Cloud Confusing
Explaining hosting, AWS, Wordpress, static sites, and all manner of cloud solutions.
Getting Started With Google BigQuery? 8 Helpful Things to Know
If you are new to Google’s BigQuery, it can be a steep (and expensive) learning curve. Here are some helpful tips and facts that will get you started a whole lot more quickly than search through and for docs or learning as you go.
Sal January 21st, 2019
Posted In: Google Cloud Platform
Tags: BigQuery, Databases, Google Analytics
WordPress DateTime Deep Dive
Recently, while working on the next version of the Post Expiration Date WP plugin, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring WordPress’ handling of dates and time. This has been an interesting, often frustrating time but I’ve learned a lot and found a number of great resources on the subject. Here are some of the top ones.
Sal January 21st, 2019
Posted In: Web Development
How To Get Your YouTube Data Into BigQuery
Google’s BigQuery is a useful tool for quickly exploring a lot of data. One of the nice things about it being part of the large Google Cloud Platform (GCP) stack is that it has good integration into other Google services. This is most prominently seen in Google Analytics’ one-click BigQuery integration using Google’s Product Linking (only for Premium/360 members), but other products can easily transfer data to BigQuery as well. Today we’ll be looking at YouTube.
Sal November 21st, 2018
Posted In: Google Cloud Platform
Working with APIs: Postman Pre-Request Scripts and Environmental Variables
This article will cover some of the initial features you should learn how to use once you get past the absolute basics of Postman. It’s a super useful tool for developments, QA, data scientists, and product managers, so it’s worth digging into. In this article we’ll bypass the basics and get into some of what you’ll want to learn as you dig into the tool.
Sal November 4th, 2018
Posted In: Web Development
Free AWS? What is AWS Free Tier and What are the Limitations?
Yes, Amazon Web Services has a free tier. This free (as in beer) stack is a 12-month program that gives developers who are new to AWS a powerful set of tools, though one that comes with some limitations. It can be seen as a gift from the massive AWS cloud or as a gateway to AWS lock-in, but either way it’s worth checking out.
Sal October 21st, 2018
Posted In: AWS
How To Easily Add Email To Your Domain
It’s 2018. We live in a world where email is supposedly being replaced by Slack, Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, and about 100 other services. That said, email is still mission critical for almost every company and if you have a business application with its own domain you almost certainly need an email address associated with it.
It turns out that setting up email for your domain is still a bit of a pain. Here’s the easiest way to handle custom domain emails.
Sal October 11th, 2018
Posted In: AWS, Google Cloud Platform
Tags: Email, MX Records, WorkMail
How To: Cheap WordPress Hosting on AWS with Lightsail
It used to be that hosting WordPress on AWS was a difficult task. You needed to deal with EC2 and the huge AWS management console with its dozens of tools and hundreds of options. Then Amazon introduced the AWS Marketplace and “WordPress powered by BitNami,” which made things easier but left many of the same hurdles in place. Then, finally, Amazon introduces Lightsail, which is basically AWS on easy mode.
Sal October 8th, 2018
Posted In: AWS
Tags: Bitnami, Digital Ocean, Lightsail, VPS
AWS Lightsail vs Digital Ocean: Cloud VPS Shootout
If you are in the market for an affordable VPS, there is a good chance you are considering Amazon Web Services’s Lightsail and a Digital Ocean droplet. Or perhaps you are already a custom of one and want to learn about other options. Either way, this is a full comparison of the two hosting services that might help you choose between them.
Sal October 6th, 2018
Posted In: AWS
Tags: Digital Ocean, Lightsail
How to Use Multi-Factor Authentication to Improve AWS Security (And What Amazon Needs to Improve)
The centralization provided by AWS is great — all your web services are in one place with one bill. But if your account is compromised (and you don’t have proper permissioning / IAM) things can go very bad very quickly. So you’re going to want to lock down access to accounts as thoroughly as possible, which means multi-factor authentication of user logins.
And yes, that’s mutli-factor (MFA), not two-factor. Two-factor authentication (TFA or 2FA) is great, but when additional security levels are possible and they can be done almost seamlessly, they make total sense. With the loss of SMS authentication at the end on January 2019 it’s debatable whether Amazon will have multi-factor (as in more than two) or two-factor authentication but we’ll avoid the semantics from this point forward and use the term that seems best in a given scenario.
Sal September 26th, 2018
Posted In: AWS
Tags: Authentication, IAM, Universal 2nd Factor
The Pitfalls of Cheap WordPress Hosting
In the market for budget WordPress hosting? The competition for your business is immense, but that doesn’t mean you — as a consumer — will benefit in the end. The hosting business is largely a race-to-the-bottom where price sensitivity has overtaken user experience. Any buyer must go into the purchase in a defensive mindset, with the full expectation that budget hosting is going to come with a few serious catches. This doesn’t mean you need to spend $35 a month to host a WordPress site, but go into the buying decision with your eyes open.
Sal September 8th, 2018
Posted In: Web Development
Tags: Shared Hosting, Wordpress