AWS Nomads #6: This is a very quick assist for setting up secure server access to your static web content.

If any part of your website needs to be secure, all of it probably should be secure. This is the rule that Google is beginning to impose. It doesn’t really make any sense for images and css files to be transmitted by https, but who are we to argue with ineluctable march of progress.

Long story short, you want to serve static content via https on your custom domain, and the default S3 setup isn’t doing it.

Amazon has a…

I first had the dream of using a tablet as my main computer device somewhere around 2002 when some of the first laptops started to appear with touch-sensitive screens that opened 360°. But they were expensive, cumbersome, Windows-based; neither good laptops nor good tablets. And that’s largely been the story ever since.

For the last five or six years I have used my IPad for a variety of creative and administrative tasks, but not until now has it been possible (much less inviting) to use it for software development.

The solution in this essay is all about browser-based networked solutions…

AWS Nomads #4: How to provide dynamic content and functionality to your web app. Everything here can be done from a mobile browser, and will cost less than a cup of coffee per month.

So, you are sitting down to build an API.

If you are an old-timer like me, you might once have done something crazy like write your own dynamic template processor as a C-language Apache module. Less insanely, many developers will have dipped into the waters of LAMP (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP), or some Rails framework or another, or perhaps a Nginx + Node.js…

AWS Nomads #3: A quick win — a script to keep your Cloud9 / EC2 working directory in sync with your public S3 bucket.

First of all, do not use this while working directly on a website that has traffic. You are going to save files, possibly accidentally, and they are going to be dropped into your public bucket instantly, and you are going to be making mistakes and breaking things.

If you don’t already have some form of staging system or development / production environment going for your live website, please consider that. (Note to self: future article.)

But…

Cloud9 + S3 - Route 53 = Rapid Static Web Site

AWS Nomads #2: The scrappy internet app developer will always need a quick way to get static content flowing. Everything here can be done with a mobile web browser.

Ingredients for this recipe:

• 1 web browser, mobile or otherwise.
• 1 S3 bucket
• 1 Cloud9 instance (which creates 1 EC2 instance)

Optional:

• 1 Internet domain

Not Recommended:

• AWS Route53

What are we building?

You could call it a static web site, but for many we developers, what we are really talking about are the static assets that back a dynamic website. Either way, this recipe is for you.

But for this…

AWS Nomads #1. This is the first article in an ongoing series on AWS development for scrappy developers.

AWS can be a maze of services and options. This is a simple guide to developing securely on AWS. Future essays will discuss various aspects of developing secure applications on AWS, which has many more variations for different application and service types.

Step 1: Secure Your Root Account

Your “Root Account” is the login that has authoritative access to everything. Until you explore the mysteries of IAM, all you have is a root account. You need to keep a root account. Here’s how to secure it.

First of…

I quickly came to realize my problem was more like a porn problem than a tech problem.

I was traveling abroad, and one of my domains was due to expire. I use Google domains, which is about ten million times better than any other domain registrar — but it so happens they don’t want you to travel.

So, I’m here in Sydney, Australia, and my domain is about to expire, and my attempts to renew it are thwarted by the message:

Previously, I demonstrated how easy it is to drop Vue.js into an existing application in order to quickly add dynamic in-page functionality.

But the true beauty of the Vue framework comes with the addition of Vuex, an extension that elegantly encapsulates both data and in-page server access.

For this demo we are going to use the handy “jsonplaceholder api” to illustrate how Vue and Vuex can either add sweet new functionality to an existing site, or refactor crufty old interfaces into nifty new web apps, but I’m going to ask you to use a little imagination as well.

So let’s…