10 Essential Tools I Actually Use to Keep My Side Projects From Falling Over
Docker management, monitoring that goes deeper than a green dot, backups I have actually restored, and everything else that showed up once deploying stopped being the hard part. Moving off Vercel solved exactly one problem: deploying. Everything else I used to get for free, quietly, as part of the platform, I now had to go find and wire up myself. A month into running my own server, I had a list…
The author, who primarily uses JavaScript and Rust, presents a list of ten essential tools that they utilize to prevent their side projects from falling apart. The first tool on the list is Dokploy, which automates the process of deploying Docker containers and managing domains. The second tool is Neon, which creates isolated preview databases for each pull request, preventing them from accessing the main production database.
The third tool is OpenObserve, which provides comprehensive monitoring, including logs, metrics, and traces, presented in an easy-to-understand format. The fourth tool is restic, a backup solution that encrypts and deduplicates backups, ensuring that restores are quick and easy.
The fifth tool is Sentry, which groups and presents bugs and exceptions in a user-friendly manner, making it easier to identify and fix issues. The sixth tool, OpenReplay, records user sessions for debugging purposes, allowing developers to replay and analyze user interactions with the application. Appium, the seventh tool, enables testing on actual devices, ensuring that the application functions correctly across different platforms.
The eighth tool, k6, allows for writing load tests in JavaScript, helping to identify performance bottlenecks before they become critical issues.
The ninth tool, Infisical, serves as a replacement for the author's previous secret management system, providing versioned secrets, per-environment values, and an audit log. This tool helps maintain better security and organization for sensitive data. The tenth and final tool on the list is the author's own, as they mention that they created this list to share their experiences and tools with others.
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