Notes to self

I am writing an introductory book to web application deployment

I decided to write a book (at the very least attempt to). And yes, there will be some Fedora inside!

Who is the target audience?

Everybody who want to start with system administration for the purposes of web server deployment. Beginners or false beginners. Ideally people with web development experience and comfortable with command line.

What will it be about?

The book will touch some general topics in system administration and provide some practical examples including deployment of Ruby on Rails & PostgreSQL application. I might add other stack/s once I have this ready.

What will be most likely in the book?

I am slowly working on the final Table of Contents. Here is something that will be there:

  • Creating Virtual Private Server (VPS) on something like Digital Ocean (Fedora/CentOS)
  • Managing users, processes, services
  • Basic Nginx configuration
  • Running with SELinux
  • PostgreSQL database setup
  • SSL certificates with Let’s Encrypt for HTTPS
  • git-push deployment for convenience

In general it’s an intersection of various things that make up for a web application deployment on a VPS.

What will it be not about?

There will be no Ansible, no Chef, no Salt, no Terraform. I think it would be too much for this introductory book. I might include a configuration management chapter that discuss this topic in general though.

How can I follow up with the progress on the book?

Check out deploymentfromscratch.com [updated]. I will continuously update it as I progress and there is an option to join a mailing list for any book related news.

Work with me

I have some availability for contract work. I can be your fractional CTO, a Ruby on Rails engineer, or consultant. Write me at strzibny@strzibny.name.

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