Part of the promise of doing the Cluetrain Listicle was to generalize it so that anyone could create one, even if they aren't Doc and Dave the two Cluetrain dudes. Turns out it was a very simple process to generalize it.

The new thing

Here's the GitHub repository:

https://github.com/scripting/listicle

And a demo

This is the thing on that repo, above, as something you can open in the browser.

http://listicle.io/demo/

The picture in the background is Walt Whitman, the famous American poet.

He wrote a poem entitled O Captain my Captain, which is how the name of this piece came about. He's also one of Doc's favorite poets.

Tour

1. Start thetour by looking at the JSON file.

2. If you like to look at JavaScript, have a look at the home page. The interesting thing about it is there is no content in there! Unlike most HTML pages, it's just a skeleton. The flesh comes from the JSON file, the JavaScript code just hangs the flesh on the skeleton.

3. You want to learn how to code? It doesn't get much simpler than this, at least for real-world examples. Please, use my code to learn from. That's one of the reasons I put it out there. To help budding developers, of all ages, genders, races, or country of origin.

4. If you want to create your own listicle, and you have a way to get files onto the public web, download the repository folder to your local computer, unzip it, edit the JSON file, upload both files to a folder on the web, then open the HTML file in the browser. You should see your content instead of mine.

5. Iterate. Scratch your head. Try another approach, until it works. That's how programmers do.

Questions?

Just post a comment here. Keep it simple. Kudos, hat tips, thanks and mazel tovs are very welcome.

Let's have fun!

PS: David Weinberger wrote this up on his blog. Thanks!