Cereo

Recently, we've taken the first step towards better SEO. We've set up our blog at https://cereo.io/blog. We could have set up a blog with a blogging service like medium if we deployed at a subdomain like blog.cereo.io, but we would get zero SEO value.

Everyone says that you really don't have to roll out your own CMS so I was looking for a tool out there that falls under the criteria:

• easy setup
• ideally cheap
• use markdown
• minimal learning curve

After reviewing all my options, I'd decided to go with Gatsby and Netlify CMS. I'm a Javascript and React dev with little experience in CMS like Wordpress. Using Gatsby and Netlify CMS allows me to work with tools I'm the most comfortable with. Setting up the Gatsby configuration (including configs for google analytics, typography, sitemaps, favicons...etc) does require some time, but if you've worked with Webpack before, Gatsby provides a simpler version of the process.

All in all, I think Gatsby and Netlify CMS is a great choice. There are some cons like bare minimal UI and rich text editor, but given my criteria, I'm perfectly satisfied with this quick and easy solution.

Github Actions has been a breeze to work with. Github Actions offers a nice CI/CD service right inside the Github environment itself. It comes with tight integration with Github. Github Actions workflows are triggered based on a variety of events, such as: commit, pull request, comment...etc.

At Cereo, we serve our Webpack bundle from Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront. We're using Github Actions to build bundles, upload them to S3, and invalidate Cloudfront cache. Our codebase is a monorepo with multiple apps. Github Actions lets us check updates using paths so that we can limit executions. Sometimes a pull request still triggers multiple workflows, but we get to run them concurrently with Github Actions. In fact, Github Actions can run up to 20 concurrent jobs.

That being said, don't try to change your entire CI/CD solution in one afternoon. Github Actions is still new to the market. Start small and build your new shiny CI system up.

#CI #ContinuousIntegration #ContinuousDelivery

I must have been living under a rock or in the 90s because when it's time to purchase a domain for my project in 2020, I chose to do it on GoDaddy. Yes, GoDaddy, with services like Google domains, Namecheap, AWS route 53 out there, I picked GoDaddy. Not even one month in, I already can't tolerate the pain of dealing with the crappy UI and the technical nightmare. There is no way to point naked domains directly to Cloudfront. The only solution is to redirect traffics to www.

Unfortunately, GoDaddy locks your domains for 60 days so I can't transfer it away. In the end, I use AWS Route 53 to manage my DNS records.