Nginx HTTPS with Let's Encrypt: Certbot Setup and Auto Renewal
Issue Let's Encrypt TLS certificates for Nginx with certbot, then make auto renewal reliable with deploy hooks, dry runs and independent expiry checks.
14 min read
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302 published
Architecture Decision Cost: A Practical TCO Model for Engineers
Estimate architecture decision cost as a small TCO model with ranges, reversal cost, and opportunity cost, then record and revisit it in your decision records.
12 min read
API Authentication Patterns: Sessions, JWTs and API Keys Compared
Learn how sessions, JWTs and API keys differ in credential type, transport and validation, and how to choose by client type and revocation latency.
13 min read
Choreography vs Orchestration: Where Saga State and Failures Live
Compare choreography vs orchestration for microservice sagas: where workflow state lives, failure handling, coupling, observability and when to use each.
13 min read
Build vs Buy Infrastructure: Maintenance Cost Is What Decides It
A practical guide to build vs buy infrastructure: separate the cost phases, model TCO, weigh differentiation and on-call ownership, and set triggers to revisit.
13 min read
Test Automation ROI: Where Automated Tests Pay Back on a Budget
Learn to model the cost of testing, prioritise by churn and blast radius, manage flaky tests, and prune suites so test automation ROI stays positive.
17 min read
Zero Downtime Deployment with Docker Compose and Nginx
Build blue/green zero downtime deployments on one host with Docker Compose healthchecks, Nginx upstream switching, graceful reloads, and safe rollback.
17 min read
Spring Boot Configuration: Profiles, Properties and External Config
How Spring Boot configuration orders property sources, when to use profiles, and how to externalise config with environment variables and mounted files.
13 min read
Monorepo Anti-Patterns: God Libraries, Cycles and Slow CI
Learn to spot monorepo anti-patterns like god libraries, circular dependencies and slow CI, and fix them with enforced boundaries, affected builds and caching.
17 min read
Modular Monolith Communication: Module APIs, Events and Outboxes
Learn when modules in a modular monolith should call each other through narrow APIs, when to use in-process events, and how to enforce boundaries.
14 min read
API Input Validation: Schemas, Rules and Shared Contracts
Learn how to layer API input validation: schema checks at the boundary, domain rules deeper in, shared contracts, error formats and safe evolution.
14 min read
PostgreSQL Connection Pooling: PgBouncer, max_connections and Sizing
Learn why PostgreSQL connections are costly, how app pools and PgBouncer work together, how to size pools, and when transaction-mode pooling breaks your app.
16 min read