Author: gatescollin
-
From Replit to Docker and Self-hosting: When Simple Becomes Complex
Remember that campaign management system I built to save a client over $300/month by ditching Airtable’s expensive client portal? Well, that story just got a sequel – and like most sequels, it involved way more complexity than I originally anticipated. What started as a simple request to “move it off Replit so we own it”…
-
Setting Up Uptime Kuma: When ‘Just Monitor My Stuff’ Becomes a Linux Deep Dive
You know that sinking feeling when a customer calls to tell you they can’t access something, and you realize you had no idea it was broken? That was me last week when AWS decided to have hardware issues with my EC2 instance. A simple phone call about a broken form turned into the wake-up call…
-
I Almost Left AWS for Shinier Platforms. Then I Found Generative AI Application Builder.
You know that moment when you’re staring at three different cloud platforms, each promising to be the future of AI development, and you start second-guessing everything you thought you knew? Yeah, that was me a few weeks ago. I found myself caught in the classic developer trap: shiny new tool syndrome. Azure AI Foundry had…
-
From Self-Hosted Chaos to CI/CD Zen: My DevOps Reality Check
You know that moment when you’re running a perfectly functional self-hosted stack, and you think “This could be better”? Yeah, that was me a few weeks ago. What started as a simple database migration turned into a full-blown DevOps adventure complete with firewall lockouts, authentication failures, and AWS deciding to have a bad day. Here’s…
-
From $300/Month to Free: Rebuilding a Campaign Management System
Sometimes the best solutions come from the worst problems. In this case, that problem was watching a digital marketing agency’s SaaS costs spiral out of control because of one simple feature: client access. Here’s how I turned a $300/month Airtable portal into a completely free, secure campaign management system using Google Sheets, some creative automation,…
-
My Deep Dive into Azure AI Foundry: The Good, The Bad, and The Reality Check
So Microsoft and Google both had their big keynotes recently, and honestly, they got me pretty excited about the current state of agent development. Google was pushing their Agent Development Kit with MCP (Model Context Protocol), while Microsoft was all-in on AI Foundry. Different approaches, but both seemed like they could be game-changers. Here’s the…
-
My Journey from DigitalOcean to AWS with Terraform
My Journey from DigitalOcean to AWS with Terraform Transitioning from DigitalOcean to AWS wasn’t just a technical challenge—it was a significant milestone in my professional growth. In this post, I’ll share my practical journey of migrating an application stack using Terraform for infrastructure automation, focusing on lessons learned, solutions found, and what’s next. Initial Stack:…
-
Custom AI Chat Hub: Self-Hosting & Automation
This blog details the creation of a custom AI chat platform integrating Open WebUI with n8n workflow automation, securely exposed via Cloudflare Tunnel. It covers motivations for building a personalized conversational interface over existing options, the choice of core components (Open WebUI for chat UI, n8n for automation, Cloudflare Tunnel for secure access), and the…
-
AI-Driven n8n Workflow Backup & Management
This blog details automating n8n workflow backups to GitHub, focusing on creating version-controlled, organized, and intelligent backups to replace manual, error-prone processes. It covers leveraging and customizing the official n8n backup template by centralizing configurations, using dynamic path expressions for date-based folder organization, implementing precise JSON comparison to avoid unnecessary updates, and adding robust error…
-
AI-Driven Business Automation Success
The blog details the author’s development of an AI-powered productivity infrastructure for their own business after building automation for clients. Key implementations include purchasing a company domain and setting up a WordPress site on AWS Lightsail; choosing Google Workspace for company email and document management; creating an AI knowledge base using n8n, Google Drive API,…