Hi everyone
So today I thought I would do a quick post, as it has now been just over a year since I started as the Senior Systems Architect at Speed Agency. We’ve had an amazing year, seeing the design, development, and delivery of a number of bespoke systems, including our own modular content management system. Of course, to achieve all this we use a whole bunch of tools. Here I thought I would summarise my favourite;
#1 Digital Ocean
Now, I know there are competitors out there, however I haven’t used them. The reasons I love Digital Ocean can be summarised here:
- We run a very strict set of processes with regards to the deployment of changes to our live environment. The snapshot functionality means I can have a single (or multiple) staging environments built in next to no time
- Their customer service is absolutely top
- Their availability is high, and their prices very reasonable
- The server monitoring is really pretty damn good, especially as it’s essentially a free extra
- And all the usual stuff to do with Volumes, Floating IPs, etc.
More information about Digital Ocean
#2 Status Cake
I’ve used a number of different suites to monitor uptime, I’ve never found one which is better for configuration, server and website monitoring (amongst other things). Also, very very few false negatives – which are a nightmare to manage if you’re handling SLAs on uptime!
Track your uptime and server statuses with Status Cake
#3 Packagist
I’ve done a blog article on Packagist before, however I have to say I love it. The power of managing modular code and dependencies through Composer, added with the closed-source nature of private packagist is just great.
#4 GitLab
We started using GitLab for managing issues and our Git repositories. I’ve got to say, whilst it might start to fall down against its Goliath-size counterparts (such as Atalassian’s BitBucket + Jira haymaker of a combo), it has lasted us very well, it’s a great system to have, it’s open source, easy to use (particularly if you’re familiar with GitHub) and has been a great toe-in-the-water for this style of project management.
#5 Confluence
I’m a true nerd for documentation. I love it. I mean I love it more than I love flow charts, which is really saying something. Confluence is phenomenal. For managing, exporting, modifying, discussing, sharing, and structuring your documentation this is the absolute bee’s knees. Seriously, if you need to document your source code, project paperwork, or anything in the software development arena, sign up for it, right now, don’t even hesitate.
I don’t know why you don’t already have Confluence
#6 draw.io
There is a standing joke in my office, in which I am referred to as Sheldon (though my computational personality tends to find me also referred to as Laurie Bream) – this is because of my absolute adoration for flow charts. From processes to systems designs to user-workflows I absolutely swear my draw.io, which allows you to draw these diagrams, export them as XML files for later, and export as a number of useful formats (PDF, for example).
Get your workflow on with draw.io
In Summary
Tools and software should make your life easier. The above 6 things have made my life infinitely easier, and helped me structure, grow, and enhance my team’s capacity and capability by providing smoother, more efficient processes and workflows. I can’t take all the credit, of course, all those tools were at some point referred to me by a colleague, friend, Search Engine, or somewhere; and none of them would have any effect if my team didn’t take the whole hearted approach to adopting the things that I have mentioned above. Every team has a critical mass which makes systems effective, and my team are the best at adapting to our ever changing requirements.
I’d love to hear what tools you have which make your job easier, I can’t promise I won’t think “oh, that’s a good idea!” and consequently adopt the tool myself 🙂
Until next time,
Johno
Edit: Considering this is essentially 6 links I thought I’d best state – there’s no commercial interest in this post, I’m in no way endorsed by those companies, have no affiliation, no referrer links or anything included!