– Running the latest stable build of Flask and Python 3.7.x

– Motivation for using Flask and Python

– Grappling with Django vs Flask

– Double edge sword, batteries included vs very few opinions

– Community support was a big factor in choosing Flask

– Stetson would choose Flask again if he re-wrote his app today

– The site uses server side templates with Jinja and no JavaScript

– Using what was built into Flask was a big factor in going with server side templates

– The app’s core functionality is emailing users when new jobs are available

– Starting to use Celery to send emails through MailGun

– The web front-end is basically a way to configure what emails you receive

– Sticking to a content delivery strategy that works for your app

– Earlybrd is mostly a monolithic application

– Being a solo developer is a nice match for having a monolithic app

– gunicorn is Stetson’s Python web server of choice

– PostgreSQL is being used as a database and everything runs in Docker

– A separate Python service does a bit of work outside of Celery

– There’s no admin dashboard, DB interaction is done with TablePlus (a GUI app)

– Finding a balance between making admin features vs user features

– Redis is being used as a back-end for Celery

– Everything is running in Docker containers through Docker Compose

– gunicorn is exposed to the internet directly

– AWS was chosen due to prior experience and loving it in general

– Everything runs on a single t2.micro EC2 instance

– Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is being used as the operating system

– Prometheus and Grafana are being used for monitoring and they run in a home lab

– Using a Python script, Dead Man’s Snitch and Uptime Robot for down time alerts

– What does Dead Man’s Snitch do?

– Using Sentry’s free tier for getting notified of app errors

– Using Slack to get notified of certain errors and alerts

– Stripe is being used to handle subscriptions after the free trial ends

– So many things for developers to learn and being surprised that anything works

– Walking through a code deploy from Stetson’s dev box into production

– Building your Docker images on your server vs using a Docker registry

– A little bit of down time between Docker Compose restarts

– No automated tests before git pushing the code, just linting

– The lack of tests mainly comes down to a lack of time

– To test or not to test, that is the question

– Daily sql dumps of the database to an S3 bucket managed by a cron job

– Choosing between cron jobs and Celery periodic tasks on a set interval

– Will everything come up if you forcefully reboot your server? Yep!

– Applying the 80 / 20 rule when it comes to disaster recovery

– Database migrations get run manually when necessary

– The main app is roughly 1,000 to 1,500 lines of Flask / Python code

– SQLAlchemy isn’t being used because there was a lot on the plate already

– Doing it the wrong way initially helps you understand why it might be wrong

– Best tips? Just get moving to the best of your ability

– Users not receiving alerts due to lack of monitoring was one mistake (but it’s fixed)

– End users (especially developers) tend to be forgiving with bugs if you’re honest

– Some developers enjoy hunting bugs and alerting someone if they found something

– You can find Stetson @stets_10 on Twitter and on LinkedIn, also check out EarlyBrd