Decoupling Content Generation: Separating LinkedIn from Portfolio Posts

When building devlog-ist/landing, a project focused on creating landing pages, we faced a challenge in tailoring content for different platforms. Specifically, we needed to generate both a detailed portfolio post with rich markdown and a concise, plain-text version optimized for LinkedIn. This post outlines how we decoupled these content generation processes to improve flexibility and maintainability.

The Problem

Previously, our content generation process was tightly coupled. We had a single function responsible for creating both the portfolio post and the LinkedIn update. This approach led to several issues:

• Complexity: The function became increasingly complex as we added more platform-specific formatting rules.
• Maintainability: Changes to one platform's requirements often impacted the other, making maintenance difficult.
• Flexibility: It was hard to customize the content for each platform without introducing conditional logic.

The Solution

To address these issues, we decided to decouple the content generation process. We introduced a new linkedin_content field to store a dedicated version of the post optimized for LinkedIn. This involved the following steps:

1. Created a linkedin_content Field: We added a new field to our data model to store the LinkedIn-specific content.
2. Optimized Content Generation: We created a separate process for generating the linkedin_content. This process focuses on creating concise, plain-text content suitable for LinkedIn's format.
3. Updated the LinkedIn Service: We modified our LinkedIn service to prioritize the linkedin_content field when available, falling back to a generic markdown-to-text converter for existing posts without the new field.

Here's an example of how the content generation process works:

// Example: Content Generation Process
const postData = {
  title: "My Awesome Post",
  content: "## Heading 2\nThis is a detailed portfolio post with **markdown**.",
  linkedin_content: "A short summary of my awesome post for LinkedIn."
};

function postToLinkedIn(post) {
  const linkedInContent = post.linkedin_content || convertMarkdownToText(post.content);
  // Post to LinkedIn using linkedInContent
  console.log("Posting to LinkedIn:", linkedInContent);
}

postToLinkedIn(postData);

The Benefits

Decoupling the content generation process provided several benefits:

• Improved Flexibility: We can now easily customize the content for each platform without affecting the other.
• Increased Maintainability: Changes to one platform's requirements are isolated, making maintenance easier.
• Simplified Logic: The content generation functions are now simpler and more focused.

The Takeaway

Decoupling content generation for different platforms can significantly improve the flexibility and maintainability of your codebase. By creating dedicated content fields and platform-specific generation processes, you can ensure that your content is always optimized for its intended audience.