Articles about software development operations

In this page, you will find articles that are related to computer infrastructure operations that are performed in the course of software development.

Examples include how to setup the server infrastructure to run Python applications, WordPress applications and etc.

How to setup Taiga project management platform on Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite

Taiga and Raspbian icon

A project management platform is useful for us to keep tabs on what we want to build. Taiga is a popular open source project management platform that is highly recommended by opensource.com to be the top open source alternative to Trello.

Taiga runs well on a Raspberry Pi 3. If you want to setup something at home to help you manage the projects that you are working on, you can consider setting up the Taiga project management platform on a Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite as the base operating system.

This post is adapted from Taiga’s installation guide to serve as a guide to setting up Taiga project management platform on Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite.

How to install Postfix as the SMTP server for applications in Raspbian Stretch Lite to send email

Postfix Raspbian icon

Email is a good medium for the applications that we deploy on our Raspbian Stretch Lite to send us notifications.

By default, a fresh installation of Raspbian Stretch Lite does not include a SMTP server for programs to send email. Thankfully, we can install Postfix as the SMTP server for the applications that we deployed on Raspbian Stretch Lite to send out email when necessary.

This post documents how you can install Postfix as the SMTP server for applications in Raspbian Stretch Lite to send email.

Set of configurations to perform on the first run of your Raspbian Stretch Lite

After you had setup Raspbian Stretch Lite on your microSD card with SSH server enabled or setup Raspbian Stretch Lite with remote configuration over WiFi on first boot, there are a couple of configurations that you should perform for your Raspbian Stretch Lite.

This post walks through some of the configurations that you may want to perform on the first run of your Raspbian Stretch Lite.

How to setup Raspbian Stretch Lite with SSH server enabled on your microSD card

The first step of starting a Raspberry Pi project is to setup a operating system of your choice on the microSD card for managing your Raspberry Pi hardware and software resources, as well as, providing the common services for the computer programs that you are going to run.

The Raspbian Stretch Lite operating system is a light-weight and well supported operating system for Raspberry Pi. Therefore, it is one operating system that you might want to consider as the operating system for your next Raspberry Pi project.

This post serves as a guide to setting up Raspbian Stretch Lite on your microSD card with SSH server enabled.

How to setup Codiad Web IDE on your Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite, Nginx and PHP

A Web IDE server allows you to code wherever you are and whenever you want from any device through a web browser. A Raspberry Pi 3 board is a good gift for programmers and if you happen to receive one or bought one and do not know what to do with it, you may want to setup Codiad Web IDE on it to help you code while you are on the move.

Read on to find out how to setup Codiad Web IDE on your Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite, Nginx and PHP as the LEMP stack.

How to setup phpMyAdmin on a Raspbian Stretch Lite, Nginx, MariaDB / MySQL and PHP 7 LEMP stack

The phpMyAdmin project is a solid software tool written in PHP, that can help us handle the administration of MySQL / MariaDB over the web.

phpMyAdmin Demo Server 4.7.8 demo screenshot

If you want to build your next project with a Raspbian Stretch Lite, Nginx, MariaDB / MySQL and PHP 7 LEMP stack, you may want to consider setting up phpMyAdmin as well. This post details how you can do so.

How to deploy Python 3 Flask application on Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite, Nginx, Supervisor, Virtualenv and Gunicorn

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B boards make good gifts for programmers and if someone had gifted you with one, you may want to use it as a control center for interacting with various IoT sensors and devices at home.

In such a situation, you may want to build a Python 3 Flask application to present the web interface for accessing the control center.

After you had built that Python 3 Flask application, the next step will be to deploy it on your Raspberry Pi 3 for serving HTTP requests.

This post discusses how you can deploy a Python 3 Flask application on Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch Lite, Nginx, Virtualenv and Gunicorn.

Configuring Nginx for PHP web applications

Nginx and PHP FastCGI Process Manager (FPM) are often used side by side for PHP applications. In such a setting, Nginx will be the first point of contact for incoming HTTP requests, acting as a reverse proxy server for the PHP FastCGI Process Manager.

The PHP FastCGI Process Manager then interprets the HTTP requests that it receives from Nginx and runs the PHP scripts for generating the corresponding HTTP responses for Nginx to return back to the HTTP client.

This post discusses a set of configurations that you can use for configuring Nginx for your PHP web applications.

Configuring Nginx to serve files for a static website

In the world of HTTP, static files are content hosted on a web server that does not change. Some examples of static files include images, CSS files, JavaScript files and HTML files.

Although it is not too hard to implement a dynamic website through a content management framework like WordPress on your own server, there are cases where it makes more sense to just host a couple of static files to realise your website.

Nginx is an excellent web server for serving static websites. If you already have Nginx running on a Raspberry Pi 3 or any other kinds of server, you may want to configure it to serve files for your static website.