Heroku Posts

A few weeks ago I built a little web application to store notes, which encrypts your notes in the browser and stores them in the cloud (yeah, I hate that term). The idea was that even if the server was compromised, nobody could read the notes without a password.

From the server logs it looks like a few people at least are actively using it, even though there is a big warning saying it is for testing only. No idea for what of course, because even in the admin all I can see is a string of random characters.

This is how notes are stored in the database.

I've jumped straight to version 1.0.0 with the latest release, since it has been running quite happily for quite some time with no issues. It's still 'use at your own risk', but it is such a simple application that there is so little to go wrong. continue reading…

A quick way to get Moya Techblog up and running (or just to test it) is to deploy it with Heroku.

If you click the following button, it will deploy Techblog on a public server:

When that's done you should have a working version of this site (sans my content obviously). It's remarkably easy to customize if you aren't happy with my coder design skills.

There is one caveat you should be aware of; Heroku has an ephemeral filesystem, which basically means that your uploaded files will disappear after a while. That is bit of a deal-breaker for a site designed for photography, but there is a solution. You can host your uploads with Amazon S3.

To use Amazon S3 with Techblog, set the following environment variables (you will have a chance to edit these when you deploy): continue reading…