– Motivation for using Node and Express

– A break down of what features the platform currently has

– Currency exchange rates, PayPal and Stripe integration options

– It’s a monolithic app with 4,000 lines of code that evolved slowly over time

– It’s using server rendered templates with progressive JS enhancements

– TypeScript is being used here and there and Gulp is building assets

– How asset cache busting works with Gulp and the template language

– SQLite is being used with the Knex library as a query builder

– A background worker isn’t being used but adding one is a work in progress

– Sending emails out with Postmark and dealing with 3rd party APIs being down

– It’s hosted on a single $10 / month DigitalOcean server running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

– Managing the Node process using PM2 in production with minimal down time

– Setting the server up by hand by following tutorials and then using ServerPilot

– Using GitHub Actions in the future and secret management

– Depending on DigitalOcean’s automated backups and handling logs

– Best tips? Don’t be afraid to build something from scratch

– You can find Umar on Twitter at @umaar and he goes by the same name on multiple sites, also check out his new course at https://learnbrowsertesting.com