How To Simplify Your Workflow As a Solo Developer?
TThe Coding Koala
Internet TechnologySmall Business/StartupsComputing/Software
Transcript
00:00:00if you've ever hosted a production level project you will sometimes get a bill that makes absolutely
00:00:05no sense for the scale you're operating at but the thing is it's not even just the money that's
00:00:10the problem every time i build an application i end up combining several different services
00:00:15one for hosting another for my database another for authentication email or background tasks
00:00:22and all of them require a whole separate account and dashboard so basically to build one complete
00:00:28platform with everything properly integrated i'm managing multiple dashboards multiple billing cycles
00:00:34and multiple credit card charges so today i want to show you something i've been using recently that
00:00:40genuinely solves most of these problems it's called catalyst slate and it's a hosting platform but what
00:00:46makes this different is that it comes with full back end already built in so many people have this
00:00:50problem of managing their hosting database email or other services in separate platforms but with
00:00:56catalyst slate you can manage everything inside one platform without increasing your budget and this
00:01:02video is sponsored by catalyst slate but as always everything i share here is based on what i actually
00:01:08found while using the platform so before we get into how everything works i want to take a moment to
00:01:13talk about the platform we'll be using today so you can understand why i migrated from other hosting
00:01:18platforms so it's basically a unified environment for building previewing and shipping web applications most
00:01:25hosting platforms give you a place to deploy your code and then they completely leave you to figure out
00:01:30everything else on your own and before you know it you've got four or five different dashboards open
00:01:35and somehow your simple side project is costing you more money than your internet bill slate is built
00:01:41differently and the reason for that is that it run on top of the wider catalyst platform which means
00:01:46the moment you deploy your front end on slate you already have access to integrated databases
00:01:51authentication serverless functions all without setting up anything separately all without duct taping
00:01:57different services together and most importantly all without the kind of bill that makes you question
00:02:02your life choices at the end of the month and here's something most developers don't discover until
00:02:07it's too late some of the hosting platforms prohibits commercial usage if you on their free plan
00:02:13meaning the moment your side project starts making money they require you to upgrade to a paid plan
00:02:18slate has no such restriction plus pricing is where things get really interesting and we're going
00:02:24to come back to that towards the end of this video but first let me actually show you what this platform
00:02:29looks like and walk you through deploying a real application from complete scratch so if you want
00:02:34to try along with me just click the link in the description and you'll be directed to the slate page
00:02:39you can take a moment to go through it but to get started click on start free trial complete the
00:02:44regular account creation process and once everything is set up you should land on the home dashboard
00:02:50now if you look at the left side of your screen you will notice something different you can see
00:02:55various services listed right there where you can find things like serverless functions databases
00:03:01authentication mail service job scheduling and literally everything else you need for a complete
00:03:07application so no more juggling multiple services across different tabs i'll come back to these later
00:03:13but first let's walk through the actual deployment process in the dashboard you'll see various options
00:03:19for how you want to connect your project since most of us are going to be using github let's go with
00:03:24that option click on add account agree to the permissions select your github account give the
00:03:30authorization and if you have a two-factor authentication you may need to verify yourself and that's it you
00:03:37should now be seeing all the repositories from your github account right there in the dashboard
00:03:42for the sake of this video i already have a next js project ready to go pick whatever project you want
00:03:48to deploy and after selecting it you'll be taken to the configuration page where you set up a few basic
00:03:54things before the deployment actually starts in the app name field you can leave it as it is for deployment name you
00:04:00can use whatever you like i'll keep the same name for now next is the deployment source where you choose
00:04:06whether you want to deploy from a specific branch or specific commit in your repository i'll go with
00:04:12the main branch after that you select your framework and as you can see almost every popular framework is
00:04:19listed here then there's node runtime which you can leave on the latest version in the root path where you
00:04:25specify the entry point of your client directory there's also an auto deploy toggle which means
00:04:31every new commit push to your repository will trigger a fresh deployment automatically and if you open the
00:04:37advanced options you can configure your build path install commands build commands and environment
00:04:43variables for now we'll leave all of those as they are once everything looks good go ahead and click
00:04:50deploy and the deployment process will start it usually wraps up in just a few minutes and after waiting a
00:04:57few minutes our site is live click on the preview link and it'll redirect you straight to the deployed
00:05:03application the project i just hosted is actually a platform that converts study notes into quizzes
00:05:09so let's make sure everything is working properly
00:05:14and everything is working exactly as expected i won't be covering the full integration of all the
00:05:20backend services in this video because honestly the documentation is clear enough that you'll be able
00:05:25to work through it without much friction but if you want a dedicated video walking through building a
00:05:31complete full stack application from scratch entirely within the catalyst ecosystem let me know in the
00:05:37comments and i'll put that together so i want to come back to something i mentioned earlier because i
00:05:42think it deserves a proper moment the pricing you get 500 megabytes of cdn storage for free which is
00:05:48enough to host your static assets for your web application next is 300 000 cdn requests and origin server
00:05:56requests for free that's roughly 10 000 visitors per day before you pay anything next is 100 000 isr reads meaning
00:06:04your app can serve cached up-to-date pages to your visitors up to 100 000 times for free and 50 000 isr
00:06:11rights means your app can silently regenerate and save those pages in the background with fresh content
00:06:17and 25 000 gigabyte seconds of function invocations which is enough to run a backend api handling real user
00:06:24requests every single day all on the free tier before you pay a single repeat and when you do go beyond that
00:06:31you're looking at fractions of a cent per request which is the kind of pricing model that lets you
00:06:36sleep at night even when your app suddenly gets a spike in traffic and one more thing is that zoho
00:06:41gives every new user 250 worth of free credits that you can claim anytime from your dashboard
00:06:47but here's what i actually want you to take away from this video it's not really about the money even
00:06:52though the money is genuinely good it's about the mental overhead that just disappears when everything
00:06:58lives in one place you stop spending your evenings debugging why two services aren't talking to each
00:07:03other make sure to at least give the platform a look yourself the link is in the description and if you
00:07:09found this walkthrough useful and want to see more content like this then subscribing is best thing you
00:07:14you can do today. I'll see you in the next one.