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4 hours ago
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Why this matters ?
Every small (solo) dev hits the same wall: “Okay, my app works locally… but how do I get it online today?”
In this issue, you’ll deploy a live Node.js API — with GitHub CI/CD, secrets, and monitoring — all without touching a single server.
Table of Contents
🚀 What you’ll build
A tiny REST API that returns random developer quotes.
We’ll deploy it using Vercel with automatic CI/CD from GitHub.
That’s it — one file, one endpoint.
⚙️ Step 1: Create your repo
Create a new folder and add app.js.
Run:
Update your package.json:
Push it to a new GitHub repository.
🌐 Step 2: Deploy with Vercel
Go to vercel.com.
Click “New Project → Import Git Repository.”
Select the repo you just created.
Vercel will auto-detect it’s a Node app.
Click Deploy.
That’s it.
Your live API is available instantly.
🔁 Step 3: Automatic CI/CD
By default, Vercel connects to your GitHub repo.
Every time you push to main, it rebuilds and redeploys automatically.
Update your README.md:
🔒 Step 4: Environment variables
Let’s make it feel more real.
Go to Project Settings → Environment Variables in Vercel, and add:
API_KEY: SECRET
Then, in your code:
Redeploy, and your new endpoint will have access to secrets safely stored on Vercel.
🔍 Step 5: Logs & monitoring
Vercel includes built-in request logs and error tracking — no setup needed.
Go to the Logs tab on your project dashboard and you’ll see all recent requests and console output.
🧩 That’s it, you just did DevOps
In about 15-20 minutes, you:
✅ Built and deployed a working API
✅ Set up CI/CD from GitHub
✅ Added environment variables and monitoring
✅ Never touched a server or wrote a YAML file
This is “no-DevOps DevOps”.
Till next time,
IndieDevOps
