[LRUG] Launching websites

Tue Aug 9 05:16:56 PDT 2016

There's no reason you couldn't use Salt/Chef/Puppet for these things - at
they're core they all implement providers which do three things:

1. Process any configuration.
2. Check current state, and whether that differs from the configured state.
3. If required, apply any changes.

While typically those actions get taken on operating system packages and
files there's nothing that prevents them being used to do the same thing
via a 3rd party API - there's already prior art for that in their
integrations with cloud providers like AWS.

On Tue, 9 Aug 2016 at 12:42 David Vaks <david.vaks9 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Thanks for the feedback! It's an interesting idea to use infrastructure
> tools to automate the process. However, part of the process involves
> interacting with third parties (their API really) as Jon mentioned.
> Originally Salt/Chef/Puppet (I didn't know the other ones - I'll look into
> it) are not really designed for that.
>
> Is anyone using these tools for setting up Google Analytics, a mailing
> list provider, register with the search engines or social media, etc? It
> doesn't quite feel that these infrastructure tools are right for these
> tasks.
>
> Have you ever faced the same problem?
>
> Thanks
>
> David
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 9, 2016 at 10:05 AM, Priit Tark <priit at gitlab.eu> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> There are couple of type of systems to archive that, I have tried all of
>> them but mostly for short period of time.
>>
>> For example heavy enterprise solutions, such as Salt [1], really fast
>> with dedicated communication with nodes and stuff, I would pick this over
>> Puppet and Chef. However with all those heavy tools, the learning and
>> maintenance cost is pretty high. You better have to be very serious to get
>> any benefit from them.
>>
>> Then there are Docker crazy, I would say stay away from it unless you are
>> Facebook or Google size, it's still more trouble than real benefit for
>> small and medium size setups.
>>
>> We, as small ruby shop, currently recommend Babushka [2] to setup nodes
>> and Mina [3] to super fast everyday deployments. Mina is super fast
>> solutions compare to Capistrano, we talk about seconds to deploy in
>> everyday situation.
>>
>> [1] https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/
>> [2] https://babushka.me/
>> [3] http://nadarei.co/mina/
>>
>> Have fun!
>>
>> Kind Regards,
>>
>> Priit Tark
>> Lead Developer
>>
>> Gitlab Ltd
>> Office: +372 6 099 000
>> Phone: +372 56 202 386
>> http://gitlab.eu
>>
>> On 9 August 2016 at 09:12, Ben Jackson <ben.jackson1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Like the Terraform idea, you could use any provisioning software for
>>> this. Ansible is a good one, fairly simple - it uses yml as a format for
>>> configuring all the steps to run and variables to use.
>>>
>>> You just code up each step you normally carry out manually. Every step
>>> ideally has a way of knowing it's already been done so it can be skipped
>>> when run the next time. That way if any step fails, you can adjust the
>>> variables or the code and run again without needing to redo everything
>>> already done.
>>>
>>> Ben
>>>
>>> On Mon, 8 Aug 2016 at 17:49, Jon Leighton <j at jonathanleighton.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I don't have the same problem as you (i.e. I don't create lots of
>>>> separate websites) but I've been using Terraform (
>>>> https://www.terraform.io/) a bit recently. I think it could help you
>>>> automate some of that list, assuming the providers you want to use are
>>>> supported by Terraform (it's still fairly new and shiny).
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Jon
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 8 Aug 2016, at 02:17 PM, David Vaks wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi LRUG,
>>>>
>>>> This is slightly off topic, but I can imagine some of you might have
>>>> faced this situation. I've been launching quite a few Rails websites
>>>> lately. It usually involves at least the following for me:
>>>> - Domain registration and DNS setup
>>>> - Server/Host configuration: Heroku setup (registration, environment
>>>> variables for some of the steps above) or Docker setup
>>>> - Deployment
>>>> - Security aspects: TLS certificates, HTTPS setup, HTTP security
>>>> headers, etc
>>>> - Legal aspects: cookie policy, T&Cs, privacy, etc (implications from
>>>> other steps)
>>>> - Email: basic setup, SPF/DKIM for the spam, create RFC email
>>>> addresses, etc
>>>> - Mailing list setup (MailChimp or others)
>>>> - Social media: signup to a few social networks, add "social sharing"
>>>> buttons
>>>> - Analytics/instrumentation/monitoring (Google Analytics, New Relic,
>>>> etc)
>>>> - Search engine registration/indexation (Google, Bing)
>>>> - etc
>>>>
>>>> Some of these steps are interlinked and that's only for fairly "basic
>>>> website" without any payment, A/B testing, user feedback or advertising
>>>> requirements.
>>>>
>>>> None of it is particularly complex, although it does require some
>>>> knowledge/experience, but it takes quite a lot of time and feels repetitive.
>>>>
>>>> There are lots of great products/services for the individual steps
>>>> involved, but I can't find anything to streamline the whole (or at least
>>>> part of the) process.
>>>>
>>>> Does anyone know any good tool, product, checklist or website for this?
>>>> Do you have the same problem? How do you handle this yourself?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for your help.
>>>>
>>>> David
>>>>
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