So one of the things that we've really been looking for and I've been looking for is just examples in the real world of HTMX being used. So I came across, a Reddit user, who I really, think has has done some amazing stuff. It sounds like just really prolific. They they were talking about all the apps they've built in the real world. And so I reached out, and I want to to see if he agreed to sort of talk on the podcast. And, I'm just gonna give him a call right here.
Hello?
Hi. Is this, actually, you know what? I'm just realizing, this this is Laz calling. I just realized I don't actually have your name.
You can just call me Tom.
Okay. So you said, like, I know your Reddit name was DM memes or something like that, but I
Yeah. DM me your epic memes.
Before I called. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
So I was just, you know, we talked a little bit before, but just to kind of give people an idea, I I found Tom, you know, I've I've been on the Reddit for HTMX quite a bit and just trying to kind of figure out what sort of questions are out there and and what people have that, the big things that people are still wondering because it's a relatively new framework. And the thing that I have heard over and over again is that people want to see h t m x in the real world. They want to see real apps being built, and, you know, this this thread was sort of talking about that, and and your comments on there really sort of showed, I I think, that, you know, you are someone who has built these real world apps, and, from what it seemed like pretty prolifically, you they seem like you you've done kind of a lot of stuff. So I just wanna say, you know, thank you for thank you for coming on. And, I I'd love to sort of hear, a little bit about your work, but maybe, you know, maybe the first place to start is is really how did you how did you get into programming in general?
What's your sort of path there?
Yeah. Well, thank you for having me. I've never been on a podcast before, but,
No. Thank you. I'm I'd love to hear your story.
Alright. Well, you know, like, when I tell people, it's almost a cliche, and, you're gonna think I'm BS ing you. Is that okay to say BS on this show?
Yeah. No. That's that's fine.
I'll try to keep it PG. But I had, a very rough childhood. And I I didn't know my birth parents. I was in and out of foster homes, and, it was it was pretty scary stuff. You know, I I think the foster program, it's great.
I don't wanna, you know, cast aspersion on, like, the foster program, but, you know, I had PTSD, and, you know, it was pretty scary stuff. And I really, just shut it all out by burying myself in media and tech and, in music. So I was the kid with ham radio even though nobody was doing that anymore. I built a computer. I built a modem, and I just had to log for technology at the Internet.
But I knew, you know, from a very early age that, I had to pull myself out of the situation what I was in, and it and that would require money. So, I realized I had to make money if I wanted to realize my dreams. So, I I even that sort of tech stuff, I put it aside, and I just worked really hard at school. I didn't really wanna go home, so I spent, as much time as I could in the public library. I would sorta stay in
Did you have a computer at home? Or
I had the computer I built. You know, we had some very I had a very good technology teacher in my middle school that I really, owe everything to mister Vogel. And, he would give me, like, little pieces of equipment that the school was throwing out. And I think he, you know, sometimes he would tell me that, but I thought he was probably buying stuff for me. So, you know, I I I built a computer out of spare parts.
I learned to code, but I also just kinda, like, put my head down and started studying. And and, you know, I gotta I, you know, I worked really hard, but I also got a lot of help from, from friends. Friends' parents took me in. I consider myself very fortunate in that way. So like but it was a real grind, because I I still did have a lot of a lot going on.
There there was, you know, I hesitate to use the term abuse because I think it's thrown around a lot. But, you know, I I I was not in a good situation. But, you know, like, I'm one of those lucky situations. Like, lots of people are not so lucky, but I I managed to to sort of scrape my way out of my situation. I got a full ride to Harvard.
You know, I was, hoping to eventually, you know, go to business school. I knew I wanted to do something in tech, but I knew I had to, like, you know, make money. I knew people were making money in tech. I knew pea there was money out there, but I thought, like, okay.
So so so what year is I'm trying to, like I just wanna Mid nineties. Okay. Okay.
Yeah.
Interesting. So you're maybe a little bit older than I. Yep. Okay.
Yeah.
Wow. So you were at Harvard?
It it was like, you know, like, it was always a few steps behind, you know, what other people had. You know what I mean? But I, you know, I think I really benefited from that, and I've always sort of taken sort of like an old school approach to what I do. So I think that served me well in some ways, like, you know, like a lot of the when I got to Harvard, I realized a lot of the the people I was interacting with really had been playing life on easy mode, and I hadn't, and it was an advantage. That being said, it it was not for me.
And maybe partly because of the trauma, but also it was pretty stuffy. I couldn't really fit them with the Ivy types. I don't think it's it's like that now, but it certainly was back then. So, you know, I dropped out and, like, every every tech person kinda, like, brags about that kind of thing. But, you know, that was pretty tragic to me at the time.
I felt like a complete failure. Luckily, I had some friends that I'd made in Cambridge. I started to hang out, with some some m I two's MIT students a bunch. And this was, like, you know, sort of like golden era early Internet stuff. So yeah. Like, you know, really, like, you know
I mean, this was I mean, this area, Cambridge, I know I know well, and I know that era too. I mean, this was a huge this is couple years before Facebook. Right?
But Oh, yeah. I mean, this is like
You know, this this is a tech hotbed.
Yeah. Yeah. It was bumping. So were you at Harvard at that time? Did you or MIT or?
No. I was, I I grew up there, so I was a kid. You know, I'm not exactly sure what what year you're talking, but, I would have been probably in high school around then.
Okay.
You know, late nineties or something like that.
You hang out at the pit?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you know yeah. So you know you know all that area down at the news and stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. I was I was in Harvard Square recently, and it's it's unrecognizable. It's, I mean,
Yeah. I have I haven't been back in a long time, but, yeah, the last time it went, it's pretty it's pretty different there.
Yeah. So you
and that's even if you were hanging out there during that's I mean, that must have been you were sort of a part of the grown up crowd almost, so that would have been probably a little different than than my experience too.
Yeah. I mean, I I I didn't feel like a grown up then. But, yeah, I mean, like, I hung out at the garage and, like, Newberry Comics and stuff like that.
But Yep. How funny.
Yeah. So, I mean, it was a it was a really exciting time to be there. Like, you know, like, when I met some of these MIT people, it was really, like, a window into, you know, probably what I should have done. You know? It was like, yes. These are my people. So, you know, I would I didn't really have a place to live. So I was sleeping on a lot of couches, you know, sneaking into dorm rooms. And like, you know, we were trolls. You know, we did I did some of the pirate radio stuff.
Like, our rooms would be, like or the rooms I was staying in, they would be just be, like, sort of floor to ceiling with tech and, you know, like, homemade stuff, like, you know, weird noise making machines. And, around those that time, I was, like, started to run with some people that were, like, getting into some real cutting edge early SEO stuff. And, with a couple of those guys, we moved out to the bay, and, we were doing, like, a lot of rapid prototyping with a lot of apps and sites you would know. And, some you definitely wouldn't know about, thank god, because, you know, there were so many really embarrassing mistakes we made. But, I think that's like really important.
And I learned a ton and, like, one of the things I learned from that is to just never not take a risk and just keep pushing, you know, and, like, we really had an attitude of throw everything at the wall and see see what sticks, you know. So
Yeah. I mean, that's
You know? Yeah. Yada yada yada. You know, I don't mean to go go on too long about that stuff, but I'm you know, you know, as you know from, like, Reddit, I'm mostly selling sites on Flippa and acquire.com. And I think that's sort of the the stuff, you're interested in, but, you know, it was sort of a weird path to get there.
Yeah. I mean, that's fascinating. I had no idea. I mean, that's and I think that your story in general of just kind of of of building stuff and just trying things out and, you know, failing, like, that's the story of that whole era. You know, people moving out to the west, sort of the Internet gold rush here, and Mhmm.
And just building everything and seeing what stuck. Yeah. So I yeah. That's interesting. So so now you said you're selling you sort of you so you sort of doing the same thing, but instead
on Yeah.
Like Flippa, you said? Flippa and Acquire?
Yeah. So Okay. You know, I've been I've been building React apps for years. And, I I shifted to Next JS apps, and there are some good templates out there used for cell to deploy. The back end's all node, and I got it to be pretty streamlined. But, the setup kinda grew and grew, and it was getting harder and harder to bring new people in, getting more and more expensive, using so many different services.
So so do you have employees in general?
Yeah. Yeah. We did. Or yeah. I did.
I had employees. The, like, the hard thing was, like, you know, everybody started keeping the the this, like the the setups became so complex, and everybody trying to keep this all in their head, and it got harder and harder to, you know, to to let people go, or when people moved on. You know, and that's just business, but you sort of, like, build this knowledge base and, it it just got like Yeah. You know, it felt like we were starting from scratch all the time, and everything was split up into so many separate parts that had to connect together and talk to each other. So that's really when I started to look at HTMX, which, you know, is, like, surprising for me, you know, as, like, as you can tell, I'm a bit old school.
You know, like, I grew up selling VHS videos on the on the old web to for basically for food money. So
Oh, man. You sold you sold VHS videos on the web?
Yeah. Yeah. I I had, like, a little, website where, you know, so there was, like, this, do you remember there was that, SummerSlam back in the nineties where a house fell on a guy?
No. I I don't They,
like, only showed it 1. Right? It was like a pay per view. So I filmed that with a camcorder through a guy's window. I just happened to be looking through a window and, you know, filming into this guy's house.
And and so he was watching the SummerSlam. So I made a tape of this, and you can actually you could see the guy watching the video. They were watching the pay per view, and I'm filming the guy watching the pay per view. And I sold that because they they never showed it again because the guy died. And I don't know I don't know how they got the house into the arena. But
I don't remember that at all.
Yeah. It was, you know, it was like one of these things where, like, you know how it how it was back then. That that stuff seemed funny at the time. You know? Like but, very troubling when you, like, look back on it. But
Jeez. Yeah. That feels like a different time now. So you were comfortable with this kind of, you know, the web one point o and you'd been doing that for a long time but but you sort of left to, you know, you did react. Yeah. You've done react apps for a long time now, but you sort of, you know, did HTMX kinda feel like you were you were coming back to more of a web 1 point o kinda setup?
Yeah. I'm old school, but I'm not an old fool. You know? So I tried out HTMX just to see what it was like. And, so I started rebuilding some of my old apps, like, and sort of almost like a learning experience.
So I I I rebuilt a few of my primary apps in HTMLX. And then, like, the the sort of big first epiphany was I didn't need to pay for Vercel anymore. I went to just get deployments directly to the server, and Okay. I can, you know, spin up a new VPS with a fresh IP for, like, $5. So spinning up VPS server, rotating my IP addresses really quickly which is like So good.
Yeah. That's funny. I've I've had to do that on a few, you know, I do sometimes web scraping projects.
Oh, yeah.
And if you hit, you know, a government website too many times, I know. Too big payloads or you start to hit the 4 zero fours because you're you're guessing what the URLs are. Yeah. You know, I got flagged as a spammer.
Oh, you're flagged. No. I Right?
Yeah. No. And it's so if if, you know, I had to I had to get a new IP address and kinda start from scratch, and, Yeah. You know, that's, that can be a huge pain. Okay. So you you kind of switched out your whole pipeline after after choosing htmx. That was kind of the driver for a whole new pipeline. Yeah. And a sort of a new way of building stuff.
Yeah. So now I basically, just build the site with just HTML, and then I put in HTML attributes. And I'm doing this all by myself a lot more now. And users can't tell the difference between a 5 second HX trigger every 5 seconds and a full WebSocket. And one can be done with 0 effort. So Yep. Sometimes I
end, it's like
Go ahead.
No. Just it's, you know, it's yeah. It's true. They use ultimately, it's like the user using the site doesn't care at all how it's built. You know, I can think we get sort of caught up in the details sometimes, but
totally, you
know, they're the ones that just it's they don't even know or care was long as long as it does what they needed to do.
Yeah. I mean, it's really not so complicated, you know, like, I can hire people to help me build. HCMX has a, like, a really short learning curve, and so I can, you know, I can and I do just fire them right after the site is up, and I don't have any trouble, understanding the code. So, yeah, I mean, that's basically
You mean
what I'm doing.
Oh, so okay. So you can like hire people just kind of temporarily as kind of a little different business model kind of setup instead of having a having a staff. You just sort of hire hire people as you need them. Yep.
Yeah. Hire and fire, basically. And, you know, it's you know, like, when I look back on my life and I I realized, like, how much I struggled to get here. And, you know, like, I mean, this seems like over the top to say, but really, like, h t m x helped me realize my dream. I I have the money I never had growing up.
You know, it's like, you know, I wanna assure your listeners, like, it's rolling in. You know, there's almost no limit to what you can do with this. So, like, I'm hoping I'm sure you have a lot of, entrepreneurs in your in your, you know, audience that that could get some in inspiration from me because, like, it almost it doesn't matter where you come from. Like, you know, using something, like, if you find the right tool, you know, you can pretty much do anything.
Yeah. I mean, that's so, I mean, it just sounds like you've so you've switched almost your entire, like, business and app structure over to HTMX?
Yeah. And, yeah, I've I've I've sold a ton of sites that way. Yeah.
Yeah. So I mean, I guess, like, you know, one of the main reasons I wanted to kinda bring you on here and and talk to you about this sort of building these these production apps and just kinda putting things out there, into the real world, is is to just kind of, you know, people that's the sort of thing that people ask all the time about HTMX, and and there there's sort of a hesitation right now to to bring something into production, because people are used to doing stuff with React. So, you know, I I asked you before the show, if you if you had, you know, maybe a list of websites or something like that
or Yeah. Yeah. A lot.
That our users could look at to sort of see these production apps, in the real world?
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can I can share some of that with you? Jeez. Where where do I dig in? Okay. So here here here's a few. Freefax online.com, free SMS online.com, cheapfaxonline.com, fax me dude.com, fax me dude dot gov, snapfax.ai, don'ttaze me bro dot web, flashrat, fax holocaust.wiz, hoodarguments.com, hoodfights.com, hoodfaxes.com.
You're saying hood fight? Okay.
Hood fights.com.
You're saying hood Hood. Hood arguments?
Hood fights.com and hoodarguments.com. And hoodfaxes.com. Rate my wound dot com, rate my facts dot biz, fax my wife dot net, shoot the dog dot org, bong.rip, fax your bong.tv, handbasket.org, Peter Griffith dot meme, mihorny.com, ratemyshed.tv, factsamericdad.tv, dogecoinmemes.gov, elonmemes.com, meme conference.net, elon excuse me. Elon coin.tv, cumcoin.jizz, dabcoin.com, free legal tax advice dotai, Peter Griffith coin dot com, steweygriffithcoin.com, briangriffithcoin.tv, bitpenny.com, bit dollar dot com, bitchcoin.ai, athd.co.uk, faxmedeltaninegummies. Com, bitcoin for kids.com, cryptokids.com, cryptopets.org, cryptofax.com, tiktokcoin.
Ca.gov, tiktokfax.org, snapcoin. Coin, legal bitcoin for senior citizens dot web, taylorswiftcoin.gov, faxspongebob.coin, feetcoin.org, show me your feetcoin.com, blue chewedcoin.biz, podcastcrypto.ai, prochoicecoin.com, prolifecoin.biz, freecovidtest.coin, filthcoin.biz, free tax form dotco.tv, and freelegalpornhubmemecoin.biz.tv.com. Just to name a couple.
Oh my goodness.
And I I have more in the pipeline.
I'm sorry. I didn't wanna interrupt you, but you you you built all of these?
Well I
mean I I built most
of them.
H t HTMLX just came out last year.
Yeah. I I mean, like, I build most of them, but basically, anybody could be an HTMX programmer. I just teach, you know, I hire as I sort of said, I hire, you know, I hire some people. Just teach them, like, the the bare minimum that they need to know. I pay them next to nothing, then I fire them. I basically just call them my HTMX idiots.
And Jeez.
You know, basically, I I I mean, like, you're a smart guy. You could probably see the pattern here. There's a handful of the the apps that are, like, inspired by other apps. You know, I I don't wanna give too much away, but, like, you know, your You had a bunch
of coin stuff in there.
Yeah. Right? Like, so, you know, p you know, every idiot, you know, knows about crypto, and they so they, you know, they Google, crypto, and then, you know, I I sort of manipulate s SEO, and I get sort of, like, let's say, stewigriffithcoin.com, you know, to sort of, like, go to the top. You know? So, you know or somebody's looking for a, like, a free fax site.
So I have a number of these sites that that I created to sorta capture that audience. Any you know, a handful of them are are, you know, sort of combinations of popular search terms in bitcoins or other things like that.
Yeah. I mean, there was a bunch of dotbiz kind of Yeah. I mean, some of them, they're porno is it is it pornography sites too?
Well, they they appear to be pornography sites is sort of the key thing. You know, it's it's like I gotta tell you. I, you know, I miss the old, you know, crypto gold rush. I pumped and dumped a lot of shit coins, you know. Oh, sorry. You can probably bleep that. But, you know, it was a beautiful time. And if I'd had h t m x then, I'd you know, I I'll I'll be honest. I wouldn't be talking to you. No offense.
What do you mean? Just because you
I'd be on an island.
Built more of the sites?
I'd be I'd be, you know, beyond rich.
You'd you'd be on an island?
Yeah. I just yeah. I wouldn't be. Yeah. Okay.
I mean, so so I'm just I you know, that was a a unbelievable list, and I don't think I remember even one of them. They're all kind of blurring together in my head right now. But I so you you're able to sell these sites on Flippa?
Yeah. I mean, I I don't wanna do your listeners' homework for them, but, like
Who's gonna buy this I mean, seriously, though, who who's gonna I'm not trying to say anything bad about your business, but, I mean, those sites, they seem who's gonna buy a site like like those, you know?
Well, okay. So so let's just take one. I'll explain how it works. So free facts online. That was, like, my first big hit. Right? So I build this site, and I use keywords everywhere, which is a Chrome extension to really SEO the hell out of it. And, I link to it from
every everywhere. Okay. Yeah.
So I link to it from every one of my other sites. Right? So, you know, hoodarguments.com and facts holocaust.wiz, slash rate. All those ones, are sort of, like, all pointing at, pointing back to it. And it only really took me 3
fax online?
Yeah. That's right. It only took me 3 days to build, and then after 3 months
3 days. Okay. Yeah. So Sorry. One second. I'm having fuck. I'm having technical problems. Hello?
I can hear you. Hey.
You know what? I I think we're back. I think it's good.
Yeah. So, you know, I I truly don't understand why, but there are tons of losers looking to fax stuff online. I mean, I don't even know that these people know what faxing is, but it gets 16,000 users a day, And the site's basically perfect. That uploading tool, no overhead. It saves nothing on the server.
I mean, the uploading tool doesn't even really work. It's only a, a page. But from the user's perspective, it's fantastic. They they think they're really sending faxes. The beautiful thing about a fax, right, is you can't even see the other end of it. So you don't know if it worked.
Well, wait. So you they get to send I mean, this site is called free fax online. Right? So they get to send free faxes, at least, through the site?
No. They don't. You really I I like I don't know if you heard this, but you you were like it's expensive to send faxes. There are legal issues with it. We're not really in the business of sending faxes. But, as far as the users' experiences,
You I mean, you said the user experience is great.
Yeah. Right. So just like they think it's great. They there's, like, a beautiful uploading bar, a confirmation screen. There's a countdown. There's even, like, a little graphic that shows the connection about, like, a little fax machine connecting. It's a thing of beauty, and it's just basic AI generated images and some HTMLX. You know, the site is fast. It's optimized.
Okay. But it but it doesn't work. Right? It doesn't work to send faxes.
No. Of course not. It's probably illegal, and, I don't even know how to do it. So I don't even know if it's possible. The but, like, the traffic on the thing was incredible. And I added a bunch of social proof reviews, which is another one of my specialties. And, I brought this to Flippa.
You add you added the social proof reviews?
Yeah. Why? Okay. So so this so this site, right nothing? This this site, I sold this for 6 figures. You
on what? What you said it was on acquire or or the
This one was on Flippa. Have you heard of Flippa.
And you sold it you sold that broken site for 6 figures?
Oh, it's not broken.
Didn't they see that it doesn't work?
It does work, though. Right? I mean, like, it does what what what I said it does. It has thousands and thousands of visits every day. And that's what people wanna buy ultimately. Right? They need eyeballs. They want clicks. And some people complained about it on Flippa, but I just reported them and blocked them. I I think the person that bought it understood, and they were happy.
I did the same thing with free SMS online. 2 weeks later for 20 k, it wasn't as big as big as a hit, but I think I could've
I'm sorry. Free free SMS online?
Yeah. They it's basically the same thing.
So you were telling them that they could send an SMS for free through your site?
Right. Yes. I could have made more, but I needed it to buy a truck. So I flipped it really quick. I I mean, I kinda kicked myself about that. I got 20 k out of that. I probably could have gotten more. And, you know, like, I listed all those sites. I've really never been more optimistic. I've been getting a lot of ideas from the podcast.
From this podcast?
Yeah. Hell, yeah. Yeah. You know, and crypto is making a comeback.
I mean, I I I I just wanna, like I don't think any of the stuff that I've gone over on the podcast, you know, should I mean, I understand that technology is the technology and it's just for building whatever kind of sites you want, but this thing of having sites that don't do what they say I mean, I I I just are you sure that's legal?
I I have a question for you. I need to hire more people to do, like, to to build more sites. So I was wondering, do you think your listeners would want jobs?
What? At on working on the sort of site I'm working on the site sites you're talking about?
Yeah. You know, see how With you? Yeah. To feel what it's like to work for a winner. You know?
You know, people can find their jobs wherever.
What about you?
No. I you know, I'm I am very lucky right now to be very busy. I'd love to work on 8 on HTMX.
Well, you come work
for me. Been kind of
Come work for me tomorrow. You can be one of my HTMX idiots. How about that,
Well, listen. I'm glad to see that people are able to build sites, but I'm not sure that some of those are are kind of you know, these examples, they don't even work. Right? I mean, they do
hood arguments for Look.
I'm I'm not
Hood arguments for I'm
not trying
amiorny.com works. I'll admit, you cannot fax American Dad, but you can't you could rate your wound on rate my wound dot com. So
Okay. Listen, I I, you know, I I don't I really appreciate that you would come on and you'll come on and talk about your businesses, but I I won't be I'm not interested right now You're gonna in any of those.
You're gonna build rate my wart.
Honestly, those seem like
You're gonna build rate my wart dotbiz tomorrow.
These just seem like the scummiest websites out there. I'm sorry. Hey.
How dare you?
I've I've I I appreciate you coming on as a guest. I do.
TikTok facts. I'm not scummy. TikTok facts.org is not scummy.
TikTok facts? What it Yeah. What's that?
Well, it it's basically a site that it looks like TikTok, but you can it looks like TikTok, but you can appear to send a fax through it.
Okay. You know what? Listen, I appreciate you coming on. I I I think it's time for us to, I'm I'm we're way over time. Yeah. So
I'll see you tomorrow. Okay. No. Hello?