PHP

Automating Deployments with Deployer

php[world] 2018

Have you ever botched a deployment and taken a site offline? I have—more times then I’d like to admit. What if we could completely automate the deployment process, make it lightning fast, remove most of the risk, and do it all without custom bash scripts? Better yet, what if we could use the same deployment process locally or trigger it via CI?

After using phpbrew to manage my local PHP versions for a while, I got tired of re-compiling PHP after every release and decided to install multiple PHP versions side-by-side with Ondřej Surý's PPA. One of the features I missed from phpbrew was the ability to run a command like phpbrew use php-7.2.8 to automatically change the php command to that version, so I ended up implementing this feature myself using symlinks and shell aliases.

 

Debugging Effectively

Web Developers Central NJ Meetup

Software bugs are inevitable; some are especially difficult to track down, causing you to waste countless hours before throwing your hands up in defeat. It doesn't have to be this way! The mental fatigue and wasted time can be avoided by using strategies like identifying the most-appropriate tool, taking a logical & objective approach, challenging assumptions, listening to variables, isolating the code path, and reinforcing code with automated tests.