{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-blog-list-jsx","path":"/blog/26/","result":{"data":{"prismic":{"allFeaturedblogs":{"edges":[{"node":{"featured_blogs_enabled":true,"heading":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"Featured posts","spans":[]}],"featured_blog_1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Blog","_linkType":"Link.document","blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":790,"height":395},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/6d8d81b1-971a-4313-b033-b4e125cb14a0_MondoDB-blog-header-790x395.PNG?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Introducing DigitalOcean Managed MongoDB – a fully managed, database as a service for modern apps","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2021-06-29","blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"MongoDB is one of the most popular databases, and it’s ideal for apps that evolve rapidly and need to handle huge volumes of data and traffic. It offers advantages like flexible document schemas, code-native data access, change-friendly design, and easy horizontal scale-out.","spans":[{"start":22,"end":44,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://db-engines.com/en/ranking","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"However, building and maintaining MongoDB clusters from the ground up can be a huge undertaking. Developers often complain that they have to spend their valuable time and resources on database management. Well, we’ve been listening and have some great news: accessing and managing MongoDB on DigitalOcean just got a lot simpler!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are excited to announce that DigitalOcean Managed MongoDB is now in General Availability. Managed MongoDB is a fully managed, database as a service (DBaaS) offering from DigitalOcean, built in partnership with and certified by MongoDB Inc. It provides you all the technical capabilities that make MongoDB so beloved in the developer community. Together we have ensured that you will get access to all the latest releases of the MongoDB document database as they become available.","spans":[{"start":32,"end":91,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases-mongodb/"}},{"start":230,"end":241,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.mongodb.com/","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Managed MongoDB simplifies the MongoDB administration. Developers of all skill levels, even those who do not have prior experience in databases, can spin up MongoDB clusters in just a few minutes. We handle the provisioning, managing, scaling, updates, backups, and security of your MongoDB clusters, allowing you to offload the complex, time consuming –yet critical – database administration tasks to us. This empowers you to focus on what really matters: building awesome apps.","spans":[]},{"type":"embed","oembed":{"height":113,"width":200,"embed_url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvHQSV7jnKA","type":"video","version":"1.0","title":"Create a MongoDB Database on DigitalOcean","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_url":"https://www.youtube.com/c/Digitalocean","provider_name":"YouTube","provider_url":"https://www.youtube.com/","cache_age":null,"thumbnail_url":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NvHQSV7jnKA/hqdefault.jpg","thumbnail_width":480,"thumbnail_height":360,"html":"<iframe width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/NvHQSV7jnKA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen></iframe>"}},{"type":"heading2","text":"Benefits of Managed MongoDB","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Easy set up and maintenance: We create the database clusters for you. Simply choose the cluster configuration (e.g., memory, disk size, number of nodes, etc.), and the data center in which you want to host the database. Follow a few simple steps and your database cluster will be up and running in a matter of minutes. You can spin up clusters using the cloud control panel, CLI, or API.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":28,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Automatic daily backups with point in time recovery: Data is one of the most important assets of an app, so it’s critical to backup your database. We take backups of your entire clusters automatically on a daily basis, for free. We also provide a point in time recovery for 7 days, that way if things go wrong due to human error, machine error, or some combination of both, you can easily restore the database as it was at any point in the previous 7 days. \n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":52,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Automatic updates and access to latest MongoDB releases: You get access to MongoDB 4.4. This is the latest release of MongoDB and comes packed with numerous enhancements like hedged reads, rust, and swift drivers. Since we have developed Managed MongoDB in partnership with MongoDB Inc, you will always get access to new releases as they become available. With Managed MongoDB, the updates happen automatically. Just select a date and time for the updates and we take care of the rest. This makes it easy to stay up to date with MongoDB releases without disrupting your business.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":56,"type":"strong"},{"start":148,"end":169,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.mongodb.com/new","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"High availability with automated failover: If your database goes down, it can take down the entire app, leading to bad customer experiences. With Managed MongoDB, you can easily minimize the downtime for your database and make it highly available with standby nodes. Standby nodes add redundancy, so if for example the primary node fails, the standby node is immediately promoted to primary and begins serving requests while we provision a replacement standby node in the background.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":42,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Scale up easily to handle traffic spikes: As your app gains traction and the usage grows, it’s important to have a database that can keep up with the increased demand. With Managed MongoDB, you can easily scale up the size of database nodes when needed.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":41,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Secure by default: Since data is critical, it also needs to be secure. We encrypt data at rest with LUKS and in transit with SSL. When you create a new cluster, it’s placed in a VPC network by default that provides a more secure connection between resources. You can also restrict access to your nodes to prevent brute-force password and denial-of-service attacks.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":18,"type":"strong"},{"start":178,"end":189,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/networking/vpc/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"The need for Managed Databases","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean’s mission is to simplify cloud computing so developers, startups, and SMBs can spend more time building software that changes the world. While databases are a critical component to any application, building, maintaining, and scaling them can be complex and time consuming. For developers that are building apps for their business, database administration is often not a core focus area. But it’s quite common to find developers that write the code and then also roll up their sleeves to maintain databases. Such users would rather offload the tedious database administration and focus their limited time and energy on building and enhancing their apps. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"With this in mind, we introduced Managed Databases a couple of years ago and are excited to add Managed MongoDB to our portfolio. With this release, DigitalOcean Managed Databases now supports the following engines:","spans":[{"start":33,"end":50,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases/"}}]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/87745cc1-1c5f-4463-b104-104b7fc30dc7_managed-databases-logos.png?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":849,"height":104}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Managed MongoDB launch comes on the heels of DigitalOcean App Platform, a modern, reimagined PaaS (Platform as a Service) that we released a few months ago. App Platform makes it very easy to build, deploy, and scale apps and static sites. You can deploy code by simply pointing to your GitHub and GitLab repos, and App Platform will do all the heavy lifting of managing infrastructure, app runtimes, and dependencies. App Platform, along with Managed Databases, helps fulfill DigitalOcean’s mission by empowering developers, startups, and SMBs to focus more on their apps, and less on the underlying infrastructure and databases.","spans":[{"start":45,"end":70,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"How Managed MongoDB works","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean provides you with various compute options to build your apps like:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Droplets: On-demand, Linux virtual machines suitable for production business applications and personal passion projects.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":8,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"DigitalOcean Kubernetes: Managed Kubernetes with automatic scaling, upgrades, and a free control plane.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":23,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"DigitalOcean App Platform: A fully managed Platform as a Service.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":25,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"No matter which compute option you choose to build your apps, you can easily add Managed MongoDB to it. In addition to this, Managed MongoDB also integrates with the Node.js 1-Click App from DigitalOcean Marketplace making it a lot easier to build Node.js apps.","spans":[{"start":166,"end":215,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/nodejs"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Simple, predictable pricing","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Just like all DigitalOcean products, Managed MongoDB provides simple, predictable pricing that allows you to control costs and prevent any surprise bills. You can spin up a database cluster for just $15/month, or a highly available three-node replica set for $45/month. Click here for more information.","spans":[{"start":270,"end":301,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/#managed-databases"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Regional availability","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Managed MongoDB is currently available in the following regions:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"NYC3 (New York, USA)","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"FRA1 (Frankfurt, Germany)","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"AMS3 (Amsterdam, Netherlands)","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We will be making Managed Mongo available in other regions soon. Please check out the release notes for most up to date information on regional availability.","spans":[{"start":86,"end":99,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/release-notes/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Join us at deploy, DigitalOcean’s virtual user conference","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Today we have deploy, DigitalOcean’s signature user conference, which focuses on celebrating, educating, and connecting awesome builders from all over the world.","spans":[{"start":14,"end":20,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://deploy.digitalocean.com/home"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Check out the keynote session from DigitalOcean's CEO, Yancey Spruill, in which he talks about where we're headed as a company and shares some exciting product updates. His keynote will be followed by sessions from community members, engineers, customers, and other experts that are building technologies and businesses powered by the cloud. With live Q&A and an active Discord server, there’s ample opportunity to engage and learn something new. Click here to attend the deploy conference.","spans":[{"start":14,"end":69,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://deploy.digitalocean.com/agenda/session/552806"}},{"start":347,"end":384,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://do.co/deploy-discord"}},{"start":461,"end":489,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://do.co/deploy"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are also launching a hackathon for DigitalOcean Managed MongoDB. Learn how you can participate, submit an app and get a t-shirt.","spans":[{"start":24,"end":66,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/mongodb-hackathon"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We hope you will give Managed MongoDB a try. Here are some sample datasets and sample apps that you can use to kick the tires. Check out the docs and let us know what you think!","spans":[{"start":22,"end":43,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cloud.digitalocean.com/databases/new?engine=mongodb"}},{"start":59,"end":90,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/do-community/mongodb-resources","target":"_blank"}},{"start":141,"end":145,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/databases/mongodb/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you’d like to have a conversation about using DigitalOcean and Managed MongoDB in your business, please feel free to contact our sales team.","spans":[{"start":120,"end":142,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/company/contact/sales/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Happy coding!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"André Bearfield","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Director of Product Management","spans":[]}],"tags":[{"tag1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Tag","tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}}],"author":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Author","author_name":"André Bearfield","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":553,"height":547},"alt":"André Bearfield","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/fdc7c85186f0a850b04083e1d4306bd1c19772e8_andre-bearfield.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"andre-bearfield"}},"_meta":{"uid":"introducing-digitalocean-managed-mongodb"}},"featured_blog_2":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Blog","_linkType":"Link.document","blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":790,"height":400},"alt":"Droplet Console","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/710499ae-78cc-4179-afc1-15793637b200_DODX3727-790x400-logo-2.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Securely connect to Droplets with SSH key pairs using a new Droplet Console","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2021-08-10","blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"The famous author Ken Blanchard once said, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.\" This is something we truly believe at DigitalOcean, and we always strive to enhance our products based on customer feedback.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"With this goal in mind, we are excited to introduce a new Droplet Console that will make it much easier to connect to your Droplets securely. The new Droplet Console provides one-click SSH access to your Droplets through a native-like SSH/Terminal experience. It also eliminates the need for a password or manual configuration of SSH keys. Starting today, we’re pleased to announce that the new Droplet Console is now available to all Droplet users.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Why you should be using Secure Shell (SSH) ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Password-based security is notoriously insecure due to password fatigue and the overuse of passwords such as ‘123456’. Secure Shell or SSH is a network communication protocol that solves this by using passwordless solutions for encryption, enabling two computers to communicate and securely share data. At a high level, SSH works by creating cryptographic key pairs consisting of a public and private key, which are computer generated and stored separately to ensure their security. ","spans":[{"start":80,"end":117,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cybernews.com/best-password-managers/most-common-passwords/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"SSH has become the default encryption protocol for many industries, but it was difficult to use SSH keys with DigitalOcean’s current Recovery (VNC) console, which is why we developed our new Droplet Console. The new Droplet Console is backed by an agent that security supervises the key pair, while also providing one-click SSH access to our users. You can see the full list of features below.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"The new Droplet Console: More time saving, less time wasting ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The new Droplet Console is for everyone who is looking to build fast, secure apps and avoid hassles with SSH access & usability issues.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"In addition to easier SSH access, the new Droplet Console comes with:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Copy/paste text: Instead of typing lengthy key pairs and text manually, you can use copy/paste to save time. ","spans":[{"start":0,"end":17,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Multi-color support: Multi-color support makes the console more useful and intuitive, and breaks the conventional standard appearance which is black text on a white background. ","spans":[{"start":0,"end":41,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Multi-language support: DigitalOcean’s new Droplet Console supports multiple languages, meaning you can now type and view any content in any language that is supported by UTF-8","spans":[{"start":0,"end":24,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"OS/images supported: Linux distributions (Ubuntu(16.04 - 20.04), Fedora (32 & 33), Debian (9), CentOS (7.6 & 8.3), CentOS 8 Stream, Rocky Linux and Marketplace images.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":20,"type":"strong"},{"start":148,"end":159,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The new Droplet Console is available by default on any new Droplets you spin up. You can also enable it manually on older Droplets. Click here to learn more!","spans":[{"start":132,"end":157,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/how-to/connect-with-console/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Check out this short walkthrough video that shows the new Droplet Console in action: ","spans":[]},{"type":"embed","oembed":{"type":"video","embed_url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt7QihVuxiE","title":"Access Your Droplet Terminal Through the Web Console","provider_name":"YouTube","thumbnail_url":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Qt7QihVuxiE/hqdefault.jpg","provider_url":"https://www.youtube.com/","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_url":"https://www.youtube.com/c/Digitalocean","height":113,"width":200,"version":"1.0","thumbnail_height":360,"thumbnail_width":480,"html":"<iframe width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qt7QihVuxiE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen></iframe>"}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We hope you’re excited about the new Droplet Console. You’re welcome to spin some Droplets up right now, and try out the new Droplet Console – why wait?","spans":[{"start":72,"end":103,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cloud.digitalocean.com/droplets/new"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Happy coding!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Harsh Banwait, Senior Product Manager","spans":[]}],"tags":[{"tag1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Tag","tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}}],"author":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Author","author_name":"Harsh Banwait","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":399},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/e83ff690-b20c-4d88-a2b6-57e562558cd6_download.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"harsh-banwait"}},"_meta":{"uid":"new-droplet-console-ssh-support"}},"featured_blog_3":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Blog","_linkType":"Link.document","blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":790,"height":400},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/588e28d3-d41e-480b-937b-8c3b19201f6e_DODX3568-790x400-Blog.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"How to scale your SaaS product without breaking the bank","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2021-06-22","blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"These days, if you are in the business of software, chances are you are delivering or plan to deliver your services using a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. A combination of internet-based delivery, subscription-based pricing, and low-friction product experiences have made SaaS solutions valuable tools for their users, and an excellent vehicle for software builders looking to distribute their products.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"These factors have made SaaS solutions ubiquitous; SaaS is the largest segment in the public cloud market, and is used to provide functionality ranging from personal finance apps for consumers, to productivity software for businesses, and even tools and services for software developers themselves to compose their applications and simplify their workflows. It is also not uncommon to find micro-SaaS applications being built for specific industries such as retail, job functions such as accounting or marketing, or tasks such as event management. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The best thing about this SaaS wave has been that it has allowed a new generation of software builders to build and monetize applications and participate in the digital economy. Previously, you had to be a big company with lots of resources, name recognition and distribution networks to successfully sell software products. Now, irrespective of whether you are a single person working on a passion project, a small team of developers in a startup, or a small and medium-sized business (SMB), the SaaS model enables you to express your ideas in the form of software and deliver them to customers anywhere in the world.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"The unique challenges of building SaaS solutions","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Despite the opportunities that come with the widespread adoption of SaaS products, software builders still have to answer key questions in their journey to building successful SaaS products. Understanding what customers to target, features to prioritize, how to price your product, and how to acquire customers are all critical questions to figure out while you are also doing the important job of actually building and operating the product. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Writing the code, testing, deployment, monitoring the usage in production, and ensuring that your apps are able to handle the additional demand when customer base and usage grows are all essential and time-consuming tasks.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Additionally, being able to test multiple ideas, pivot, and double down on the ideas that actually work is critical in early stages of SaaS development. Once growth comes, it is equally important to scale up without compromising on performance or reliability. Needless to say, all of this needs to be economically viable as well, since not everyone has the resources of large SaaS providers like Salesforce or Adobe.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Cloud Computing enables builders but also poses challenges","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Fortunately, for the act of building and operating your apps, cloud computing can help take some load off your shoulders. Unless you have the scale and resources of Facebook, chances are you are not going to set up your own data centers to host the computing infrastructure that powers your SaaS company. Public cloud infrastructure providers can bring great value to SaaS builders by providing on-demand computing services with usage-based pricing. However, just like how the legacy software companies weren't built for the SaaS model, the early (and big) cloud computing services were not optimized for the unique needs of small SaaS building teams. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Smaller SaaS teams face challenges with large cloud computing providers, including:","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Too many technology options","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"There are just too many options for tech stacks on which to build your SaaS - programming languages, application development frameworks, libraries, runtime environments, architectural patterns, and deployment models - and the list is growing by the day.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Complexity of cloud computing services","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Even when you have decided on a technology stack, there is a lot of cloud vendor-specific terminology you need to learn and heavy lifting you need to do to build on the cloud, not all of which contributes to making your SaaS applications successful.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Unpredictable costs","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The experimentation necessary in early stages of SaaS development, as well as the scaling of applications required during the growth phase, call for affordable and predictable pricing from your cloud provider. The last thing SaaS teams want is surprising and indecipherable bills from your cloud provider. Unfortunately, smaller businesses often experience unpredictable costs with cloud providers who are busy serving only the large enterprises.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"DigitalOcean provides a simple, cost effective solution for SaaS builders","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Fortunately, at DigitalOcean we have a laser focus on small software development teams, who are trying to build the next generation of applications. Today, DigitalOcean customers are already building SaaS applications which serve all kinds of customers.","spans":[{"start":191,"end":217,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/saas/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We believe SaaS builders should focus on building apps that power their business, and not spend their valuable time on managing infrastructure. That is exactly what we have been able to enable through our intuitive products that are built for scale and reliability.","spans":[{"start":205,"end":223,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Vidazoo is an advertising technology company specializing in video streaming and serving. It serves video ads to thousands of websites and handles close to 10 billion requests per day. \n\n“We are as much a data company as an adtech company. Our business relies on speedy and accurate data processing at massive scale. DigitalOcean provides us the perfect set of tools to operate our SaaS business profitably, while not making us feel the need to become full time system administrators. We plan to move a lot of our apps to DigitalOcean App Platform and other fully managed products.” - Roman Svichar, CTO of Vidazoo","spans":[{"start":0,"end":7,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://vidazoo.com/"}},{"start":187,"end":583,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We believe in meeting customers where they are. If they already have an understanding of cloud infrastructure technologies, they should be able to leverage that knowledge and get started with our products without any further ramp up.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Whatfix is an enterprise SaaS provider that offers a digital adoption platform to businesses. The company helps enterprises gain the full value of their investments in enterprise applications by providing real-time, interactive, and contextual guidance to users of those applications. \n\n“What we really love about the DigitalOcean platform is the ease of use. We feel like we know infrastructure and can handle most of the configuration and management. What we needed from a cloud was not bells and whistles but efficiency and reliability. DigitalOcean provides us a platform to build our apps and then gets out of the way. Just how we like it.” - Achyuth Krishna, Director of Engineering of Whatfix","spans":[{"start":0,"end":7,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://whatfix.com/blog/driving-the-future-now-were-excited-to-announce-our-90-million-series-d-funding/"}},{"start":287,"end":648,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We understand that scaling while maintaining reliability of applications and profitability of business is important, so we provide robust solutions which minimize downtime.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Centra is a SaaS-based e-commerce platform for global direct-to-consumer and wholesale e-commerce brands. Centra provides a powerful e-commerce backend that lets brands build pixel-perfect, custom designed, online flagship stores. \n\n“How do we enable our customers to create differentiated online experiences? How do we ensure their e-commerce apps stay up and running at all times? How do we scale on-demand when traffic grows or new customers come in? These are the questions that we ask ourselves every day. Thankfully, we have a partner in DigitalOcean that provides just the platform to answer those questions enabling us to guarantee 99.9% uptime for our clients.” - Martin Jensen, CEO of Centra","spans":[{"start":0,"end":6,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://centra.com/"}},{"start":233,"end":673,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"These are just a few examples of SaaS businesses finding success on DigitalOcean. We are constantly amazed by the creativity and innovation that software builders are utilizing our platform for. If you are interested in learning more about product updates, technical deep-dives and best practices for building SaaS products and businesses, please contact us to learn how we can help you get started. ","spans":[{"start":340,"end":357,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/migrate/?utmmedium=blog","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Come build with DigitalOcean!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Looking to migrate your SaaS to DigitalOcean? Leverage free infrastructure credits, robust training, and technical support to ensure a worry-free migration.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":156,"type":"strong"},{"start":0,"end":156,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/migrate/?utmmedium=blog","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Raman Sharma","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Vice President, Product & Programs Marketing","spans":[]}],"tags":[{"tag1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Tag","tag":"Developer Relations","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"developer-relations"}}}],"author":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Author","author_name":"Raman Sharma","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":512,"height":512},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/497b4b14-d192-493a-8b66-7ae176ba99f3_raman.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"raman-sharma"}},"_meta":{"uid":"how-to-scale-your-saas-product-without-breaking-the-bank"}}}}]}}},"pageContext":{"limit":12,"skip":300,"numPages":33,"currentPage":26,"data":[{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":400},"alt":"mongo db","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/b1ae16a8-dafd-4184-a60a-86e53bf25d08_mongodb-blog.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Guest Post: MongoHQ on DigitalOcean – Not Just Ready, Production Ready!","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"The MongoHQ Team: We're pleased to announce that DigitalOcean is the latest cloud to host production ready Elastic Deployments of MongoDB. At MongoHQ, we wanted to combine our Database-as-a-Service with DigitalOcean's fast and convenient cloud technology, jumping at the chance to partner with them and make that a reality.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":17,"type":"strong"},{"start":107,"end":126,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://blog.mongohq.com/new-elastic-deployments-now-available/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"For those of you who are unfamiliar with MongoHQ's new feature, Elastic Deployments offer a rapid route to a full power MongoDB system, complete with advanced features like oplog access for integration with other databases or high data performance web frameworks like Meteor. When your application needs more storage, Elastic Deployments is there with its autoscaling technology to match all your demands.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Elastic Deployments are designed to work on the most performant cloud hosting platforms available, so it was natural for us to connect with DigitalOcean. Our CEO Kurt Mackey puts it best: \"Developers want to host their applications with DigitalOcean primarily for the same reasons that they deploy databases through MongoHQ – to keep agility and flexibility while retaining power on demand.\"","spans":[{"start":127,"end":152,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.mongohq.com/digitalocean"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean offers the same kind of rapid provisioning for cloud instances that MongoHQ offers for MongoDB databases. It takes less than a minute to bring up an SSD Cloud instance complete with 20GB of SSD storage and 512MB of RAM. There's easy to use dashboards and APIs, Tier-1 peering and virtual private networks within the data centre – that's the kind of service we love at MongoHQ, and our partnership means that developers can leverage the perfect dovetail of hosting and database provisioning.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean has also been great to work with, providing us with extensive system access to benchmark and test our platform, as well as connecting us with three of their engineers. It's because of that collaboration that we're having a smooth rollout – we're production ready for DigitalOcean users right now.","spans":[{"start":299,"end":308,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.mongohq.com/signup/?utm_source=Digital%20Ocean&amp;utm_medium=lp&amp;utm_campaign=digital%20ocean"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-06-24","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"mongohq-guest-post"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":784,"height":392},"alt":"API v2","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/74a1ac12-dbca-423c-ae53-9e8d69dd1b92_apiv2.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"API v2.0 Enters Public Beta","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"For the past couple of weeks, we've been testing a new version of the DigitalOcean API. We're now excited to invite you to try out our public beta! We've rewritten the newest version of our API from the ground up, and we're looking for feedback from our community as to what features you'd like to see and how current ones can be made better.","spans":[{"start":236,"end":244,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/digitaloceancloud/api-v2"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"While version 1 of our API is still available for use, the new and improved version 2 of our API will allow you to manage a wider variety of DigitalOcean actions in a RESTful way. The endpoints are intuitive and powerful, helping you to easily make calls to retrieve information or to execute actions.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"What's New?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We've worked on making the new API as streamlined and easy to use as possible. Some new added features include:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"A truly RESTful API: Developers can now communicate with the API through standard HTTP methods: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE & HEAD.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":20,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Improved Authentication: Users can create and authorize API tokens to provide read-only or read/write access to their account without exposing their credentials.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":24,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"OAuth Applications: As the beta progresses, third party application developers will be able to easily create and integrate their applications on top of the new API.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":19,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Slugs: Developers can now use slugs to reference sizes, regions, domains, public SSH keys, and public images in addition to the numeric IDs.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":6,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Pagination: Results are now paginated where applicable, making it easier to interact with large collections such as a domain with hundreds of records.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":11,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Expanded API Coverage: The new API supports IPv6 actions, such as creating a droplet with IPv6 enabled and enabling IPv6 on existing Singapore servers. Furthermore, developers now have the ability to change their Droplet's kernel, making upgrades using the API much more seamless.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":22,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Getting Started","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We're excited to hear what you have to say as we continue to refine the direction of v2. You can find the complete documentation on the DigitalOcean developers portal. Let us know what you think on our API v2 Github page.","spans":[{"start":136,"end":166,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://developers.digitalocean.com/v2/"}},{"start":202,"end":220,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/digitaloceancloud/api-v2"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"You can also jump right into the conversations happening in our community by checking out this easy Getting Started Guide and a list of API v2 libraries.","spans":[{"start":100,"end":121,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-the-digitalocean-apiv2"}},{"start":136,"end":152,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/what-libraries-and-wrappers-are-there-for-digitalocean-s-apiv2"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-06-23","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"api-v2-enters-public-beta"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":784,"height":392},"alt":"ipv6 support in singapore","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/fe75ad99-3607-49c4-b951-a85a120f686b_IPv6_Image.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Announcing IPv6 Support in Singapore","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"Since our launch, IPv6 has been one of the most requested features in our community. Today we are excited to announce that public IPv6 addresses are now available for all Droplets in our Singapore region. IPv6 can be enabled during Droplet creation, or added to existing Droplets without the need for a reboot. This will be the standard for all new datacenter locations going forward – several of which will be launching within the next few months.","spans":[{"start":48,"end":66,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocean/suggestions/2639897-ipv6-addresses"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"SGP1 is the first datacenter to have IPv6 support because it is running v1.5 of our backend code base. The new version was completely rewritten from the ground up and provides many benefits over the current v1.0 code. This includes more actions that can be initiated without needing to power off a Droplet – such as enabling/disabling networking services – as well as an overall more reliable backup service architecture. After much testing during a two month beta period in Singapore, we've also started the first phase of our migration to the new 1.5 codebase in the San Francisco region.","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/b8c14bba718b5fbc7c9c8b70d187959fee078361_ipv6_check.png?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":814,"height":233}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Below are our community articles that will help you get started with IPv6 on your Droplets.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"How To Enable IPv6 For DigitalOcean Droplets","spans":[{"start":0,"end":44,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-enable-ipv6-for-digitalocean-droplets"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"How To Configure Tools To Use IPv6 on a Linux VPS","spans":[{"start":0,"end":49,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-tools-to-use-ipv6-on-a-linux-vps"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"How To Add Additional IPv6 Addresses to your Droplet","spans":[{"start":0,"end":52,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-add-additional-ipv6-addresses-to-your-droplet"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"How To Configure Your Droplet to Only Use IPv6 Networking","spans":[{"start":0,"end":57,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-your-droplet-to-only-use-ipv6-networking"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"You can also navigate the IPv6 tag for more IPv6 articles and questions in the community. With your help, we'll be able to refine this feature to best serve our community and join the future of the internet.","spans":[{"start":26,"end":34,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tags/ipv6"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Sincerely,","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The DO Team","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-06-15","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"announcing-ipv6-support-in-singapore"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"Todd H. Gardner","author_image":null,"_meta":{"uid":"todd_h_gardner"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":357},"alt":"track:js","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/322a8fbd-111f-4e4d-9593-a6fb336e9e5d_trackjs.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Building A Better Web With Track:js","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"In this guest post, co-founder of Track:js Todd H Gardner discusses his experience with transitioning more and more of his company over to DigitalOcean. In case you haven't heard, Track:js is an awesome service for tracking and fixing client-side JavaScript errors.","spans":[{"start":43,"end":57,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/toddhgardner"}},{"start":180,"end":188,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://trackjs.com/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"From The Creator","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We're bootstrapping Track:js, so we're perpetually short on time and money. We initially started using DigitalOcean for its price, but have stayed for nearly a year now because it works so well. Setting up Droplets is super easy and we have all the control we need to automate them.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Their systems are also incredibly fast and reliable, handling everything we've thrown at them. We hit #1 on HackerNews and saw 25,000 unique users hit our DO box and performance was stellar: less than 1s response on average. We host our public-facing sites on DigitalOcean using a combination of static files and WordPress. Deployment is automated with git hooks, which were straightforward to setup.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean has been so great for us that we're looking to build out our usage capture components on a cluster of Droplets. We're very optimistic about this – it could save us a ton in monthly transactional costs and give us even more control.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading3","text":"More than the Error","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/f71735ecfd54c4a662af90dec9a457839a610688_telemetry.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":679}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The error is the last in a long series of events. What happened before, what did the user do, and how did we get into this state? We built a custom event engine to track what the user, the network, and your application were doing leading up to the error. We call it the Telemetry Timeline – it's kinda like a BlackBox Recorder for your web app.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading3","text":"Realtime Analytics","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/4232e651810b4f651f7600f8df000de4b59d7338_dashboard.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":497}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"There is a lot of noise out there. A lot of errors are beyond your control. Our Analytics Dashboard helps you focus on the biggest impact. See the browsers, pages, or customers that are having the hardest time. Measure your app over time and see how your error rate changes.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading3","text":"Putting Service in SaaS","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We're here to help you build a better app. My team and I are always working with customers to integrate, improve, and fix issues of all kinds. We now receive over 1,500 JavaScript errors per minute. To ensure that we can keep up with that load and continue to scale, we leverage DigitalOcean's API to quickly spin up a dozen Droplets and hammer our systems with errors for performance testing. We build out an \"error drone\" template, which rapid fires fake requests at us, then create a swarm of them on demand. As a DigitalOcean user, you pay hourly for the test and tear them down. No other service is offering that kind of speed and simplicity.","spans":[{"start":68,"end":90,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"mailto:notify@trackjs.com"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-05-26","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"guest-post-trackjs"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":375},"alt":"mark imbriaco","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/ced74678-66a9-40a9-9da6-143beeafed6c_employee_spotlight_blog_mark.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Mark Imbriaco: Empowering Developers Through Infrastructure","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"It wasn't easy for Mark Imbriaco, DigitalOcean's new VP of TechOps, to leave GitHub. 'They have a fabulous product that's drastically changed the world in the way software developers can collaborate with one another,' he says. But their non-hierarchical, managerless structure inhibited him from maximizing his contributions to the company. 'I got frustrated. I think I have a lot to offer.","spans":[{"start":19,"end":32,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/markimbriaco"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Today, Mark feels most valuable building teams and helping others succeed. His vast experience in operations and his passion for empowering developers is a contagious energy that's ignited our engineering team.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"A Decade As A Developer","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Mark left school to found his own startup with a few friends: a web-hosting company called Internet Presence and Publishing which they later changed to iTribe. Their seed money came from a co-founder's father, and the little bit of cash was used to pay for \"a tiny office, crappy furniture, and an internet connection.\"  But with a child on the way, Mark left the struggling startup to join a company where he could make some real money.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":4,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/markimbriaco"}},{"start":91,"end":123,"type":"strong"},{"start":152,"end":158,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"He would soon land a job building AOL web services in the late 90's when everyone was using them. \"It was a lot of fun, I mean, you've got 50 million people on the Internet and 25+ are connecting through AOL.\"","spans":[{"start":34,"end":37,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"It was at this moment that I became a litte starstruck. Growing up as a kid, AOL and Netscape.com were the heart of the internet.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"But he wouldn't stay there long – his family hated living in Northern Virginia. Sacrificing one of the coolest jobs on the planet, Mark synced back up with a co-founder of iTribe to hack on html.com and christmas.com. \"The latter doesn't show up on LinkedIn because it's so ridiculous,\" he jokes. But there was unforeseen value in picking up those highly desirable domain names. Although the startup didn't take off, they sold the domains (and many others) to help fund the business and pay back investors. \"I was proud we were able to do that – particularly my friend's father who put down the initial seed money.\"","spans":[{"start":190,"end":198,"type":"strong"},{"start":203,"end":216,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"To most of us, leaving the biggest Internet company in the world to take a second chance on a startup may seem a little too risky. But following your heart is one of his biggest pieces of advice for young developers.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Transitioning To Operational Roles","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Afterwards, Mark was a Java developer at Decisiv for five years during the early 2000s, switching to Ruby and Rails for the last year of his tenure. When 37signals, now Basecamp, went looking for a system administrator to help scale their systems, Mark jumped at the chance to get back into Ops work. He designed and managed the infrastructure powering Basecamp, Campfire, Highrise and all of the 37signals apps. After four years of massive growth, having become the Operations Manager and building a great team along the way, he decided he was ready to make a change.","spans":[{"start":41,"end":48,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.decisiv.com/"}},{"start":168,"end":176,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://basecamp.com/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This was a crucial moment for Mark –  at this point he's one of the most experienced people in the world at running Rails apps. And so at the peak of his career and overflowing with knowledge he decided to join Heroku. Over his two years at the PaaS, the company went from hosting 60,000 apps to over 1.5 million.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"But with nowhere to go but up, Mark Imbriaco made what he refers to as \"the biggest mistake of my career.\"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Mark had a few friends at LivingSocial and felt restless working for Heroku after the Salesforce acquisition. But after joining, he realized he wasn't very passionate about daily deals.\"That was the biggest mistake I made,\" he says, \"going somewhere I didn't care about the product.\"","spans":[{"start":26,"end":38,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.livingsocial.com/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Departing From GitHub","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"A year later GitHub exploded with a huge $100 Million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz. Mark had known the founders for years and \"believes in Marc Andreessen's assertion that software is eating the world and that developers are making that happen.\" Unlike his time at LivingSocial, Mark was passionate about building systems, tools and services that allow developers to work together.","spans":[{"start":13,"end":19,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/"}},{"start":41,"end":87,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://gigaom.com/2012/07/09/github-finally-raises-funding-100m-from-andreessen-horowitz/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Despite the lack of vertical structure, Mark showcased his natural leadership while heading the move into their own colocation facility. He also worked on strategies for updating the public status at GitHub.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"\"Whenever I wrote a post-mortem at GitHub, I didn't ask anybody before I published them. I would get feedback on grammar and wording from the team, but I didn't need to go to the CEO and ask. It was part of the culture and everyone wanted to be transparent.\"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Mark explains his formula for writing an ideal post-mortem:","spans":[{"start":0,"end":59,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"o-list-item","text":"Apologize for what happened.","spans":[]},{"type":"o-list-item","text":"Demonstrate you understand what happened.","spans":[]},{"type":"o-list-item","text":"Explain what you will do to reduce the likelihood of it happening again.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you're honest to customers and come off as genuinely empathetic, he explains, then you can turn a bad situation into the opposite – into something that actually builds confidence with your users.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Realizing his expertise could have a greater impact with a team underneath him, Mark decided to leave GitHub. When I asked what he was looking for in a new company, he responded simply \"a place where I could have a bigger impact on a business with a product I cared about. I wasn't willing to sacrifice either of those this time.\" After speaking with Ben and Moisey, he decided DigitalOcean was that place.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"VP Of TechOps At DigitalOcean","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We finished our conversation by discussing his evolution from a developer to more operational roles. \"I still like to get my hands dirty,\" Mark tells me. \"I like to write code, I like to hack on things.\" But at this point in his life, he feels he can provide the most value when helping other people succeed. It took a long time and a lot of heartache along the way to settle into this new role – but now he couldn't be happier.","spans":[{"start":47,"end":99,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.linkedin.com/in/imbriaco"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"\"I think it's typical of engineers to reach a certain level and feel there's really nowhere to go but management. But management is not the continuation of an engineering career, it's really starting over in a new discipline. You can either embrace this truth immediately, which is incredibly rare, or you take the role and rail against it for a while and complain about being in meetings all the time instead of writing code.\"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Mark likes to call it the \"seven stages of technical grief.\" But he's come out the other side having a healthier perspective on things.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"\"I want to help other people succeed. I want to help grow teams. I want people on my team to have careers that are even more successful than mine. And I want to help expand our field because internet operations, and really anything web related, is just over 20 years old at this point. We're learning new things every day.\"","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-05-18","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"inside-digitalocean-mark-imbriaco"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":392},"alt":"billing","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/0ccd70c2-bd05-45fb-992a-5770265862a8_billing.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Never Get Surprised By Your Monthly Invoice Again!","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"UPDATED [March 2019]: Clarified billing alerts","spans":[{"start":0,"end":46,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We don't think anyone should be served with an unexpected bill. Users can now opt-in to receive an email alert if their monthly spend exceeds an amount that they define.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This feature was inspired by a Hacker News user who commented on a thread saying, \"Amazon should let us know if monthly bill > X and send me a priority email.\" Many of our own customers had already requested something similar in UserVoice, and it became clear that this was a great idea for any cloud provider.","spans":[{"start":52,"end":61,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7573660"}},{"start":229,"end":238,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocean"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"How It Works","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Billing alerts are disabled by default. To enable them, navigate to the Billing options of your account. In the Billing alerts section, check the box and define the alert threshold (which is initially set to $20), then click Save.  (For more information, visit our Invoices and Alerts page.)  If your Monthly Usage goes over the limit set, you will receive an email alerting you once per billing cycle.","spans":[{"start":72,"end":87,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cloud.digitalocean.com/account/billing"}},{"start":233,"end":290,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/accounts/billing/invoices-and-alerts/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This is simply an email notification. No Droplets are suspended or destroyed. Your feedback will continue to drive our design process – if there are any other features you would like to see let us know here.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":37,"type":"strong"},{"start":202,"end":206,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocean"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-05-04","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}},{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}},{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"never-get-surprised-by-your-monthly-invoice-again"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":392},"alt":"user to user illustration","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/6ff630e4-fd82-4702-be33-bba855bf88ec_snapshot-transfer.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Easily Transfer Snapshots Between Accounts","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"heading3","text":" Important Note:","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"As of January 2018, a newer version of this tutorial has been published on our Community site called \"Transferring a DigitalOcean Snapshot to a Different User or Team\". Please refer to the linked tutorial for the most up-to-date instructions on transferring DigitalOcean snapshots.","spans":[{"start":102,"end":166,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/transferring-a-digitalocean-snapshot-to-a-different-user-or-team"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"---","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Under the images tab in the control panel, users can now send their snapshots to another DigitalOcean customer with a click of the mouse. Simply select the 'transfer snapshot' icon and enter the email address of the recipient. Upon clicking the transfer button, the sender will notice the icon turn blue, indicating that the snapshot is mid-transfer. When the user on the receiving end accepts, the sender will no longer have access to the image.","spans":[{"start":395,"end":445,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/1726b944-c97c-4fcd-998c-391308a0d918_pic1.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":1180,"height":885}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"As the receiver, you will have a new section on the `Images` page titled Pending Snapshot Transfer Requests. Here you'll be able to accept or decline the transfer request. If approved, the snapshot will disappear from the original user's account, as well as be added to your list of `Snapshots` where you'll have full control over the image.","spans":[{"start":73,"end":107,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/49e2e53f-9b84-48ae-bf6a-07c278c61d51_pic2.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":1180,"height":885}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This is one of many exciting rollouts to celebrate the coming of Spring :)","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Just a heads up: as transferring a snapshot maintains all of the original snapshot's settings, there may be configuration that allows the sender to potentially later access droplets created from the image. Make sure you trust anyone who gives you an image.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":256,"type":"em"},{"start":0,"end":16,"type":"strong"}]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-04-25","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}},{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"easily-transfer-snapshots-between-accounts"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":392},"alt":"VNC console","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/adab6381-70d0-4ac9-94ed-716b1931f2e6_vnc-console.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"New Super Fast Droplet Console. Thanks, Golang!","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"**We think Go is awesome! **A year ago we started looking into Go as a potential language to standardize our backend around. Since then we've been looking for every excuse to rewrite some of our services in Go.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The first publicly visible service we've rewritten is our new web console. Using Go, we were able to dramatically decrease load and connection times from seconds to milliseconds. Aside from the immediate benefits, the console is also much more reliable and scalable.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"What benefits did we get from using Go?","spans":[{"start":0,"end":39,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Goroutines made it easy to duplex the tcp and websocket connections, allowing us to dramatically improve the speed of the entire service.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Interfaces allowed us to build end to end testing, ensuring future updates are easier to ship and bugs can be fixed quickly.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Go's built in net/http package means we are able to do live deploys and keep on-going development invisible to users. In fact, the three or four times that we have deployed code to the console since we switched to the new version were done with no interruptions or customer tickets being opened.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Go's package system makes sharing code incredibly easy. That means we can share the code developed for the new console between projects seamlessly.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The more services that we rewrite in Go, the more we fall in love with the language and the more we feel it complements the development of distributed systems.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Oh, by the way. If you're a software engineer that's interested in writing Go -- we are hiring.","spans":[{"start":88,"end":94,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://careers.digitalocean.com/"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-04-24","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Engineering","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"engineering"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"new-super-fast-droplet-console-thanks-golang"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":392},"alt":"ubuntu","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/9287963b-5a5c-43b6-bbcf-6ef94aca9f1d_ubuntu1404.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Announcing The Release Of Our Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"The new Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 'Trusty Tahr' server is now available to spin up on DigitalOcean. Their latest Long Term Support release integrates the best of new open source technologies into an excellent and simple-to-use Linux distro. The team over at Ubuntu has been introducing new features and bug fixes throughout the cycle, officially taking it out of beta around 11:15 AM today.","spans":[{"start":66,"end":73,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cloud.digitalocean.com/registrations/new"}},{"start":104,"end":105,"type":"strong"},{"start":109,"end":110,"type":"strong"},{"start":114,"end":115,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This release will bring a new level of stability, scalability, and performance to cloud environments with support and maintenance for five years. Users can deploy applications securely and with confidence that they'll be supported with patches and updates. While there isn't much to talk about in terms of drastic feature changes, most of which were made during the interim releases, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is precisely what a Long Term Release should be: solid, stable, and well-tested with refinement and polish.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"For detailed descriptions on new features and information concerning upgrading from Ubuntu 13.10 click here. You can spin up an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Droplet now!","spans":[{"start":103,"end":107,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/ReleaseNotes"}},{"start":128,"end":152,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-04-15","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}},{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"announcing-the-release-of-our-ubuntu-1404lts-image"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":392},"alt":"chefconf","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/64aedb29-effa-4bc2-bacb-fc2ac8f775a4_ChefConf-2014-Blog.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"ChefConf 2014: The Key Ingredient Is DevOps","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"We'll be sponsoring this year's ChefConf in San Francisco, CA and look forward to participating in the Chef community and meeting engineers. The conference will be filled with keynotes from leaders in DevOps, technical workshops, and other goodies – you can check the event schedule here.","spans":[{"start":283,"end":287,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://chefconf2014.busyconf.com/schedule"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Over at DigitalOcean, we currently use Chef to handle all aspects of our physical and cloud infrastructure. It also drives the automation for all of our internal / external applications. If you're at the event head over to booth 210 to find our Chief Technology Evangelist John Edgar and meet a few members of our engineering and site reliability team: SREs Anthony, Sunny, and Andrew as well as software engineers Brooke and Joonas.","spans":[{"start":273,"end":283,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/jedgar"}},{"start":358,"end":365,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/anthonycaiafa"}},{"start":367,"end":372,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/intsunny"}},{"start":378,"end":384,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/sparciii"}},{"start":415,"end":421,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/brookemckim"}},{"start":426,"end":432,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/prometheus"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you're an engineer yourself remember we're looking to expand our team – so don't be shy! Upcoming events this month include RailsConf, the first ever GopherConf, and a hometown event at NY Tech Day. Stay tuned.","spans":[{"start":57,"end":72,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://careers.digitalocean.com/"}},{"start":92,"end":107,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/company/events/"}},{"start":127,"end":136,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.railsconf.com/"}},{"start":153,"end":163,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.gophercon.com/%E2%80%8E/"}},{"start":189,"end":200,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://nytechday.com/"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-04-13","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"chefconf-2014-the-key-ingredient-is-devops"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":392},"alt":"Heartbleed Vulnerability","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/0e7ea40d-1f2a-4a4a-b20d-09d166204319_heartbleed-locked-down.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Update: Heartbleed Vulnerability","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"Update: As of Friday,  April 11th at 8pm EST, DigitalOcean completed its audit of distribution images and 1-click applications .  All images have been updated or patched to protect against the Heartbleed OpenSSL vulnerability.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":7,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"As many of you are now aware, yesterday the CVE-2014-0160 vulnerability, better known as the \"Heartbleed bug\", in the OpenSSL Project was disclosed. This is a serious vulnerability that will affect many websites and applications on the internet. As the researchers have said:","spans":[{"start":44,"end":71,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140407.txt"}},{"start":253,"end":274,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://heartbleed.com/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"\"Without using any privileged information or credentials we were able steal from ourselves the secret keys used for our X.509 certificates, user names and passwords, instant messages, emails and business critical documents and communication.\"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"What have we done?","spans":[{"start":0,"end":18,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"As soon as this vulnerability was disclosed to us, we immediately began the process of patching our internal systems to use the latest secured version of OpenSSL and updating our mirrors.  By noon today, all our infrastructure was updated and our certificates reissued, securing our internal and external facing assets and revoking our old certs.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"What should you do?","spans":[{"start":0,"end":19,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We advise our customers to follow the steps that we have taken for our own systems (where applicable)  to secure your own droplets. At this point, we have no reason to believe that any credentials have been compromised, but to be on the safe side we recommend you change your DigitalOcean.com and Droplet passwords.  Using the same password elsewhere (ill-advised in any case) may lead to your password being rendered unsafe again.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We also recommend you make a few precautions as a part of your normal workflow:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Use a password manager that allows you to create strong passwords that are unique for every service you use.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Enable two-factor-authentication for any critical infrastructure services you use.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Periodically roll over your DigitalOcean API keys.  This means that you will have to re-issue your API key via the DigitalOcean.com control panel for any applications configured to use your old key.","spans":[{"start":85,"end":106,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-use-the-digitalocean-api"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are in the process of updating all of our installation images so that any new servers will be patched against this vulnerability from the time of deployment.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"For more information about how to update your existing servers and protect yourself against this vulnerability, check out this article.","spans":[{"start":122,"end":134,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-protect-your-server-against-the-heartbleed-openssl-vulnerability"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-04-08","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"heartbleed-vulnerability-update"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":392},"alt":"UI/UX designer with mouse and words 'Inside DigitalOcean Zhanna\"","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/ac34c99d-a8ad-40fd-a104-498d0d4db1de_inside_do_zhanna_blog.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Zhanna Schonfeld: From Designing Toys To Building Our Website","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":" ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"[ Zhanna](https://twitter.com/zhannabanana) is sitting in an empty office with our creative director, making last-minute commits before the looming deadline of launching the new DigitalOcean website. The last pull request is merged and there's no time for further Q & A or browser testing. While the rest of the team is out celebrating the [Series A](https://assets.digitalocean.com/blog/static/digitalocean-closes-37-2-million-series-a-led-by-andreessen-horowitz), Zhanna is making sure the website is ready to complement the announcement.  Tall order, as Zhanna had only started working for DigitalOcean in December. But what she was able to accomplish not only surpassed our expectations – it blew them away.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"After graduating with a BFA in Industrial Design from the Cleveland Institute of Art, Zhanna joined a major toy company in Ohio. While this may seem like a dream job, Zhanna quickly became bored, stating \"it was a repetitive process to churn out new variations of the same plastic products. In my mind, I'd mastered it and my career stagnated.\"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"![Industrial_Design](inside-digitalocean-zhanna-schonfeld/toys.jpg)","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Her transition into the tech community was gradual but natural, having been fascinated with the web from a very young age. \"It's funny,\" she says, \"I was building websites since I was a kid on GeoCities, back when the `<blink>` element was around causing seizures, but I wasn't very familiar with the industry.\" Her curiosity as to why some websites succeeded and others didn't continued to grow, and in 2010 she left her job to begin freelancing, helping colleagues on the design and front end of their projects.  ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"After developing an [impressive portfolio](http://svveetdesign.com/home/portfolio/), Zhanna decided to venture out on her own. Aspiring to create something amazing and beautiful, she co-founded Obsesh.com – a photo-sharing app for makeup enthusiasts. Although it's long been abandoned, the experience was enough to motivate Zhanna to leave Ohio and immerse herself in the startup culture of NYC.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"![Obsesh.com](inside-digitalocean-zhanna-schonfeld/obsesh.png)","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"It wasn't long before Zhanna joined [Quirky](https://www.quirky.com/) and was responsible for designing their web interface. She continued to develop her knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Git as her appreciation for developer culture grew. She could speak their language, work with their tools, and write code. It was here that Zhanna was also given her first opportunity to work with a team of developers on the web platform and watch the company scale extremely fast. When asked for the most valuable takeaways from that experience, her reply was simply \"change is constant and make data-driven decisions.\"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Looking for a new startup, Zhanna began searching open positions on [Dribbble](http://dribbble.com/) and felt a strong connection to DigitalOcean after watching an early [TechStars video](http://vimeo.com/37383186). She was hired and immediately started helping our creative director Jesse Chase build out the new community, simultaneously producing beautiful images to complement our social content. When asked about the role of aesthetics in tech, she says \"to me design is shaping the experience for the user. It's said that good design is invisible; that it feels so right and seamless that you don't even notice it.\"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"![Social_Image](inside-digitalocean-zhanna-schonfeld/twig.png)","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Little did she know she would soon be asked to apply that philosophy and create an entirely [new website](https://digitalocean.com/), in the midst of a Series A round, in under a week's time. Zhanna remained unfazed by the pressure: a combination of natural talent and a creative process that puts heavy emphasis on testing and metrics that validate designs. \"It's about getting into people's heads and figuring out the best way to get someone to do what they need to do on your platform,\" she tells me with a smirk, drawing inspiration from Steve Krug's book [Don't Make Me Think](http://www.sensible.com/dmmt.html).","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"\"We were trying to embody our core values of simplicity and love. We kept it simple even in the tech aspect by using the [Middleman framework](http://middlemanapp.com)– a static site generator versus a rails app. Keeping the site static makes it easy to build and maintain, and gives the designers complete control and ownership of it. We worked six days (and nights) to build the website from the ground up.\"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"To tell the DigitalOcean story, Zhanna showed off the control panel's intuitiveness by incorporating demo videos right on the home page. \"It's easy to add a ton of features and buttons and options,\" she says, \"But that just overwhelms people.\"  ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"![New_Website](inside-digitalocean-zhanna-schonfeld/website.png)","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Zhanna is now focusing on the new community, building out better search and navigation, mobile capability, personal profiles, a voting system and other outstanding upgrades. While not yet complete, without Zhanna \"none of this would be possible\" says creative director Jesse Chase. \"From sharing her UX philosophies, to shedding light on a particular design comp, js library, or css framework, Zhanna has been an incredible asset to this team.\"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"But the feelings are mutual.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"\"The best ideas come from speaking to people, from working on problems and seeing things from a different perspective,\" says Zhanna. \"DigitalOcean understands that in every aspect – it's the place and culture that I've always wanted to work for.\"","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-03-24","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"inside-digitalocean-zhanna-schonfeld"}}}]}}}