End of Beginning: Release v1.0.0

Release!

I released a project I was working on. It's the static site generator I have been mentioning in some of the past blog posts.
I use released it as a npm package, as it's written in JavaScript. You can find it here.

Steps To Making A release: (details)

1. Sign up for a npm account at https://www.npmjs.com/signup
2. Make a folder with the name for your program
3. Write your program inside the folder, along with README.md to explain to user how to use it 4.1 If you are using git for this program, you can run git tag to add a version number and label to your current commit, like: git tag -a v1.0.0 -m "initial release" 4.2 If you don’t have one already, run npm init to setup package.json, which will have information npm uses to publish your program
4. Log into npm via command npm adduser, then enter information for the account you set up
5. In the root of the program, run npm publish --tag text to publish the pogrom; --tag is optional and adds an easy-to-read version label by what you put as text (This is different from git tags)
6. See your package on https://npmjs.com/package/your-package-name (replace your-package-name with the name you have chosen)

Learning

I thought the process would be very complex, but it seems to just be a npm publish command to publish your app, assuming you have been using npm to construct your app already. No additional change is needed.

I didn't realize how accessible npm package creation is. I was under the impression that these are all some kind of officially approved packages from some accredited organizations, but actually everyone can do it!

After looking at other people's repo and their release on npm, I quickly realize where npm take information to publish your app. It seems to be the README.md and package.jsonin the program.

User Testing

How would a user set up and use my package? I have it detailed in the Getting Started section of my package, along with other instructions.
Basically:

1. While inside an empty folder, download the tool via command npm i static-site-converter in command line (such as cmd or PowerShell)
2. Run command cd node_modules\static-site-converter to get into the tool's root folder
3. You can now use it! Run a command like node index -i test_files to generate HTML file(s) from the input, where test_files is a TXT or MD file or folder path.

If you need more details, it's all written in the link to Getting Started.

I found another fellow developer to test my package. She thought everyone was clear, and it went pretty smoothly, but she was a little bit confused by what the instructions on README.md meant by input and output directories, so I had to add some words to make it clear to the user.