Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment
deploymentfromscratch.com
Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment
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Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment
#2Hi fellow readers of HN,
I am Josef, a full-stack developer, a formal Ruby Linux packager at Red Hat, and an author of Deployment from Scratch (which is this post about!).
After working at Red Hat and technically leading a start-up (of which I was the primary production engineer), I decided to write down a resource I felt was missing on the market:
A book that gives you the confidence to deploy your first application focused on fundamental, transferable, and long-lasting skills rather than tools of the day:
* You'll learn about networking, Linux, systemd, deployment strategies, web servers, application servers, databases, and containers.
* You'll be able to deploy Rails or Django applications (or anything really) together with production PostgreSQL and Redis databases. All automated with just a few lines of Bash.
What's unique about this book:
* It's a comprehensive book where things are designed to work together. I take readers from general networking knowledge to databases and containers. It's for beginners, but I am not skipping anything, not even SELinux.
* There are no abstractions, just Bash. I believe in learning the actual thing rather than an abstraction. Abstractions are great once you know what they are abstracting.
* Everything is done on Enterprise Linux with full SELinux support. While I have happy readers using Ubuntu, I thought the market doesn't have a good CentOS/Rocky/RHEL book.
There are three scripted demonstrations, cheatsheets, and a security checklist, apart from the book content. The demonstrations include:
* A git-push deployment of a database-backed Ruby on Rails application with Encrypted Credentials and Action Cable
* A self-sufficient PostgreSQL cluster with automatic system upgrades, log rotation, and TLS
With these demonstrations, you can be up and running quickly and also save a lot of money on Heroku :)
Stats so far:
* Took me more than 3 years to write (1+ year of fulltime billable time)
* Built a mailing list of more than 600 interested people
* Sold 366 copies
* 22 readers gave the book 5-star rating
The table of contents and the first small chapter: https://deploymentfromscratch.com/previews/intro.pdf
A special SHOW HN preview of the Web Servers chapter: https://deploymentfromscratch.com/previews/show_hn_preview.p...
Buy on Gumroad: https://gum.co/deploymentfromscratch
I am around to answer any questions.
Josef
p.s. You can use "showhn" discount code at checkout for 20% off as a thank you to this community that put my posts several times on the HN frontpage ;)
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment
#3deployment is always the one Ive struggled with. there so much tutorial about building a webapp and almost always all of them assumes you can deploy. and I could not find dedicated resources for deployment. thank you so much for this!
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment
#4I am just starting the process of migrating away from Heroku, so this is perfect timing. As a full stack dev, I've always done the bare minimum with deployment as I never found the process particularly enjoyable. In the past, I would always just copy-paste build configurations from past projects, or some online resources, and wouldn't spend much time digging into the details or really understanding the ins and outs of the build & deploy process.
Needless to say, I'm looking forward to this book.
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment
#5Page red flagged and blocked by BitDefender.
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment
#6Page red flagged and blocked by BitDefender.
Oh shoot. It's just a static page hosted on Netlify, wonder why is that.
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment
#7I'm currently reading this book and I am very impressed by the work done by the author.
It goes in depth on many subjects like provisioning, configuration and deployment. For a beginner like me it's perfect.
Highly recommend for web developers who wants to understand better how a server works under the hood and how to deploy it.
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment
#8Re: Show HN: I wrote a book on web application deployment
#9As someone new to deployment this book was a great read. I learnt a breadth of new techniques (ssh, security (e.g. fail2ban, selinux, permissions), bash commands, dns and configuration of a vps) and i also liked, that the author gave advice on which tools could be helpful (e.g. Ansible).
The book however does not go into detail on these tools (ansible, terraform), its goal is to teach the basics of deploying an app on a linux vps.