Its super easy to find programming courses, but they rarely cover how to actually deploy or “use” whats made, esspecially for web development. Is there a good way to learn this for free?
You’re probably interested in full stack and infrastructure.
Look for resources on how to securely manage a Linux server (ssh, hardening, backups, VPS management). How to securely work with Apache and NodeJS. ( Scaling, TLS configuration, data sanitization). (Just examples of tools feel free to explore your options)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has a great deal of freely accessible learning resources. Give this a look through.
Deploying and administering a website/service covers multiple fields separate to programming - you’re going to want to primarily look into DevOps, SysAdmin, and infrastructure. Like programming, there are a lot of areas to specialise in as well that depend on what stack you need.
Considering your inexperience in the field, a Platform-as-a-Service product like Heroku might be a good place to start. If you need something more serious with more configuration, an Infrastructure-as-a-Service product like AWS may be better (plus they have many hosted Software-as-a-Service products for things like authentication). If you want to roll your own servers you’ll want to look into Docker, which makes it simple to deploy isolated versions of your project (+ any databases) on any machine.
All these products are well documented with guides aimed at beginners - the trick is knowing where to look ;) If you give me some specifics about your project I can probably point you at some basic guides for AWS.
I should also give you the warning that all of these options carry some security risks if you’re careless - they can be all configured wrong or exploited through vulnerabilities in your code, which can result in a large bill or (if you’re running on your own infrastructure at home) put your personal data at risk.
I don’t have anything specific in mind. I’m mostly just trying to figure out where to even start learning. Like, I have a few different web sites and web apps already made, ranging in complexity from stuff with only html and css, to larger .net apps with a database and restful api. I just don’t really know how to go from running the exe on my computer to actually making it a secure and usable website.
You’ll definitely want to study DevOps and SysAdmin if you’re looking for general knowledge. O’Reilly textbooks are a good place to start.
If you’re website is entirely static, you can actually host it for free with Github Pages. For deploying a .NET (or really any dynamic) app you probably want to look into how to package it into a Dockerfile. That makes it platform agnostic and bundles every dependency into an easy to deploy image. After that you probably want to look into setting up Heroku to put your app on the internet. You’ll also want to maybe register a domain and configure DNS if you want a proper domain name, but that’s comparatively simple.
If you’re going the AWS route, you’ll want App Runner or EC2 for the app itself, RDS for database, and maybe even API Gateway to sit in front of your service and route requests/terminate authentication. You could even configure everything with code using an Infrastructure-as-Code tool like Terraform.
If you can’t tell from the number of links, the barrier of entry to AWS is much higher but it’s worth getting your head around depending on where you want to go. Maybe leave it until you’re a bit more comfortable with building an deploying apps though, I’m mainly mentioning AWS to give you an idea of what you might want to head towards, you should probably stick with Heroku for now.
I’ve going through the Odin Project for web development. Maybe it may cover that.
This looks cool thanks for sharing.
This isn’t a stupid question at all.
I’m trying to get into Drupal and deploy an e-commerce website for a friend from scratch but ye gods is my attention span at its limit.
Its incredibly annoying. I’ve taken a number of courses on software development, in a number of different areas, but nothing ever goes beyond, “press run in your IDE and see your finished program run”. If you’re just making a simple app that runs locally, fair enough, but thats only half the battle for most modern software.
Yeah? That’s why OP posted it here, there are no stupid questions here.
