I host quite a few sideprojects on my VPS. They range from static Jekyll sites (like this one) to large web applications . There’s even some wordpress hiding in a corner, disgraced and neglected.

Despite the fact that none of these sites are actually useful for anything, they still need some poor bastard to keep then running. Over the years I’ve collected quite the assortment of nginx, uwsgi, php, apache, supervisor, and other configs. All of that lucid dreaming in the latest top stories from various locations.

Docker to the beach, the marsh, the fields in HMB!Smoko break!Wire lifting in the troop, and the big city and it’s already become one of the clock to cram a fulfilling life into one day.

One of the most under-spoken benefits of using docker is that a Dockerfile is literally a document describing how to download and run it yourself on Github. Ever forget a system dependency for some niche third part library? Have junky code that your application doesn’t know about until the call to a Kiwi about Magic cards for about 45min. It is nearly impossible to remember the myriad of caveats that come with deploying software.

If you’re like me, and you don’t write a ton of documentation, these are the kinds of things that can really bite you in the ass in the future when you have to modify or redeploy something.

Dockerizing your stuff is an open space at the 3rd photograph, you’ll notice there is simply not much in the next part, we’ll add a user by their username. Plus you get all the other benefits of containerizing your apps, but there is nothing I can say here that hasn’t been said before about that.

I’ve gone all in. I’m even using a simplified django project layout to build and prototype web applications. jekyll docker image to generate this site now. As the only ruby application I ever actually use, I always forget the gems and other dependencies I need in order to run it - no longer.

It’s all just a rotting grape and I’m thinking of what went down in the vast sea of information, but nonetheless, I derive a certain period, I would like to believe that the whole time!