Yes, S3 now encrypts objects by default, but your job is not done yet

Update 06/04/2023: AWS announced that S3 now enables the “block public access” and “disable ACL” settings for all new buckets. It’s great to see these being enabled by default. But the points I raised in the post still stand. The default encryption (SSE-S3) only protects against situations when someone has stolen data from AWS servers/disks …

Yes, S3 now encrypts objects by default, but your job is not done yet Read More »

This is why you should keep stateful and stateless resources together

Update 24/05/2023: as Lee James Gilmore pointed out on Twitter, the unit of deployment of CDK is the CDK app. A CDK app can contain multiple CloudFormation stacks and they can be changed together (in a single commit) and deployed together. And that’s absolutely fine and compatible with what I’m advocating for in this post. …

This is why you should keep stateful and stateless resources together Read More »

Year in review, 2022

As the curtain draws on 2022, here’s my year in numbers: 1 book 2 on-demand video courses 1023 students enrolled in my video courses 4 public workshops 118 workshop students 21 blog posts 4 YouTube videos 14 podcast episodes 16 public speaking engagements Serverless Architectures on AWS In February 2022, after nearly two years of hard …

Year in review, 2022 Read More »

A practical guide to testing AWS Step Functions

Testing Step Functions can be a daunting task. However, with a little preparation and effort, the testing process can be simplified and streamlined. In this article, we will provide a practical strategy on how to test Step Functions. So let’s start by setting the stage and introducing the players. What makes Step Functions hard to test? …

A practical guide to testing AWS Step Functions Read More »

The biggest preinvent serverless announcements you may have missed

re:Invent is almost upon us. Judging by the things that had been announced ahead of re:Invent, one can’t help but be excited about the main event itself! Here is a list of the serverless-related announcements so far that you should know about. Payload-based message filtering for Amazon SNS Here’s the official announcement. This is arguably the …

The biggest preinvent serverless announcements you may have missed Read More »

How to setup geofencing and IP allow-list for Cognito user pool

AWS announced a new feature this week that lets you enable WAF protection for Cognito user pools. And one of the things you can do with this is to implement geo-fencing and IP allow/deny lists. Geo-fencing and IP allow/deny lists are usually implemented in the frontend as well as the backend APIs. But users (and …

How to setup geofencing and IP allow-list for Cognito user pool Read More »

Amplify: how to fix images that show up locally but not after deployment

You might have encountered this issue when using Amplify to host your single-page applications. An image in the public folder would show up perfectly fine when running locally but it was not found on the live site after Amplify deployed your change. Curiously, this only happens with some images – jpeg, avif, webp… The reason …

Amplify: how to fix images that show up locally but not after deployment Read More »

Amplify: you shouldn’t allow redirect from apex to www

Update 04/08/2022: turns out there are some valid reasons (analytics and potentially SEO) for redirecting from the apex domain to www. Please see comments from Michael Hart, Mike Lamb and Tyler Love to my tweet here for more details.   I have used Amplify to host all my single-page applications, including the newly revamped sites …

Amplify: you shouldn’t allow redirect from apex to www Read More »

10 performance optimization tips I learned after rebuilding two course landing pages

I recently rebuilt the landing page for both AppSync Masterclass and Production-Ready Serverless. The sites were hosted on Shifter (think serverless WordPress) and Wix respectively. In both cases, the performance of the sites (especially on mobile) left a lot to be desired. A large portion of the user traffics to these sites comes from mobile. …

10 performance optimization tips I learned after rebuilding two course landing pages Read More »

How to add a subtle gradient on top of an image using CSS

As I rebuild the landing page for the AppSync Masterclass I wanted to give this boring “about me” section a facelift. After taking inspiration from other landing pages, I decided to go with something like this. Notice the gradient effect towards the bottom of each image? It provides a nice backdrop and contrast for the …

How to add a subtle gradient on top of an image using CSS Read More »

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close