In this episode of Running in Production, Dave Merwin goes over building a service that helps protect those that protect us. It’s a service written in Django and it’s hosted on a single DigitalOcean server. It’s been up and running since 2016.

Dave covers using Django apps, the benefits of keeping everything hosted on 1 server and getting your app up and in front of customers as soon as possible.

Topics Include

• 3:01 – Initially building an app for 1 B2B client and designing features based on that
• 5:58 – Motivation for using Django and Python for this project
• 9:26 – Building a monolith with 14 Django apps but moving towards microservices
• 14:47 – Mostly server rendered Django templates but there are pieces done with Vue
• 20:50 – PostgreSQL is being used as a DB and a side topic about how nice TailwindCSS is
• 25:08 – Not using Docker and learning from the Django community when getting stuck
• 28:50 – Everything runs on a single DigitalOcean server using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
• 32:30 – Using Gunicorn, nginx, Let’s Encrypt and Cloudflare
• 39:38 – Not waiting out for the best tools and being able to evolve your tech stack
• 41:58 – Deployment process from start to finish
• 46:14 – DigitalOcean’s alerting tools are enabled along with Uptime Robot
• 51:23 – Using DigitalOcean’s server snapshots for complete backups
• 56:05 – Best tips? Try to get your app in front of your customers as soon as possible
• 58:40 – Dave is on Twitter @davemerwin and check out their site https://purebluedesign.com/

Links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Insurance_Portability_and_Accountability_Act
• https://tailwindcss.com/
• https://gist.github.com/davemerwin/75420b25ae8a975ec6916d5141eb39d4 (server set up)

• django →
• python →
• vue →
• cloudflare →
• digitalocean →
• lets-encrypt →
• nginx →
• nuxt →
• postgres →
• systemd →
• ubuntu →
• uptime-robot →

• https://gunicorn.org/

Support the Show

This episode does not have a sponsor and this podcast is a labor of love. If you want to support the show, the best way to do it is to purchase one of my courses or suggest one to a friend.

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