Maintain a production app
Already deployed an app? Add checks, manage secrets, watch for errors, and practice recovering from an incident.
Intermediate
- What CI/CD actually does read Learn what CI/CD means, what should happen before code gets merged or deployed, and how to set up a basic pipeline with GitHub Actions. 4 min
- Run your tests in CI read Wire your test runner into GitHub Actions with one small workflow file, walk it line by line, and make the green check required so untested code can't reach main. 11 min
- Store and rotate secrets read What counts as a secret, why it can never sit in your repo, and where it goes instead: a .env file locally, your host's dashboard in production, and a clear plan for the day a key leaks. 10 min
- Understand HTTPS and certificates read What plain HTTP exposes on a shared network, what TLS and certificates actually promise, and the one HTTPS job your host still leaves to you. 9 min
- Check security before you ship read A practical pre-ship pass for your first real app: secrets, user input, passwords, dependencies, HTTPS, and the rules client-side JavaScript can never enforce. 12 min
- Read logs and trace an error read Where logs live once your app is deployed, how to follow a stack trace back to your own code, and what is worth writing to the log in the first place. 11 min
- Monitor your app and set useful alerts read An outside uptime check, a health endpoint that actually touches the database, and alerts tuned so you still believe them. The minimum monitoring for a first real deployment. 11 min
- Track errors in production read Why users never report crashes, and how an error tracker catches them anyway: a small SDK, source maps to decode minified stack traces, and triage by users affected instead of raw event count. 10 min
- Respond to a production incident read An incident playbook for a team of one: confirm the outage is real, roll back before you debug, find the change that caused it, and write three sentences so the next one hurts less. 9 min