Enjoy Today
Indie product logs by Amiko

First Shipment: Setting the Baseline

product-log · meta · hugo

Editor’s Note: Every journey needs a starting point. This blog is mine. It’s not just a collection of articles, but a living product log where I document the reality of building for the global market as a beginner.

Context

For over 10 years, I’ve been writing code for others. As a Senior Engineer, I was comfortable with technology but increasingly distant from the product itself. I wanted to change that. I wanted to build, ship, and grow my own products.

But “Indie Hacking” is overwhelming. There are endless things to learn: marketing, SEO, design, copywriting, legal compliance… The list goes on.

I realized I needed a home base. A place to:

  1. Document my learnings (to solidify them).
  2. Showcase my work (to build credibility).
  3. Experiment with growth tactics (SEO, analytics, monetization) in a low-risk environment.

So, I decided to treat this blog as my Product #0.

The Challenge

The goal was simple: Ship a production-ready blog in 24 hours.

However, “production-ready” for an indie hacker means more than just hugo new site. It requires:

  • Performance: Must be blazing fast (Core Web Vitals).
  • SEO: Sitemap, robots.txt, semantic HTML, meta tags.
  • Analytics: Google Analytics 4 (to track traffic).
  • Monetization Ready: Google AdSense integration (ads.txt, placeholders).
  • Compliance: ICP Beian (for China access) + Global accessibility (Vercel).
  • Workflow: Zero-friction deployment (Push to Git -> Live).

The Solution

I chose a minimalist tech stack to focus on content and speed:

1. The Stack

  • Engine: Hugo (Static Site Generator). It’s incredibly fast and produces zero-dependency HTML.
  • Hosting: Vercel. Free, fast global CDN, and automatic Git deployments.
  • Theme: Custom-built “Portfolio + Log” theme. I didn’t want a generic template. I wanted a specific “Shipping” focus.

2. Key Implementations

The “Portfolio First” Layout I modified the homepage to prioritize Products over Posts.

{{ range .Site.Data.projects }}
  <a href="{{ .url }}" class="project-card">
    <div class="project-icon"><img src="{{ .icon }}" ...></div>
    <!-- ... -->
  </a>
{{ end }}

Production Hygiene I set up a rigorous hugo.toml configuration to ensure search engines and ad networks are happy:

  • enableRobotsTXT = true
  • Custom layouts/partials/head.html for conditional GA4/AdSense injection (production only).
  • ads.txt in the static folder to verify inventory ownership.

Cross-Border Accessibility

  • China: Hosted on a specific domain/server with ICP filing (future plan).
  • Global: Vercel handles the rest of the world.
  • Build System: Used hugo-bin and custom npm scripts to avoid local dependency hell and ensure consistent builds across Windows/Mac/CI.

Results & Learnings

I successfully shipped v1.0 within the timeframe.

What I learned:

  • Don’t over-engineer: A simple static site is powerful enough.
  • Content is King, Distribution is Queen: Building the blog was the easy part. Writing consistently and getting readers will be the real challenge.
  • Small wins matter: Seeing the “WeChat QR Code” and “Project Cards” render correctly gave me a disproportionate amount of joy. It feels real now.

What’s Next? Now that the baseline is set, I will focus on Project Alpha (a productivity tool) and Mindgift. I will log every major milestone here.

Stay tuned.

About the Author

Amiko is a software engineer turned indie hacker, learning to build and sell to the global market. Follow my journey on X (Twitter) or subscribe to the RSS Feed.