My Idea

I have had this plan to build out some examples of Stripe integrations on this site for a while now. I even created it with a Stripe section. However, it has always taken a back seat to other priorities like my Photos section. As I have integrated some newer Stripe technologies using approaches I think are pretty creative and provide good examples of how to make use of newer functionalities, I wanted a way to share what I have learned. I often find that, if I want to really understand something, one of the best ways is to try and teach it. Also, I think designing an example integration that includes educational components to explain the why of an integration as well as the how presents some fun challenges and opportunities to flex my web dev skills.

Why Stripe?

Full disclosure: I work at Stripe, and building integrations so I can assist users is one of the core components of my 9-5. I do try to keep my work life and personal life separate in general, but in this case, I find building integrations to be the part I enjoy the most. Recently, I was helping users at our annual user conference, Stripe Sessions, and after showing my own example integrations to help explain features like Elements with Checkout and Active Entitlements, users were asking if there was a public site where they could review these examples. Finally, I was inspired by my colleague who built the examples at 4242.io. I wanted to use the inspiration and put my own design spin on that kind of approach.

Content and Design Choices

When I try to envision the types of integrations and educational information I want to present, I find I get a bit torn between wanting to provide as much information as possible to make it clear why I am doing what I am doing and avoiding unnecessary clutter and overloading my readers. This is a balance that I know the Stripe docs try to strike as well. Furthermore, I have yet to determine whether it makes sense to attempt to design each example integration as its own endeavor or if I want to construct an entire design system to unify the user experience and make each successive integration easier to understand. I can easily get ahead of myself, and I know that pre-optimization can be the death of a good project, so I will try to focus my efforts (at least initially) on making something useful. If this effort starts to increase in scope and complexity, I will take a stab at building some sort of basic design system to make it easier to build new integrations with a consistent pattern.

With respect to content choices, I am trying to decide whether it makes sense to start with basic integrations like Embedded Checkout and a simple Payment Element or dive into reproducing my integration of Active Entitlements paired with Nuxt middleware to showcase how this feature can make it easy to provision access to content and services. I don't want to replicate what is already in Stripe docs, but there is also a risk in getting bogged down with the more complicated integrations. I will have to consider what balance to strike.