Taking a web application from local development to a live, secure production environment can be daunting if you've never looked under the hood. We just published a comprehensive course on the freeCodeCamp.org YouTube channel that teaches full-stack deployment from the ground up.

Developed by Imad Saddik, this course takes a hands-on approach. By doing everything yourself before introducing CI/CD automation, you gain a deep foundational understanding of how complex systems are hosted, secured, and maintained.

Here is what the course covers:

  • Cloud Infrastructure
    Provision an Ubuntu server, enforce secure SSH key authentication, and completely disable password and root logins.

  • Security & Firewalls
    Configure UFW to block unauthorized ports and set up Fail2Ban to automatically thwart brute-force attacks.

  • Application Runtimes
    Install Python and Node.js, configure swap memory for resource-constrained servers, and set up Gunicorn and Supervisor to manage background processes.

  • Data & Search
    Self-host a lightweight Meilisearch instance, isolate it with a dedicated system user, and automate daily database snapshots.

  • Global Delivery
    Map custom domains with DNS, secure connections with Let's Encrypt SSL certificates, configure Nginx as a reverse proxy, and utilize Cloudflare's CDN for edge caching.

  • CI/CD Automation
    Build GitHub Actions pipelines to automate linting, formatting, unit testing, and deployment with atomic virtual environment rollbacks.

  • Continuous Security
    Integrate Software Composition Analysis (SCA), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) with Bandit, and Dynamic testing (DAST) using OWASP ZAP.

  • Observability
    Monitor CPU, memory, and orphaned processes using Btop, and parse Nginx access logs in real-time with GoAccess to detect and block malicious bot traffic.

By the end of this course, you will have successfully transitioned a Vue.js and FastAPI application from a manual deployment into a fully automated, production-ready pipeline.

You can watch the full course right now on the freeCodeCamp.org YouTube channel (11-hour watch).

I am continuing to listen—just let me know when you are done talking!