241–250 of 259 posts
For your front to back integration: I suggest you look into django-graphene and reacts apollo-client. That small addition to my stack has, at least, doubled if not tripled my churn speed. Throw in something like Django-channels and you get a modern full async websocket capable reactive framework :)
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You can deploy Docker containers to Heroku. I've done this (just requires a simple heroku.yml file and heroku stack:set container ). If the project grows to the size where Heroku's costs become prohibitive, I can easily switch over to Digital Ocean with some tweaks to the docker config.
Why not just save the money and start elsewhere?
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I'm glad you shared this. I've been reading the comments here with much interest but simultaneously also a sense of impostor syndrome, for I've been running my one-man SaaS on generic LAMP since 2005, and aside from adopting jQuery early on, I haven't much touched any other piece of exciting tech that's come out since. My old and boring stack works just fine on the VMs that it runs on, and and continues to support me…
> Of course I'm aware of the cons of programming in PHP versus other languages PHP has come a long way. With v7 (and soon v8) and with Laravel programming in PHP is not only a delight, but also extremely robust and fast. For the front-end, jQuery to Vuejs is not a big leap. You can sprinkle it around to test waters and gain confidence. Such a pleasure to work with.
As a one-man team operating a 10+ year old SaaS product, I’ve done two things that have helped keep things sustainable. The frontend continues to be server generated. PJAX style partial page updates is (mostly) dynamic enough. The maintenance burden of operating a JavaScript frontend is too high to justify for a 1-2 person team. The second thing I’ve done is avoid containers. VMs work fine for many types of applicati…
VMs (even self-updating ones) can be built easily using templates with tools like Packer.
And without containers, a lot of things can be done very simply, often more easily, using modern versions of systemd. You get ad-hoc namespacing, ro storage, resource (CPU/network/memory/I/O) limiting, CPU pinning, private networking, logging and much more by the power of a single line more in the .service file. Throw a tight selinux configuration on top of it and you got a pretty good per-service, secure "container" on your system. Additionally, you get smart .service dependency handling, service auto-restarts, notified restarts if you care to implement it, scheduled tasks, and so on in a multiprocess environment that makes you just sad thinking back to having to resort to stuff like supervisord.
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Hey Anthony, I really like your product. It's crazy fast, might solve one of my issue, is super simple to use, and the UI is gorgeous. I've a few questions though: - how do you compare to other privacy focused analytics tools, such as https://usefathom.com/ or https://simpleanalytics.com/ ? - it seems like you just launched your SaaS a couple of weeks ago. Why didn't you launch it earlier by removing some not strictl…
Hey thanks for the nice comment :) About your questions: 1) Fathom, Simple Analytics, and Plausible are great. They have done an incredible work too. Panelbear has already most (if not all) of the features you might find in their offerings. However, I do intend to dive into more advanced functionality, while keeping it simple to use. I will be talking more about it when I feel confident about what I can deliver. 2) I…
As a fairly new dev, this is really great information for me. Thanks for posting this. If you don't mind me asking, roughly how much do you spend (time) on this every week? How much of that is split between development, operations and product or business development?
Glad you found it useful! Since I have a full-time job too, my time on this project is pretty limited, usually no more than 2 hours per day. That's why I tried to automate and save time as much as I could using Kubernetes operators, well supported open source projects, and most importantly, tools I already feel comfortable with. I don't have hard rules in terms of how I distribute my time, but recently it may have lo…
It's interesting to see how you split your time and how much thought goes into all this. A followup question, if you could;
> and most importantly, tools I already feel comfortable with
What do you do in situations where X tool would be 'better' than Y tool, but you're comfortable with Y tool? Do you do a comparison of the time/effort it takes to learn AND use X tool vs. Y?
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Is it okay to touch base with you directly? I would love to hear your feedback and how we can help. Nothing to sell. - PM for DO Kubernetes.
I wish companies would have better visibility to allow them to approve DO for cloud stuff. Struggled to get the necessary compliance docs under NDA from DO
If you need more than that, the privacy@ email is the right way. https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/pipeda-faq/
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Checkout Hatchbox.io, just started using it myself. You basically pay a flat monthly rate for their Heroku-esque management service and then pay for the servers on your provider of choice separately (e.g. DO, AWS, etc).
Are you finding it mature enough to "just work"? The reason someone pays for something like heroku is they put a high value on "just work", I am really not looking to be troubleshooting weird bugs or figuring out weird edge cases in my ops, that's the whole point here! I'll take a look, it definitely looks interesting, thanks!
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It is more complex than what I'm looking at right now, but I still appreciate the read as it helps me think about some things I can do now to be better prepared for a more scalable environment later. Thanks. Oh, and I had one (serious, but off topic) question... what are you using to brew your fresh cup of coffee?
I like my coffee dripped, preferably from my home country (Costa Rica).
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I'm glad you shared this. I've been reading the comments here with much interest but simultaneously also a sense of impostor syndrome, for I've been running my one-man SaaS on generic LAMP since 2005, and aside from adopting jQuery early on, I haven't much touched any other piece of exciting tech that's come out since. My old and boring stack works just fine on the VMs that it runs on, and and continues to support me…
Nice work. Your SaaS has been providing you income for 15 years. Tell us about your SaaS. What were your challenges early on? What were your hardships? And what were your lessons learned? What would you do differently?
I'm a private guy. But I will say that it's a Greek startup, birthed in my English dorm room (Comp Sci grad; taught myself programming at age 11 by reverse engineering GORILLA.BAS; shout-out to all you DOS 6.22 babies #486dx2 #duneiichani #zerocool #snowcrash #bbs #qbasic #mode13h #nehe #0x5f3759df #lamp #vi).
> What were your challenges early on?
From a life standpoint, it would have to be student loans. But in crisis lies opportunity, because by working to pay these off, I programmed database integration layers between a bunch of local companies that ultimately led to a sweet SaaS system.
From a technical standpoint, there were many fun challenges, such as 2,000+ days of uptime with multi-master replication. But the biggest challenge was probably getting an early version of Quixote and a cranky SOAP protocol to talk to a bunch of SAP EDRs; that's when I learnt people skills.
> What were your hardships?
The usual stuff... paying the rent, feeding myself, no free time. It was all systems go back in the day, and dating wasn't really an option; but I'm thankful for lots of genuine friends, who welcomed my intermittent visits.
From a business standpoint, the biggest hardship was my constantly wrestling with the idea that I could do anything but I couldn't do everything. Once I concluded that exercise I found peace, and then everything else just clicked into place.
> And what were your lessons learned?
1. There are multiple SaaS strategies. One such strategy is to go super niche. Emphasis on super. 2. Going super niche doesn't scale, but it will allow you to prioritise free time - whilst living a steady, balanced lifestyle. 3. To go super niche, build your SaaS in such a way that you can run it from your mobile phone. 4. Always keep an eye on your phone, so that when the need for customer comms arises, it flows with elegant efficiency. 5. The quality of your communication with your customers is your competitive edge. Excel at this to justify your pricing. 6. Optimise all your business processes around minimising your phone's notifications - the goal is to maximise your free time. 7. At your leisure, routinely check in on your customers for a friendly catch-up. This enhances your competitive edge and bargaining power. 8. Always add value to your customers, and if you can't add value, walk away. You'd be surprised how much you can earn and still add value. 9. Enjoy time. Discover who you are. Explore life with your family and friends. Exercise your body and mind outdoors. 0. Help others. Volunteer your skills and resources. I advise several entities and it brings me great joy.
> What would you do differently?
Perhaps I'd have picked a name that was easier to recall, and easier to spell.
But when you go super niche, it doesn't really matter what name you pick.