Deployment from Scratch

An introductory book to web application deployment.

No Employees
Founders Code
Solo Founder
Books
Education
Programming
Writing

To teach others fundamentals in web application deployment and improve my own understanding of it in the meantime.

September 29, 2023 1000 copies sold

It was a long time of waiting but it's finally here.

I did 17 sales in September and I had my first success with an affiliate who sold a couple of copies and helped me to reach this milestone this month.

It all feels incredible and I am excited of what's ahead in the future.

February 12, 2023 900 copies sold.

I reached another important milestone on the road to 1000 copies sold.

I enabled purchase parity pricing directly in Gumroad and have seen some new discounted sales coming in this February.

I haven't done any new marketing besides that, but I am preparing some changes to the website and offer for 2023.

November 29, 2022 850 copies sold.

Let me celebrate a small win on the road to 1000 copies sold.

850 people from more than 70 different countries bought my book to date.

It shows how having access to a global market can make a difference. And it motivates me to get to that magical 1000 line.

September 1, 2022 v1.2 update released!

Deployment from Scratch is now officially 1 year old. To keep things fresh here's another update.

This update brings:

  • a refreshed Linux Containers chapter
  • a new collection of example Dockerfiles

The collection of Dockerfiles comes with an explanation README that should help you understand building containers in general.

Enjoy!

April 14, 2022 Crossed $25,000 in sales

Today is the day Deployment from Scratch crossed $25,000 in total sales. It's also exactly one year and two weeks since I started to sell the pre-release version.

I wrote a more detailed blog post summarizing the first year of sales. Read it to find out more :).

December 9, 2021 v1.1 update released!

I am committed to keep Deployment from Scratch up-to-date and make it better as time goes. This is a first small update towards that goal.

This update brings:

  • brand new HTML version
  • firewalls chapter update on port scanning
  • grammar and rendering issues fixes

I also went back and checked the things are still working for the new Django 4.0 release.

September 1, 2021 1st edition released!

Today, I am releasing Deployment from Scratch, 1st edition. It was a long journey of more than three years, and it’s time to make it a reality. Of course, I could always do a one more read and rewrite a paragraph or two, but it’s just as important to stop at some point and let the world benefit from all that work.

It covers a lot:

  • networking and typical system administration
  • static sites, proxies, and load balancers with NGINX
  • SSL certificates with Let’s Encrypt
  • installing Ruby/Python and configuring Puma/Gunicorn
  • building systemd services and Docker containers
  • PostgreSQL and Redis administration
  • automation with Bash and git
  • discussing storage, backups, emails

I made a new landing page and
a post about the release.

April 2, 2021 I started to sell the pre-release version

So I finally started to sell the pre-release of the book on Gumroad. The pre-release includes first 13 chapters that takes you from a high level overview of the whole deployment process to automating deployment of static sites. The focus of this first part of the book is on networking, system administration and automation, and security hardening in terms of SSH, SSL/TLS, and firewalls.

Selling pre-release is always a question, but honestly the last programming book I bough myself was also just an unfinished beta. And I even had this question as part of my early poll. People do want to start reading sooner! No, not everybody, but I think it's a good idea to start getting it out there, especially since it's a big book and so the pre-release is almost a book on its own.

I sent the option to buy it to the mailing list of 611 subscribers.

March 3, 2021 Got 500 people interested in the book

I almost thought this milestone won't happen. Since I started to send out previews and updates for the book, I started to lose subscribers. It makes perfect sense though, some people forgot they even signed up, some lost interest along the way.

Don't get me wrong. As soul-crushing as it is for any maker, It's a good thing. I was increasing the chance that people staying on the list actually care about the product. There was only one problem. I am getting to an actual release, and I hoped to get 500 interested people for prime time.

With people leaving the mailing list, I thought it won't happen. I thought I will always get close to 500 only to get another drop :). On this day it did! Nice and rounded 500!

November 14, 2020 First 2 previews sent to the mailing list

Lately, I moved most of the content from gitbook over to a new build using Pandoc. After some time using the latest build, I am more confident I will stick to this. I have an almost final look for some chapters, so I decided to send out a preview to the mailing list.

I sent out previews before to interested beta readers, but I wanted to know how my list reacts to this sneak peek and whether they all unsubscribe. Sigh.

The first preview was the beginning of the Firewalls chapter and the second preview is ten first pages of DNS and SSL/TLS Certificates chapter. I want to do at least one more preview before a pre-release, most likely for the book's practice parts.

About

To teach others fundamentals in web application deployment and improve my own understanding of it in the meantime.