{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-tag-jsx","path":"/blog/tag/community/7/","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":72,"numTagPages":10,"currentPage":7,"uid":"community","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":"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":"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":"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"}}},{"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":"NY tech meetup","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a5dcf4a9-5674-4636-a5ba-926787e820fa_NYTechMeetup.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"NYTM: Jeff Lindsay Demos DigitalOcean","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"Earlier this month, we had the opportunity to demo DigitalOcean for a room full of techies and immerse ourselves in the burgeoning community of our hometown. NY Tech Meetup is a 35,000+ member non-profit organization that supports the growing NY technology community.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The goal of NYTM is to \"help build a sustainable technology industry that drives economic growth, leads innovation, and creates positive, high-impact change for our local communities and the world.\" A quarter of the audience at the conference knew about DigitalOcean; that's roughly the number of developers in attendance...you do the math.","spans":[{"start":12,"end":16,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://nytm.org"}},{"start":324,"end":340,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Once a month they host demo night at the Skirball Theater at NYU, which provides highly visible platforms where companies can showcase what they build. The event is always packed and the energy at this meetup has been integral to the growth of the New York scene. Notable companies that have demoed at NYTM in the past include: Foursquare, Livestream, Tumblr, Vimeo, Aviary, Twilio, Aereo, Skillshare, Shapeways, TheLadders, HowAboutWe, Codecademy and many, many others.","spans":[{"start":328,"end":338,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://foursquare.com"}},{"start":340,"end":350,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://new.livestream.com/"}},{"start":352,"end":358,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.tumblr.com/"}},{"start":360,"end":365,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://vimeo.com/"}},{"start":367,"end":373,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.aviary.com/"}},{"start":375,"end":381,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.twilio.com/"}},{"start":383,"end":388,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.aereo.com/"}},{"start":390,"end":400,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.skillshare.com/"}},{"start":402,"end":411,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.shapeways.com/"}},{"start":413,"end":423,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.theladders.com/"}},{"start":425,"end":435,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.howaboutwe.com/go/dating?utm_medium=SEM&amp;utm_source=GsearchB_Dating&amp;utm_campaign=NTL_Brand_Unified&amp;utm_content=g&amp;utm_term=how%20about%20we..&amp;utm_position=1t1&amp;utm_matchtype=e&amp;utm_adgroup=Brand_-_HAW&amp;utm_device=c&amp;mobile_ad=true&amp;utm_adid={adid}&amp;gclid=CP_p8ranjb0CFYN0OgodvSMADg"}},{"start":437,"end":447,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.codecademy.com/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We were honored to be there and will be attending and sponsoring as many New York events as possible throughout the year.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":121,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Watch The Video!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The demo Jeff gave at NY Tech Meetup was an early proof of concept for our PaaS / provisioning offering. It showed instant provisioning of apps and services, plus real-time discovery and configuration of connected services. It was powered by the open source project Flynn, which is based on Docker, etcd, and a few others.","spans":[{"start":9,"end":13,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/progrium"}},{"start":266,"end":271,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/flynn/flynn.io"}},{"start":291,"end":297,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.docker.com/"}},{"start":299,"end":303,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/coreos/etcd"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"While there's a lot more functionality potential than what was demoed, this shows that you'll soon be able to programmatically (or using a friendly user interface) deploy and provision more instances of your applications and services immediately. For those of you counting, that takes wait time to spin up a VPS down from less than a minute to less than a second, allowing you to easily scale out horizontally across your droplets without necessarily needing to spin up new servers.","spans":[{"start":344,"end":362,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"It's powered by Docker, but you don't need to know Docker to take advantage of this system.","spans":[{"start":38,"end":42,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"It also uses etcd and components of Flynn in order to provide real-time discovery of services. This means as backing services like databases come online or go offline, your application can dynamically reconfigure to use them or change behavior in realtime. No need to reconfigure anything, no need to deploy again.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Watch it in action below:","spans":[{"start":0,"end":25,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[{"start":0,"end":0,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://video.google.com/get_player?docid=0B6jFsllSG-3aZXZvN0JHUlhRVW8&amp;ps=docs&amp;partnerid=30&amp;cc_load_policy=1"}}]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/59808171876e6254b0b084ec5a93fb59ca861632_nytm_posterframe.png?auto=compress,format","alt":"IMAGE ALT TEXT HERE","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":422}}],"blog_post_date":"2014-03-11","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}},{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"nytm-jeff-lindsay-demos-digitalocean"}}},{"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":"mchacks","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/3670c1d3-7fd9-4bc8-8974-0d87f8f8a2a1_blogimg.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"We're Happy To Sponsor Canada's Most Badass Hackathon: McHacks","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"We're heading north of the border for Canada's most anticipated hackathon.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Why's that? Because 24 hours are spent creating great apps, hanging out with leading engineers from the best tech companies in North America, and hacking for $30,000 in cash prizes, the latest tablets, and new mobile phones.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Hosted at McGill University in Montreal the weekend of February 22nd and 23rd, undergraduate students from universities around the world are invited to show off their programming skills. According to the Event Page, where hackers can also register and get more information, anything goes at Canada's most beloved hackathon: web, desktop, mobile, hardware projects, etc. Submissions will be judged on \"creativity, technical difficulty, polish, and usefulness.\"","spans":[{"start":204,"end":214,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://mchacks.io/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Teams are capped at four people, so bring your friends... Or don't! Even if you don't have a team, event coordinators will help you pair with other devs flying solo because it's Canada and they're awesome. It's also a great learning experience, as there will be a lot of evangelists walking around (including our very own John Edgar), and there's some pretty fantastic tech talks lined up.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We're hoping a bunch of you college devs make it out there. If you are coming from out of town, don't worry about travel expenses – they'll reimburse you up to $150 in travel costs if you demo something. And admission is free, including food and drink for the duration of the hackathon, so you don't have to worry much about dipping into those savings you'll need in a few years to pay off those bloated loans ;).","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Follow McHacks [@mcgillhacks] and John Edgar [@jedgar] on Twitter!","spans":[{"start":16,"end":28,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/McGillHacks"}},{"start":46,"end":53,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/jedgar"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-02-11","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"we-re-happy-to-sponsor-canada-s-most-badass-hackathon-mchacks"}}},{"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":"warhammer","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/5e47b26a-577d-4500-8678-19a127b1fa86_employee_sportlight_blog_warhammer.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Inside DigitalOcean: Warhammer","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"Josh Warrick, known to most of us on IRC as \"Warhammer\", is the most enthusiastic support specialist (internally known as sharks) born in the great state of Ohio. Finding New York a bit abrasive, he prefers his home office, where just last week he replied to over 1,800 customer tickets (he typically aims for 30-40 per hour). We sat down with Josh to discuss troubleshooting, Linux tattoos, and why he's got the best job in the world.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Where are you from?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"I am from the great state of Ohio!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Where do you currently live?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"I am living in San Antonio, Texas. I joined the Air Force when I was 18 to see the world and found myself there. When I got out I had a few job offers, so I decided to set up shop and haven't looked back.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"How did you become involved with computer programming / troubleshooting?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Troubleshooting started very early in my life. I began hiding cookies in my browser from my parents who were catching on to what I'd be doing on the internets [laughs].  Actually my interest, in a less technical sense, probably dates back to when I started wrestling and doing jiu jitsu. With those activities you're dealing with body mechanics as opposed to mechanics on a server, but you learn that everything impacts something – from setting up to take downs to even passing guard. I think that really is the foundation of how I troubleshoot efficiently: if someone says their server or site is down, it becomes muscle memory in terms of what to look for and what configurations to keep in mind.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Later, Linux and Python became somewhat of an addiction. Like some shady fellow came up to me and was like \"have you tried some of this Linux?\" and I've never stopped using it. I think about it all the time; I use it to solve problems and simplify my day. I was lucky to have friends who were very knowledgable and helped spark my interest.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Describe your typical day?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Coffee as soon as I wake up, maybe I check my email. Then most of my day is spent slamming on tickets.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Once the workday is over it's a toss up: I love doing yard work, and I love destroying my four year old in one-on-one basketball on his 5 foot hoop (I am better than Lebron James in his eyes and intend to keep it that way). After that, my wife and I usually put the kids to bed around 9 and have a movie set to fall asleep.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"How do you approach customer support [How does \"Love\" factor in]?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The way I approach customer support is my own kind of style. I'm of the belief that as a support specialist, I do not need access to our customers' virtual servers in order to resolve an issue – there are always context clues I can use to my advantage. I want to dominate the issue and have that customer completely wow'd (if you're reading this and I haven't done that for you, open a ticket and I will see what I can do).  I think that if you leave a customer breathless, positive word of mouth can be the best kind of marketing for your company. That's the love factor: treating each customer like their issue is your issue. Their site is down, my site is down; Their server is not pinging, my server is not pinging. I have to fix this NOW.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"You're busy helping users all day. Any time for your own projects?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"On the weekend, I enjoy writing Python scripts that make it possible for my wife – who isn't very familiar with computers / Linux – to perform tasks such as a mass server deploy or resizing a droplet via the api. That lets me know the code is well written and user friendly. I'm also working on a few automation things of my own.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"What's the most exciting part of your job?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"For me, it's the diversity of issues I get to see. It's like being an artist waking up to a blank canvas, and having the gratification of finishing a different painting every day. I couldn't ask for a better job.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"What's the most gratifying ticket you personally resolved?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"There have definitely been a few times where I've fixed an unbootable filesystem... next thing my wife sees is me coming out of my office screaming \"HECK YES I FIXED IT!\"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"What's the biggest project you've ever helped setup?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Technical: I've set up quite a few clusters in my day. If you listen to me, your website will never go down.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Non-technicaI: I used to coach a high school wrestling team in San Antonio. We had a few placers in a state championship within two years.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"How is working remote?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Horrible! Traffic to my office is usually littered with my kid's toy cars...","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"...I love it. I cannot thank DigitalOcean enough for this opportunity. It has helped me in many ways, the most important being the opportunity to spend time with my family.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"What was your favorite part of visiting the office?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Certainly not the keg or the ping-pong table [laughs]...","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Visiting the office was an amazing experience. The people were great, I didn't get mugged like in the movies, and I ate the Phaal curry successfully.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Would you ever consider living in NY?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If I got to be the quarterback of the New York Giants, sure ;)","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"You have a Linux tattoo. Any others we should know about?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"I have the Ballmer Peak, the Debian Logo, a fork bomb, and a Linux Tux.","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/55b2bab48edd3cce8e114a8e43ae55d12394c81c_linux_tattoo.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":"linux","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":648,"height":409}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Is there a subreddit you frequently visit?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"My favorite subreddit is /r/showerbeer.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"You've previously worked for other cloud providers. What made you want to work for DigitalOcean?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"When I applied here, I was coming from a gig where I used to wake up and couldn't wait to login. I'm grateful I was able to find that enthusiasm again at DigitalOcean. When it comes to your job, it has to be something you're passionate about and absolutely love doing day in and day out. You have one life, you should like what you spend your time doing. It may sound strange, but I wake up and get excited to see my ticket queue in the morning. It's something that I thoroughly enjoy and have a passion for – knowing I get to be a part of something great.","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-02-05","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"inside-digitalocean-warhammer"}}},{"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":"ubc sailboat","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/8f31eb9c-5ebe-459f-aa12-2fc8a3a14fce_header.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"February's TopDrop: UBC SailBot","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"February's #TopDrop features UBC SailBot – a student team dedicated to designing and building a robotic sailboat [SailBot] to compete in the Microtransat Challenge – that will attempt to set a world record by crossing the Atlantic Ocean.","spans":[{"start":29,"end":40,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://ubcsailbot.org/"}},{"start":141,"end":163,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.microtransat.org/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Winning last year's SailBot 2013 International Robotic Sailing Regatta with a perfect score, the team's motivation is neither class credit nor financial gain; simply put, UBC Sailbot is passionate about complex programming, advanced electronics, and sailing. Their inolvement with robotic sailing has become an important part of their engineering education, and is a large contributor to their knowledge of engineering principles, naval architecture, mechatronics, and teamwork.","spans":[{"start":20,"end":70,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://sailbot.org/"}}]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/12fa3bb0caecb54244bfbd0a08d4c8d2c767e3ca_cross_2.png?auto=compress,format","alt":"regatta","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":975,"height":532}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The team consists of over 40 students at the University of British Columbia. With support from industry mentor and yacht designer Don Martin, these students design, manufacture, test, and race high-performance robotic sailboats. Over the past three years, the UBC team has had impressive results in the annual International SailBot Championships: 2nd in 2011, 1st in 2012, and most recently in 2013 where team again captured 1st place – this time with a perfect score of 50 / 50.","spans":[{"start":130,"end":140,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://sailboatdata.com/view_designer.asp?designer_id=178"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"To put things in perspective: the US Navy placed 2nd that year.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The UBC SailBot team has certainly proven their ability to take on the best teams in the world. So what made these first class engineers migrate to DigitalOcean? According to team member Josh Andrews,","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"\"Our requirements for hosted computing power changed drastically this year. We went from only needing a blog, to needing a reliable place that could drive all of our various testing and public facing needs. When looking into different ideas for how to do this, DigitalOcean quickly rose to the top of the stack in terms of both speed and price. We also love SSDs!\"","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a7da8f6e375802df26f34a11607b7e4d9979072e_sailbot.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":"sailboat","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":3008,"height":2000}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The team will utilize a DigitalOcean droplet for tracking, blogging, project management, and testing. Their present aspiration is to cross the Atlantic autonomously, from Newfoundland to Ireland. When the boat starts its journey, its main point of contact will be with the droplet: information such as location and current telemetry data will be sent over satellite to the VPS, and all data will be displayed on the team's tracking page.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"They will also use the droplet extensively during testing, and when in range of GSM the team will use those networks instead of satellite to send information to the debug page also hosted on the VPS. This information consists of more granular data than sent over satellite, including the current state of the boat and sensors as well as the information sent from the algorithms running the control logic.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Follow UBC SailBot on Twitter [@UBCSailbots] and cheer them on as they cross the ocean!","spans":[{"start":31,"end":43,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/ubcsailbots"}}]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/80002d0fcd507c83d7e677362d0ad1622e7538de_cross_1.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":"cross the ocean","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":960,"height":250}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Submit your project using the hashtag #TopDrop on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.","spans":[{"start":50,"end":57,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/digitalocean"}},{"start":59,"end":67,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.facebook.com/DigitalOceanCloudHosting"}},{"start":72,"end":79,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://plus.google.com/117083621748239590241/posts"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-02-02","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"february-s-topdrop-ubc-sailbot"}}},{"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":"hacktech","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/36da2561-9871-481d-a9b6-ea679bbc9911_01222014hacktech_blog.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Hacking Beachside in Santa Monica","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean will be sponsoring this year's HackTech in sunny California! We're getting anxious just thinking about the insanely cool hacks, the warm weather, and of course – the ocean.","spans":[{"start":44,"end":52,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.hacktech.io/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The event is essentially a winter weekend getaway for the world's most dedicated college devs looking to hack their way to a working prototype. These talented programmers will work with teams to solve problems and develop concepts – notable examples of \"hacks\" are GroupMe as well as the Facebook Like button and Chat feature.","spans":[{"start":265,"end":272,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://groupme.com/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We love hackathons because it represents our philosophy that technology is trending toward bottom-up adoption and highlights the importance of developers. At HackTech, students are empowered to build whatever they want, from websites to apps (and even hardware!), the only real limitation being the time constraint of the event.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"After time runs out, teams demo what they've built and compete for prizes. That said, even those who do not complete their projects will experience an unparalleled networking event, with some of the smartest people one could hope to collaborate with. At the end of the day, the goal is for people to come together and use technology to transform ideas into reality.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Follow HackTech on Twitter! @thehackTECH + DO Chief Tech Evangelist John Edgar @jedgar for some positive reassurance and a fresh changes of clothes (swag!).","spans":[{"start":28,"end":40,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/thehackTECH"}},{"start":79,"end":86,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/jedgar"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-01-21","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"hacking-beachside-in-santa-monica"}}},{"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":"brooke","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/7840a53e-7e8d-4b5a-8e90-a6c7d5da62d6_InsideDO_Brooke_blog.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Inside DigitalOcean: Brooke McKim","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"Our new series Inside DigitalOcean (#InsideDO) will bring our developers, writers, and who knows maybe even our C-level suits out of the shadows to discuss everything from the tech world to startup culture to their favorite band. We are lucky enough to learn about our community members and what they're working on every day – here's your chance to get an exclusive, personal look inside the DigitalOcean.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Featured in our first employee spotlight is Brooke McKim, engineer at DigitalOcean since April 2013. Born outside of Philly and living in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, we sat down and talked about programming languages, open-source projects, and what it's like to be the coolest guy in the office.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"When did you first become interested in development?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"My first programming class was in high school – I honestly didn't like it very much. Then I took some more classes in college, but I was more focused on system administration and IT security. The first major step in programming was for my final project senior year – I took on the role of doing the web application.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"What's the most interesting project you're currently working on?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Right now it's very interesting to work on DigitalOcean's scale and its growth to this point. We're sort of re-evaluating everything we've done in the past, bringing it up to date to work with all the new users in our community.","spans":[{"start":43,"end":63,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/blog_posts/thank-you-so-much-for-making-2013-a-huge-success"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Do you have any advice for aspiring developers?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"It would probably be don't assume that all other developers know everything just because they've been doing it a long time. And don't beat up on yourself just because you don't know something. At the same time, don't try and learn everything at once. I've met young developers who are bouncing all over the place – for the most part that just doesn't work. You have to focus on a couple of things at a time and you're able to integrate and build from there.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Any comments on Ruby vs. JavaScript?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"I mean, I'm a big fan of Ruby as a programming language. JavaScript definitely has its applications, and is the right tool for the job in many scenarios, but as a general programming language I prefer Ruby over JavaScript. Most of the time I try and stay away from programming language debates though – they can be really silly.","spans":[{"start":25,"end":29,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Do you have any favorite open source projects?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"I'm a big fan of open source projects that are just rock solid and work really well. It's kind of hard to achieve sometimes in the open source community, because you have a lot of different people working on the same project. Nginx comes to mind, which is an incredible web server. Rails is also a great open source project, although not quite as stable.","spans":[{"start":226,"end":231,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://wiki.nginx.org/Main"}},{"start":282,"end":287,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://rubyonrails.org/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Are there any trends you think to follow?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Certainly the JavaScript community is trending at the moment. The node community is growing too, but I'm more interested in the people building the front end JavaScript frameworks that are making some amazing websites. They're giving new experiences that we've never had on the web before. I was recently at a conference where a presenter talked about Bustle.com, which is a women's information and news site. You load the page and there's pictures to click that instantly load articles. They were using Ember.js and the technology was really cool.","spans":[{"start":352,"end":362,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.bustle.com/"}},{"start":504,"end":512,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://emberjs.com/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Do you have any outside hobbies?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"I'm pretty into music. I've been to Bonnaroo the past few years and you can probably find me there again this year.","spans":[{"start":36,"end":44,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.bonnaroo.com/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"…Are you the coolest person in the office?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Obviously, right?!… Nah, maybe on the engineering team.","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2014-01-20","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"inside-digitalocean-brooke-mckim"}}}]}}}