How to learn about website deployment, hosting and servers? - server

I am a beginner web developer. I have found that there are extensive resources for learning languages and frameworks, but I find my knowledge very lacking when it comes to website deployment, hosting, servers - basically all the things required to do after the website is complete on the local development environment.
It's not like there aren't resources for these things - there are, but they're usually very specific and advanced.
What are some good resources to learn this area (btw, what is it called?) of web development? Where to start?

Your best bet is to simply dive in into the web hosting environment. At least, that's how I learned. Follow these general guidelines:-
If you're not conceptually aware of the technology behind web hosting, watch youtube/beginner videos to familiarize yourself with what's actually happening.
Sign up with a web hosting service. Godaddy and HostGator both have a very user-friendly interface.
If you'd like to go ahead and actually deploy your local website for free, try this site: http://www.domainsforauthors.com. This website is awesome and is absolutely free. You get a domain name, and plus hosting is free.
For example, look at my sample website: http://spicelife.domainsforauthors.com
I will also list my college course page for web development resources:-
http://cis3630.org/resources.html
Additionally, if you're more comfortable with local development methodologies, try free software like Microsoft Expression Web(Recommended) or Adobe Dreamweaver
Hope this helps you pal.
Also, as far as tutorials are concerned:-
https://www.thenewboston.com/
This guy, Bucky Roberts, is great. He has a lot of youtube videos for everything IT related.
Also, W3 schools always helps

Related

Any advice on choosing a Netlify CMS template?

enter image description hereI was originally working toward setting up a Wordpress blog for a friend...
The requirements are that:
-they would not need to do any 'code related' or tricky admin tasks pertaining to maintaining the site.
-they would have a unique domain.
-they can sign in from anywhere and write content.
-SEO is important.
The simple UI contributor interface of WP was very appealing. Though with some research I have decided to choose a JAMstack orientated blog. And going with Netlify CMS instead of a headless WP.
There are some templates available from Netlify. I was hoping to get some advice on which template to choose. They are all fairly new to me.
But ease of use, SEO, and various pretty designs would be my main desires.
I appreciate any help. Thanks.
If you are new to JAMStack development, I suggest use Stackbit. They develop some awesome templates and take care of netlifyCMS setup, which can be quite some chores.
If you mean the Templates available here, then they are less to do with Netlify-CMS, and just what Jamstack tool you want to use.
The CMS itself looks the same for all of the templates, all they do is give you an example of how you can wire up NetlifyCMS to various popular site-generation tools.
My personal opinion would be either Next.JS or Eleventy, as they are relatively easy to use with good SEO out of the box, but your personal previous experience and preferences on which JamStack tool to use for this blog would be the defining factor.

Playframework 2 in the cloud

I started with python on google app engine 3 months ago.
Then I switched to Play2! on Heroku + mongodb and it is a breeze to work with.
I am really far in my project and I want to release the website in the next couple of days. But I just saw the pricing for SSL on heroku, which is really high.
And I don't want to launch my website without SSL. SSL on heroku costs $20/month without the certificate.
I saw some alternatives in this post What cloud platform supports playframework 2.x deployments?
But I am still not too happy. I want to pay as little as possible to start my website.
So at the moment I am looking on Google App Engine again. This would mean that I have to rewrite my whole DB.
Does GAE restrict some features of play2?
I also saw dotcloud but their pricing page is really confusing. I don't know how far I can go with the sandbox mode, and there is a mark on SSL so I think its somehow included but there is also an SSL addon which doubles the price.
I am okay if my website will cost me more then I will get out of it for a few months, but with the ssl on heroku is just too much.
What would you recommend me?
Edit:
Currently I am looking at openshift which looks kinda interesting. They implemented SSL for free to all users, but I am still not sure if I can use this with my custom domain.
Edit2:
Okay it is only shared ssl. Which means I would have to get "Megashift" which costs $42/month
Edit3:
It seems that I can only deploy war files to GAE, which destroys the purpose of play2.
So I would have to choose between heroku, dotcloud and openshift. And all of them are expensive if you want to use SSL.
I would advice you to give openshift a try
It's free, red hat has stated that it will keep a free offering (it's not just during the beta...)
Here's a screencast:
http://playlatam.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/deploying-play-framework-2-apps-with-java-and-scala-to-openshift/
a github repo
https://github.com/opensas/play2-openshift-quickstart
and an article at red hat
https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/supporting-play-framework-on-openshift-with-the-diy-application-type
I doubt that GAE will work properly with Play. The blacklisting of some classes will impact your project with several limitations that you won't have in another environment, and you have the issue of deploying war files (there are plugins for that in Play 2, but still).
Look at it from another point of view:
if your project is a personal "for fun" project with no other aim than trying something, you probably don't need SSL. Even if you really need (or want) SSL, 20$/month is not so much for a hobby, people pay close to that in games like WoW (subscription + extras) each month.
if your project is serious (startup, aiming to get money) you should stop worrying about expenses like 20$. They are investments to get the cash coming. If as a business you are willing to rewrite your code to save just 20$, you are doomed to fail.
I can recommend you Jelastic.
Besides it offers Jelastic SSL and Custom SSL as well at a reasonable price.
Some hosting Providers allow SSL for free for their customers and the price actually varies depending on the Hosting Provider you choose. So you have alternative here.
Jelastic has recently provided a tutorial on how to deploy Play 2 web framework application to the cloud. So you can freely use it as a basis.

CMS for easy administration and Client uploads

A charity has asked for my opinion on what CMS to use for a new website. A couple of web developers have donated their time to develop the website.
What is need is the following.
Easy uploads of images / video's The client must be able to upload video's and images of events that they are coordinating. The client is not tech savvy, and this is the most important thing.
Easy to medium administration. The site is to be administered and supported by a new person who is willing to learn what they need to.
Easy access to make donations.
I nice, clean look. (this is really up to the developer though)
Any advice would be appreciated. After research, the three candidates seem to be Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla, and views on these or other suggestions are welcome.
I'd vote for Wordpress. It's probably the easiest for non tech savvy users.

social features- chat, forums, online directories

We are building a content based portal. Along with the content, we want to provide some collaborative tools- i.e. chat, forums, online directories etc
We are hoping to leverage open-source software for this, as this isn't really a differentiator and will hopefully be faster/cheaper. I am looking at light integration between the content and these (common login, ability to easily reference content in chat/ forums etc) and am flexible on features being offered- as long as the broad functionality is achieved.
We have hosted on MS Azure- what should our considerations be towards identifying the right product?
Joomla! is one option. You want to ensure that the majority or all of the tools you are looking for are openly available no your chosen platform. It is hard to make a solid recommendation without much detail on the content, but you can check it out here:
http://www.joomla.org/about-joomla.html
It is free and open source, site says
Joomla is used all over the world to power Web sites of all shapes and sizes. For example:
Corporate Web sites or portals
Corporate intranets and extranets
Disclaimer: Have never used Joomla

Are there any special server requirements for rendering a .mobi site?

I need to develop a mobi site for a client, do I need a specific server setup for this, or are there any additional server configurations that I need in order to render a mobi site or does it work the same as a normal website?
A .mobi domain is not different (in terms of setup/configuration) than a .com
Even from a technological point of view, you can develop a mobile oriented application using the web technology (Java, PHP, Python, PHP...) and hardware infrastructure you prefer.
From the developer perspective, there's good instructions for .mobi compliance here, and ready.mobi is a great and free testing tool to evaluate mobile-readiness using industry best practices & standards.
ready.mobi is a great tool for testing compliance for this. Also, there's good instructions for .mobi compliance here.
I believe that you should check the availability of Javascript in the target platforms.
Your server should be able to serve pages with the application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml MIME type, otherwise some WAP browsers wil not render the page correctly (Nokia series 60).