How do you quickly spin up new projects?

I would heavily recommend checking out Netlify, Firebase, and Hugo (or Jekyll).

Once you have a domain name, Netlify will handle FOR FREE(with a tiny bit of configuration):

1. HTTPS certificates
2. Hosting a website
3. Spinning up alternative URLs when you create a pull request on GitHub
4. Automatically deploying all pushes to a master branch (either to an alternative URL or directly to the production website)

Firebase replaces a backend for most simple applications (basically for free unless you get a bunch of users) I'm sure it would work fine for your TODO app. It handles (all from the frontend):

1. Auth
2. Email stuff
3. Database querying (you can use Firestore Rules to configure who can access specific entries based on the auth).

If you want to build a landing page separately from the web app, then I would recommend using Hugo or Jekyll and an existing theme.

I used these for my existing SaaS solution and I think they are the way to go right now. If you're curious, I wrote about these tools in more detail (and I also covered a few more tools) here: https://www.zakmiller.com/posts/micropreneur-toolkit/.

I built my own boilerplate (https://usegravity.app) in React/Node, then ended up commercialising it after talking to a few people who had the same problem.

For my own products, I usually start with a basic landing page template for validation (I haven't found a good service that suits my needs yet) then move to development with the boilerplate.

Hosting is always on Heroku because it's so easy to set up and maintain, ain't got time for fiddling around with AWS for days.

I am currently using AWS Cognito to handle the auth and so far it's been fairly painless, at least as painless as AWS can be I suppose.

You get 50k users for free per month so there's no cost really for MVPs.

To get started quickly they provide a ready-made & hosted UI for signup/login/forgot-password screens. The pages are somewhat customizable in look'n'feel but still kinda 'meh' looking, in the end I coded up my own using React and MaterialUI and now I plan to just copy/paste this for all my future projects.

Cognito handles the account validation via an email or SMS. You can enable social logins as well as email, mobile-number or username based logins and/or MFA.

I have my backend REST API proxied through AWS ApiGateway which validates all calls against Cognito before forwarding on the request.

I like to keep my options open in regard to flexibility and prefer to invest a bit more time initially. So my default is Python/Django (backend), Vue/Vuex (frontend) and NativeScript-Vue (iOS+Android) running on Heroku (PaaS).

Netlify, as others have outlined, is awesome!

I use sheet2site.com for testing MVP ideas like job boards.

I'm pretty new to setting up new web apps so this might be a stupid question, but why is nobody recommending WordPress? I mean, that's free even if your web site should grow larger and its very easy and quick to set up. There are tons of free themes and apps to support you with all the thing you need.

I quickly looked at Netlify and Firebase, and they both seem free for very small (hobbyist level they both state) sites, but as soon as things start to grow the costs also seem to grow very rapidly.

What advantages do they have compared to something like WordPress?

GitHub Pages can get you surprisingly far if you don't need a bespoke back-end. It allows you to spin up JavaScript web apps and landing pages, all on your own domain (using CNAME) and with HTTPS.

For the landing page I'd use a Bootstrap template.

Create React App (front end),
Netlify Functions (backend),
Netlify Identity (authentication),
Netlify Hosting (server)

If you have a Netlify account, you can check out my setup by deploying it here https://app.netlify.com/start/deploy?repository=https://github.com/parkeragee/jabba

More info on it here: https://blog.parkeragee.com/post/-jabba-the-netlify-starter-app/

Currently I'm working on a project, where I've built a landing page and a possibility for users to create an account. I'm using Meteor, React and Bootstrap for this project. And I've built this page really quick.

You can checkout the tutorial on their page https://www.meteor.com/, they're building a todo app 😉.

I'm working on something that will help lower this barrier. I'm planning to release it as an open source command line tool in the next month or so. Of the options currently available, I think Firebase is the safest bet.

I'd love to tell you more about what I'm building, and to hear more about your use case. Email me at [email protected] if you're interested.

Anyone else who is interested is welcome to email me as well :)

Same as a couple of others here, I typically copy an existing project (Python/Flask, SCSS + Webpack frontend) and rip out the project-specific stuff. I'm in the process of extracting this out into a boilerplate repo I can clone that gets me up and running with a basic app (a la Spark from Laravel).

I'm also working on putting together a better system for registering a domain, setting up hosting, DNS records, a mailbox, DKIM/DMARC and outbound sending, and automated git deployments but that's more of a pipe dream right now.

I come from a heavy tech background and tend to do most of the scaffolding myself just through habit, my experience and previous work.

I've found that there are a lot of good barebones MVC applications with essential functionality (user registration, search etc) for most major languages. However in addition to using a template on GitHub, I try to re-use my side-project code for other projects.

I just duplicate existing projects, gut them, then work from that. Anything re-used more than once I try to roll into a package to re-use across projects. Once project is gutted to just a barebones TODO app, turn it into a VM / container then duplicate. However you need to spend some time refactoring your projects to not inherit technical debt.

IThat way you're not throwing away your previous work/time and you get to learn from older mistakes and correct them.

My favorite solution here:

• Start a local Rails project
• Install Devise gem (user mgmt and auth)
• Install Rails admin or Administrate gems (admin to manage data easily)
• Create Heroku project and push

... be up and running in < 1 hr. Cheers!

I don’t quickly spin up projects, I do projects that are challenging, allows me to explore new technologies and topics and that supports my career. Usually are not “quick”

I wrote my own authentication system supporting passwordless in Go, exposing GraphQL API. I host it on Heroku or AWS directly, it's light and adapted to my needs every time.

Free template hosted on Netlify also free :)
https://github.com/pydanny/cookiecutter-django all hosted on a new AWS account for free ec2/s3/rds
Only thing I would pay for is a gmail account. If it does grow gmail has so many apps for it that not having it is a disadvantage.

If you're working on it is a side hustle, I would spend money over wasting time.

That would mean using a page builder to create a landing page quickly and using a PaaS to host so you don't have to worry about deployments etc.

I also think there is value in hiring experts for 30 minutes to an hour. I plan on doing that in 2020.