Wouldn’t you like to know when MailGun fails to deliver an email? Or worse still, when someone complains about an email you sent?

MailGun can notify you about the following events:

• Clicked
• Complained
• Delivered
• Failed
• Opened
• Unsubscribed

There’s just one catch: You have to write your own webhook, then subscribe to those events with your webhook’s URL. If that thought left you cross-eyed, fear not! The reign of cloud computing has made this simpler than it used to be, especially the introduction of functions as a service.

Wouldn’t it be cool to send out an SMS SOS with the touch of a button? Like your own private SMS Bat-Signal!

I’ll show you how to do it using Twilio and an Azure Function. Here’s an overview of the simple architecture:

                                   /--> |        |--> 📱
|--(HTTP POST)--> [ Azure Func 𝛌 ] ---> | Twilio |--> 📱
                                   \--> |        |--> 📱

Simple, right? Let’s paint the clouds red, 160 characters at a time.

🤜 💥 🤛

Scenario: You’re using an Azure Logic App to update a Salesforce record using the Salesforce API connector.

Problem: The Salesforce connector doesn’t make it easy to send a custom update request. It wants you to name all the fields you intend to update. But what if you don’t want to update some of those fields, based on some condition? Well, you were up a creek — until you found this post.

Not so long ago, in an office so very close, an imperial trooper used the same p@$$w0rd on every single site.

The onus of easy peasy pwnage led to separate and proper passwords for important sites, led to plasticky back pats, led to proud promotions.

But an imperial trooper’s memory banks are only yea big and only hold yea many passwords.

Eight words.

“Hey, can I see you in my office?”

Whatever important tasks hung spinning in the air around you darken to match your widening pupils, then plummet to the floor in a slow-motion Broadway disaster. Eight words and the serene, ever-smiling avatar of your boss.

Prologue: Merek vs the Old Library

The last tattered shred of hope clung limply to its flagpole and flew at half mast.

“Where did we go wrong?”, Merek grimaced. Hopes in Köd Kingdom had flown so high, higher than the green and black banners billowing proudly atop the castle spires. The day they’d broken ground— the popping corks and howling cheers still echoed mirthfully down his ear canals. Only the wind howled now.

Grab a bowl of buttery popcorn because the saga continues! The end of the previous chapter saw our intrepid little Rails app camping happily on Heroku. This latest chapter in the hosting chronicles brings with it a twist: not just a change in host, but a complete migration from one programming language to another.

The app is no longer on Heroku, and it’s no longer written in Ruby or Rails. It’s written in JavaScript, hosted by Netlify, and it’s getting by with a little help from its new friend, Vue.js.

Onward for the Why’s, How’s, and Gottchas of the switch.

Static site generators aren’t new, but something about the fresh simplicity of Hugo is turning heads. We’re in the early stages of the Gartner Hype Cycle, but expect to see media outlets abuzz with tales of Hugo “making waves” and “disrupting stuff”. Even de facto strongholds like WordPress have begun losing ground to the inexorable spread of the Static Invasion.

But between all the skirmishes, turf wars, and soap-box-soliloquies, how do you know if Hugo is the right match for your site, or if it’s even worth the hype? Here’s what you need to know, reader’s digest style. (from Migrating WordPress to Hugo, Step-by-Step)

I won’t kid you; the road to course creation is riddled with potholes, roadblocks, and sketchy checkpoints. It was hard. But the solution to each obstacle taught me new skills and valuable life lessons. I think it’s time to document those lessons.