Orchid Newsletter: Post-Holidays Edition
Tags: showdev, orchid, static, webdev
Published: 2019-01-16 02:24:02

---
title: Orchid Newsletter: Post-Holidays Edition
published: true
description: December 2018 Monthly Orchid Update
tags: 
- showdev
- orchid 
- static 
- webdev
series: Orchid Newsletter
canonical_url: 'https://orchid.netlify.com/news/2019/1/16/post-holidays-edition'
---

How it is already halfway through January? I apologize this update is so late, the holidays have kept me very busy and time just got away from me. But this is software development, and deadlines slip all the time, right? 😜

As a recap, this series is a monthly newsletter around Orchid, the newest and best static site generator for the JVM. There is a growing need to keep the community up-to-date on all the happenings around Orchid, and here I will share Orchid's progress during the previous month! Follow along with this series to stay on top of Orchid's newest features, track adoption on Github, and see who's using Orchid!

{% github JavaEden/Orchid %}

# On Github

As of the time of writing, Orchid is at 127 (or 0b1111111 in binary) stars on Github! Thanks for all the support, let's keep it going strong!

I'm also seeing more activity on Orchid's [issue tracker](https://github.com/JavaEden/Orchid/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Aupdated-desc), which means people are trying it out! I do my best to answer each issue within a day or so, and this is the best way to get in contact with me if you're having issues or found a bug, as it helps everyone else out as well.

# What's New?

Orchid is now at version [0.15.3](https://github.com/JavaEden/Orchid/releases/tag/0.15.0), with most changes being small bugfixes or minor usability improvements.

Most of the month, however, was spent writing new tutorials, to guide you through Orchid's best features. The most up-to-date versions of these tutorials are in [Orchid's documentation site](https://orchid.netlify.com/wiki/learn), but you can also find them right here on Dev.to!

{% link https://dev.to/cjbrooks12/orchid-tutorial-05---whats-on-the-menu-4n0o %}

{% link https://dev.to/cjbrooks12/orchid-tutorial-06---all-about-archetypes-36ma %}

{% link https://dev.to/cjbrooks12/orchid-tutorial-07---the-amazing-auto-documenting-admin-panel-47l4 %}

# Coming Soon

As part of Orchid's never-ending quest to be the single best tool for code documentation, I'm excited to say that research into Groovy code docs is underway! This is still very much just in the exploration phase, but I'm hopeful that I will be able to get a significant chunk of it done in the next month or so. Stay tuned here to keep up-to-date with its progress!

I've also been working on a bit of a secret project for my company, a fun little serverless SlackBot that:

- runs in Node.js
- which is written in Kotlin/JS
- and is documented with Orchid
- with product pages and help forms also managed with Orchid
- all assembled with Gradle
- and uses Netlify services for all everything (although Netlify doesn't have a database so I'm using Firebase)

It's not quite finished yet, but you are welcome to preview [CrederaBot](https://crederabot.netlify.com/) whenever you like! You can even install the bot on your own Slack team, but I can't guarantee that I won't delete your data if I need to change the DB schema 😇.

---

Are you interested in getting started with Orchid? There simply is no better way to manage all the documentation for your project, and I'd love to help you get set up! 

If you have an open-source project that needs docs, are building a new portfolio, or are building any other kind of static site, I want to work with you to get you set up with Orchid! Comment on this post, send me a PM here on Dev.to, or [contact me here](https://www.caseyjbrooks.com/contact/) and I will be with you every step of the way.

And as always, let me know if you start using Orchid so I can feature you in next month's update!