped me ensure that the platform was running efficiently, allowing me to quickly identify and resolve potential issues before they impacted users.

At the same time, I decided to migrate the VPS from Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to Vultr. The main reason for this switch was cost-effectiveness—Vultr offered a more affordable option without sacrificing the performance we needed to keep the platform running smoothly.

To prevent the VPS from filling up due to large amounts of user-generated content, I implemented a separate storage solution for static files. By offloading static assets like images and documents to an external storage system, I freed up valuable space on the VPS, improving the platform's scalability and performance

I also implemented a full redesign, with a strong focus on mobile first. Google Analytics revealed that the majority of our users accessed the platform via mobile devices, so providing a seamless mobile experience became a key priority.

By 2023, the founders had become increasingly occupied with their own personal and professional activities, which meant we weren’t able to host events to drive engagement as we had in the past. However, despite the reduced involvement, Penakota continued to thrive.

The platform had become a living community, with users still actively posting their works daily. Even without constant events or new initiatives, Penakota had established itself as a valuable space for poets and writers to share their creativity, and it kept growing organically.

As of September 23, 2024, Penakota has grown to over 5,000 users with more than 16,000 works shared. So far it's been a long and fun journey.