https://aboutfullstack.com/ Backend architecture, databases, and full-stack engineering notes. en https://aboutfullstack.com/building-11-dojo-how-i-used-ai-to-ship-a-full-stack-edtech-product-solo/ https://aboutfullstack.com/building-11-dojo-how-i-used-ai-to-ship-a-full-stack-edtech-product-solo/ Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 If you've followed this blog for a while, you'll know I mostly write about enterprise architecture, integration patterns, and the odd war story from the Pega trenches. This post is a bit different —… https://aboutfullstack.com/stop-using-a-power-saw-to-cut-your-vegetables/ https://aboutfullstack.com/stop-using-a-power-saw-to-cut-your-vegetables/ Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Why Generative AI Is Not the Answer to Every Problem — and How to Use It Securely What Even Is Generative AI? (And Why It's Different From the AI You Already Know) Before we talk about misuse, we… https://aboutfullstack.com/protecting-services-with-google-oauth-on-traefik-v3-docker-swarm-traefik-forward-auth/ https://aboutfullstack.com/protecting-services-with-google-oauth-on-traefik-v3-docker-swarm-traefik-forward-auth/ Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 This guide documents the auth-host mode pattern using thomseddon/traefik-forward-auth:2 (TFA). It replaces the more complex oauth2-proxy approach that required a dual-router hack and an errors… https://aboutfullstack.com/building-web-applications-at-lightning-speed-a-codeigniter-4-website-generator/ https://aboutfullstack.com/building-web-applications-at-lightning-speed-a-codeigniter-4-website-generator/ Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 In the world of web development, we're always looking for ways to ship faster without sacrificing quality. After spending countless hours building similar CRUD applications, admin panels, and content… https://aboutfullstack.com/proxmox-vm-fails-to-boot-fix-unexpected-inconsistency-run-fsck-manually/ https://aboutfullstack.com/proxmox-vm-fails-to-boot-fix-unexpected-inconsistency-run-fsck-manually/ Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 If your Proxmox virtual machine suddenly fails to boot and drops you into an (initramfs) BusyBox shell with errors like: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY The root filesystem requires a… https://aboutfullstack.com/2025-in-review-failing-faster-building-faster-and-enjoying-the-journey/ https://aboutfullstack.com/2025-in-review-failing-faster-building-faster-and-enjoying-the-journey/ Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 As 2025 comes to an end, I wanted to pause and reflect on what this year meant to me—what I built, what I learned, and more importantly, how my mindset around building and failure evolved. This year… https://aboutfullstack.com/when-the-cloud-goes-down-a-day-that-made-me-rethink-my-setup/ https://aboutfullstack.com/when-the-cloud-goes-down-a-day-that-made-me-rethink-my-setup/ Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Today was one of those days where everything that normally “just works” decides to take a vacation. Cloudflare had a pretty big outage, and suddenly all my websites were unreachable. The funny part?… https://aboutfullstack.com/thumbgenie-ai-has-been-attacked/ https://aboutfullstack.com/thumbgenie-ai-has-been-attacked/ Sun, 20 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 We had launched ThumbGenie AI couple of months ago and it is one of our faster growing product. With the faster growth also comes more attention from unwanted vistors. We had developed the app in a… https://aboutfullstack.com/codeigniter-4-with-inertia-js/ https://aboutfullstack.com/codeigniter-4-with-inertia-js/ Fri, 09 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 If you don't know about Inertia.js you can learn more about it at its home page https://inertiajs.com/ . Its helping you to build single page applications without APIs. In summary the front end React… https://aboutfullstack.com/why-a-strong-featured-image-matters-in-blog-posts-and-how-thumbgenieai-helps/ https://aboutfullstack.com/why-a-strong-featured-image-matters-in-blog-posts-and-how-thumbgenieai-helps/ Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 When you're writing a blog post, it’s easy to focus solely on the text—getting the right words, the right message, and proper formatting. But one element that’s often underestimated is the featured… https://aboutfullstack.com/total-free-minimalist-wordpress-theme/ https://aboutfullstack.com/total-free-minimalist-wordpress-theme/ Fri, 21 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 I’ve always been a fan of simplicity, especially when it comes to design. When I started my blog, I knew I wanted a clean, minimalist theme that would let my content shine without any distractions.… https://aboutfullstack.com/how-to-use-web-components-in-react-with-typescript/ https://aboutfullstack.com/how-to-use-web-components-in-react-with-typescript/ Mon, 10 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 When building a Laravel Inertia React application with TypeScript , I encountered an issue where custom web components were not recognized by TypeScript, even after importing and defining their… https://aboutfullstack.com/how-to-make-and-host-website-for-free/ https://aboutfullstack.com/how-to-make-and-host-website-for-free/ Sun, 19 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Creating a website is easier than ever, and thanks to modern tools and platforms, you can host one for free. GitHub, in particular, allows free hosting for static websites through its GitHub Pages… https://aboutfullstack.com/using-webpack-with-multiple-file-output/ https://aboutfullstack.com/using-webpack-with-multiple-file-output/ Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 With default configuration if you use webpack you will endup creating single JS and CSS file. But there are situations where you need to create multiple output files to avoid loading unnecessary… https://aboutfullstack.com/setting-up-smtp-relay-on-iredmail/ https://aboutfullstack.com/setting-up-smtp-relay-on-iredmail/ Sun, 17 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 In this quick tutorial we will see how you can enable outgoing emails through mail gun relay host. This will be useful if you are using self hosted email with shared IP address. Because when you… https://aboutfullstack.com/jekyll-generate-pages-for-each-tags/ https://aboutfullstack.com/jekyll-generate-pages-for-each-tags/ Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 As I am in the process of converting some of the Wordpress based blogs to to use the static website builder Jekyll. This will allow instant response to the users without loading my self hosting… https://aboutfullstack.com/create-jekyll-themes-from-scratch/ https://aboutfullstack.com/create-jekyll-themes-from-scratch/ Fri, 23 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 If you are a fan of static website builders, you will definitely a fan of Jekyll site builder which is also supported by Github static website hosting. Recently I am in the process of converting one… https://aboutfullstack.com/automatic-deployment-with-portainer/ https://aboutfullstack.com/automatic-deployment-with-portainer/ Thu, 22 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 If you are self hosting your website and aiming for automating the deployment, this quick guide might help you. In this we are going to run the docker services inside a docker swarm cluster and will… https://aboutfullstack.com/using-secrets-in-portainer/ https://aboutfullstack.com/using-secrets-in-portainer/ Sat, 10 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 This is a quick post on how to use docker secrets with portainer . We will use the pgadmin service as an example to demonstrate this. Login to the portainer and navigate to the secrets landing page.… https://aboutfullstack.com/setting-up-traefik-load-balancer-on-docker-swarm/ https://aboutfullstack.com/setting-up-traefik-load-balancer-on-docker-swarm/ Tue, 12 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Recently I was upgrading my home servers from Raspberry Pi to a PC with high configuration (intel i7, 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD). On Raspberry Pi, I used a single node docker network, but with plenty of… https://aboutfullstack.com/nginx-ssl-pass-through/ https://aboutfullstack.com/nginx-ssl-pass-through/ Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000 In most of the configuration we terminate the SSL at the load balancer and use http connection from load balancer to the server when it is in internal network. But in some situation we needed SSL… https://aboutfullstack.com/solving-proxmox-lxc-console-blank-issue/ https://aboutfullstack.com/solving-proxmox-lxc-console-blank-issue/ Thu, 28 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000 As I am recently upgrading my home network from simple Raspberry Pi to Proxmox based hypervisor network have got to explore many new things. This is one of the issue I couldn't find an answer quickly… https://aboutfullstack.com/backup-and-restore-postgres-database-with-docker-run/ https://aboutfullstack.com/backup-and-restore-postgres-database-with-docker-run/ Wed, 02 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Now a days it is common to use database as a service from cloud providers instead of maintaining the local postgres installation. Also there will be times you switch between providers due to some… https://aboutfullstack.com/working-with-docker-stack-and-iptables/ https://aboutfullstack.com/working-with-docker-stack-and-iptables/ Tue, 18 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000 After moving to new country, I am setting up my home network to bring some of containers back from the cloud to self hosting from home. But the problem with my new router is there is no port based… https://aboutfullstack.com/importing-linked-wsdl-files-in-pega-soap-connector/ https://aboutfullstack.com/importing-linked-wsdl-files-in-pega-soap-connector/ Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 During one of my past projects, we were required to integrate with an external system via a SOAP service to verify a customer's debt history before allowing overdraft on their bank account. However,… https://aboutfullstack.com/my-docker-swarm-setup/ https://aboutfullstack.com/my-docker-swarm-setup/ Tue, 14 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 I am running my websites from my Raspberry Pi mini PC, and in this post, I am going to explain how I organize the apps and manage security using docker swarm network. In my setup I choose nginx… https://aboutfullstack.com/exmaple-with-usecontext-in-react-js-functional-components/ https://aboutfullstack.com/exmaple-with-usecontext-in-react-js-functional-components/ Sun, 12 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 In this brief article, we will discuss the effective implementation of useContext. For those unfamiliar, useContext is a technique for sharing state within an application between various components,… https://aboutfullstack.com/what-is-not-pega-best-practice/ https://aboutfullstack.com/what-is-not-pega-best-practice/ Wed, 08 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Through out my nearly 16 years of experience in Pega I have worked on many different projects and with many different teams. Sometime I am surprised to see some so called best practices which are… https://aboutfullstack.com/mockware-pega-simulations-made-easy/ https://aboutfullstack.com/mockware-pega-simulations-made-easy/ Tue, 17 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 This post is about my Pega Community Hackathon project named Mockware. I created this project to solve a problem faced by many Pega project team related to integrations. Below listed are some common… https://aboutfullstack.com/using-chaptgpt-for-generating-react-js-code/ https://aboutfullstack.com/using-chaptgpt-for-generating-react-js-code/ Wed, 11 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 I was using copilot for while and it was really helpful to speed up the development. But wanted to give a try how ChatGPT compares with copilot as assistance. So I choose a simple use case of… https://aboutfullstack.com/sending-html-email-in-java-sprint-boot/ https://aboutfullstack.com/sending-html-email-in-java-sprint-boot/ Sun, 27 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Recently was refactoring a Java Spring boot project which I bought in Codecanyon. It had an API endpoint to send a HTML verification code. The HTML was hard coded inside the Java code and couldn't be… https://aboutfullstack.com/reset-postgres-sql-auto-increment-key/ https://aboutfullstack.com/reset-postgres-sql-auto-increment-key/ Sat, 26 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Sometimes after you have imported data in to postgres sql database you might find the new inserts are failing as the generated unique sequence keys are conflicting with existing records. You could… https://aboutfullstack.com/removing-index-php-from-codeigniter-urls/ https://aboutfullstack.com/removing-index-php-from-codeigniter-urls/ Thu, 29 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000 If you have developed CodeIgniter application and want to remove the index.php file from the application generated URLs, you can follow this simple steps. As a first step you need to go to the config… https://aboutfullstack.com/which-css-framework-to-choose-in-2022/ https://aboutfullstack.com/which-css-framework-to-choose-in-2022/ Mon, 12 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000 I have started using Bootstrap framework so many years back for styling my websites and apps. It really helped me to easily style things same way across the browsers as there were more differences… https://aboutfullstack.com/creating-a-codeigniter-website-using-website-generator/ https://aboutfullstack.com/creating-a-codeigniter-website-using-website-generator/ Mon, 22 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 There are many website generators but most of them provided as SaaS. So you will not be able to download the generated website but the code is hosted in the provider side. So you have to keep paying… https://aboutfullstack.com/show-and-hide-widget-animation-using-react-js/ https://aboutfullstack.com/show-and-hide-widget-animation-using-react-js/ Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 This small tutorial for anyone want to implement a show and hide animation for widgets with simple script and help of some css styles. The final animation will be similar to you see below. If you are… https://aboutfullstack.com/free-screen-recorder-for-making-animated-gif/ https://aboutfullstack.com/free-screen-recorder-for-making-animated-gif/ Mon, 08 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 There is a time that you made an amazing React component and want to show case to the world. Off course you want to show it in action and an animated gif would be better. You search for some screen… https://aboutfullstack.com/react-js-tags-component/ https://aboutfullstack.com/react-js-tags-component/ Sat, 06 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 I was looking for some light weight Tags component found Tagify to be interesting. But then figured out it got many features which I will not use. So I wanted to create something very minimalist. I… https://aboutfullstack.com/implement-form-builder-with-react-js-drag-and-drop-dnd/ https://aboutfullstack.com/implement-form-builder-with-react-js-drag-and-drop-dnd/ Fri, 05 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 I am working on a form builder which is part of my CodeIgniter 4 website builder going to be available at https://thephpcode.com. The current website builder uses old UI and generates website in… https://aboutfullstack.com/pega-column-populations-jobs-performance-issue/ https://aboutfullstack.com/pega-column-populations-jobs-performance-issue/ Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 When you have a Pega application running longer time in production you might already have a big case volume. In this time if you expose a new column to the case table and deploy to Pega the column… https://aboutfullstack.com/avoiding-form-fields-loosing-focus-issues-when-using-redux/ https://aboutfullstack.com/avoiding-form-fields-loosing-focus-issues-when-using-redux/ Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 I am working on revamping my dynamic website generator thephpcode.com . Last time when I implemented 10 years ago, I choose KnockoutJS for binding data model to the UI as there were not many options… https://aboutfullstack.com/which-cloud-hosting-to-use-in-2022/ https://aboutfullstack.com/which-cloud-hosting-to-use-in-2022/ Sat, 23 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000 If you are starting a small online business like me, this advise might help you. I have done some research recently as I was migrating my web apps hosted from home on my Raspberry Pi4 to cloud… https://aboutfullstack.com/maintaining-state-with-react-js-drag-and-drop-dnd-and-redux/ https://aboutfullstack.com/maintaining-state-with-react-js-drag-and-drop-dnd-and-redux/ Fri, 22 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000 I am currently working on a form builder which is part of the website builder for thephpcode.com CodeIgniter website generator. So the requirement was to allow users to create dynamic pages by… https://aboutfullstack.com/performance-comparison-between-digital-ocean-droplet-and-raspberry-pi-4/ https://aboutfullstack.com/performance-comparison-between-digital-ocean-droplet-and-raspberry-pi-4/ Mon, 18 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000 I am hosting all of my websites including this one in Raspberry Pi. Nearly 7 websites are running in a single Raspberry Pi 4 with 8Gb RAM. As am I am planning to move to a different country wanted to… https://aboutfullstack.com/woocommerce-is-it-good-for-your-business/ https://aboutfullstack.com/woocommerce-is-it-good-for-your-business/ Sun, 10 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000 It became so famous who ever already trying out eCommerce platforms will have definitely heard about it. But we can start with the introduction for newbies. What is WooCommerce? WooCommerce is a… https://aboutfullstack.com/is-low-code-and-no-code-really-good/ https://aboutfullstack.com/is-low-code-and-no-code-really-good/ Wed, 06 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Now a days every one talks about low code and no code platforms. Also we can see faster adoption to low code and no code platforms. For some clients we can see a real use case and also for some… https://aboutfullstack.com/bootstrap-5-card-header-with-button-right/ https://aboutfullstack.com/bootstrap-5-card-header-with-button-right/ Sun, 12 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000 If you are using cards in your apps, there is a good chance you need to have buttons on the right top within the header. Below snippet will help you to align buttons or icons in the card header… https://aboutfullstack.com/codeigniter-4-security-module-jwt-rolebased-permissions-etc/ https://aboutfullstack.com/codeigniter-4-security-module-jwt-rolebased-permissions-etc/ Thu, 24 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000 CodeIgniter was my go to framework long time ago but then I started using Laravel PHP framework and went on using other technologies for backend such as Java Spring boot, node js based Nest JS etc.… https://aboutfullstack.com/handling-escape-characters-with-pega-rest-connectors/ https://aboutfullstack.com/handling-escape-characters-with-pega-rest-connectors/ Tue, 22 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000 When you are mapping clipboard page using JSON mapping in Pega REST connector rules, you might have encountered issues when the value of some fields has got special characters such as back slash or… https://aboutfullstack.com/what-is-happening-sri-lanka/ https://aboutfullstack.com/what-is-happening-sri-lanka/ Sat, 05 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000 After my long vacation to Sri Lanka recently I choose to write something completely unrelated to full stack development. Sri Lanka is an island which is located south of India and called Ceylon early… https://aboutfullstack.com/modularize-android-development/ https://aboutfullstack.com/modularize-android-development/ Sun, 07 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Recently I have started with some android development for my new start sameepa.lk. The project is for connecting consumers directly with nearby small businesses and farmers to make sales process more… https://aboutfullstack.com/javascript-functions/ https://aboutfullstack.com/javascript-functions/ Sat, 27 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Adding some of the JavaScript functions which could use in your projects. Most of them are from my React projects using as functional components in Helper.js file. Unique id function This can be used… https://aboutfullstack.com/maintaining-ui-state-right-in-pega-with-dx-api/ https://aboutfullstack.com/maintaining-ui-state-right-in-pega-with-dx-api/ Wed, 17 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Introduction A small introduction if you don't know pega or DX API. Pega is at the core is a BPM tool for managing work flows and it offers lot more than that. You can learn more at pega.com . DX API… https://aboutfullstack.com/running-media-server-from-raspberry-pi/ https://aboutfullstack.com/running-media-server-from-raspberry-pi/ Sat, 30 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 When you would like to use my Raspberry pi as much as possible instead of by special purpose devices then using it as file server combined with media server will be a great use case. Here I will… https://aboutfullstack.com/running-your-private-docker-registry-from-raspberry-pi/ https://aboutfullstack.com/running-your-private-docker-registry-from-raspberry-pi/ Tue, 19 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 If you are running docker containers in Raspberry pi like me, you might have experienced that many of the images available in the docker public hub will not run on the Raspberry Pi. So you will be… https://aboutfullstack.com/docuspace-lightweight-documentation-app/ https://aboutfullstack.com/docuspace-lightweight-documentation-app/ Thu, 14 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Everyone feel happy when the documentation is good while using other frameworks. I wanted to have great documentation for my products and was looking for some lightweight app for creating good… https://aboutfullstack.com/how-to-use-ssd-for-hosting-on-rpi/ https://aboutfullstack.com/how-to-use-ssd-for-hosting-on-rpi/ Tue, 12 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Raspberry Pi 4 comes with improved faster USB 3.0 interface. So if you use SSD disks with Raspberry Pi 4 you will see significant improvement in the speed. The performance test shows at least 3 to 4… https://aboutfullstack.com/raspberry-pi-as-home-server/ https://aboutfullstack.com/raspberry-pi-as-home-server/ Fri, 08 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 I am using Raspberry Pi as multi purpose server. It is been almost two years since since I have started using the Pi. I have started with RPi 3 then upgraded to RPi 4. I am using it as a media…