#nodester

As you have probably already seen on TechCrunch, GigaOm, VentureBeat, eweek, and DZone, I have sold my open source PaaS startup Nodester to AppFog, a leading polyglot PaaS service provider!

If you remember back two years ago, I also sold my cloud communications startup Teleku to Voxeo.  Ten years prior to the Teleku acquisition, I built and sold another company called Digital Voice Technologies which build and managed IVR (Interactive Voice Response) services for companies like Disney, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft.

All of three of these companies were bootstrapped subsidiaries owned and operated by GetVocal, inc, my AZ-based technology company, which made the exits easier.  Reflecting back on these deals has generated a few questions and thoughts:

Does this make me a serial entrepreneur? 

Does this make GetVocal an incubator?

What's next?

I enjoy the excitement around a new idea and opportunity.  I love the branding side of the business so much that I have hundreds of web domains and can't write a single line of code until the project has a name. I love solving new problems that have not been tackled by other companies or projects.  I love the notion that my idea has the potential of changing the world.  I love the excitement surrounding launch day. I love meeting new people throughout the life of the project. I love coding but equally move the marketing and sales side of the business. Finally, I love negotiating the exit deal and watching my project take on a new life under someone else's vision. 

This process just seems to continue repeating itself.  

If you visit GetVocal's website, you'll notice that I have another project already underway.  In fact, it's be underway for several years now.  This project is called Surf-By-Tel and it's more of a humanitarian / labor of love project enabling visually impaired people to surf the web with their voice.  I love seeing a visually impaired person's face light up when they first learn that they can surf the web with their telephone of VoIP application.  Check out this video testimonial from a user of my Surf-By-Tel voice browser platform:

When I set out to start the Nodester open source PaaS project 1.5 years ago, I had no intention of building and running a 24x7 Node.JS PaaS. I simply wanted to learn Node.JS and the nuances of hosting Node.JS apps in a public and private cloud environment.  

With the help of the open source community (specifically @DavGlass and @DanBUK), I learned about Linux chroot sandbox securing of apps. I would also like to thank the following developers who have contributing to the Nodester project over the years: @_Alejandromg @Eschoff @Marcosvm @Abraham @MichealBenedict, @Crp_underground @AdamKumpf @Krwindham @Akavlie @eldios @Tenzer @Eocampospy @Fgnass @JP_pinilla Yawnt @WeAreFractal MintPlant Ckknight @Arvidhahldev @stephanepericat and @Kev_nz.  As of late, @_AlejandroMG has been my wingman on this rocketship ride and has proven himself to be an amazing Node.JS developer, thoughtleader, and most patient support engineer. I would work with any of you again in a heartbeat!

I would also like to give a shoutout to @Tropo @VoxeoLabs and @IrisCouch for their hosting sponsorships which have allowed us to offer our hosting services to the Node.JS community for free since day one!  

I am proud to say that Nodester was the first 100% open source Node.JS PaaS solution available for developers and it’s still one of the few Node.JS platforms that supports native WebSockets! The Nodester community is passionate about open source public, private, and hybrid cloud PaaS services and has proven that open source projects can become viable businesses.

Upon accepting a new career opportunity with Bechtel, it became clear to me that I could no longer support the growing demands of our susccessful open source project and free hosting service.  I looked at the various leading PaaS providers out there and it became clear that the only one with our vision and mission was AppFog. They, too, were very excited about taking over the Nodester project and ultimately adding our realtime websocket technology into their CloudFoundry platform.  

This partnership between AppFog and Nodester will give our Node.JS developers the very best public and private PaaS hosting solution as Node.JS continues to grow and extend into the enterprise.  I am very proud of our accomplishments and have made many new friends throughout this endeavor. With that, I have one last thing to say.....Hack the planet! \m/

Cheers,

@ChrisMatthieu

Links to the press coverage at the time of this post:

AppFog

TechCrunch

GigaOm

VentureBeat

eweek

Download git for windows here.

Download github for windows here.

Open git bash from with in git sub menu.

Git bash has *nix shell environment simulated.

Download node.js from the site. Ensure installation by -

 node -v

Generate and add public key to the github from your current device if not already installed

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "<email>"

vi /c/Users/<user account>/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Copy the public key. Add it as SSH key to the github here. 

Install nodester client -

npm install nodester-cli -g

Setup user account at nodester -

noderster user setup <user> <password>

Configure github key for the nodester account

nodester user setkey

Create a default nodejs app via the client -

nodester app create test-app

Initialize the newly created nodejs app from the previous step -

nodester app init test-app

cd test-app/

vi server.js

Start the server and view on browser http://localhost:<port-number-as-given-in-server-js>

node server.js

Browse your git remote repo list like so -

git remote -v

The nodester repo may be present by the name of origin.

Incase, you want to change the nodester repo name from origin to more specific name, go ahead -

Remove origin repo -

git remote rm origin

Fetch your git repo handle on nodester like so -

nodester app info nraj

Add this repo to your remote repo list -

git remote add nodester [email protected]:/node/git/test-app/<unique-key>.git

This would set the nodester repo name in the repo list as nodester instead of origin.

Now, add this code to nodester git using

git add .

git commit -m 'first hello world'

git push nodester master

For non-nodester usage, you might still want to configure your github repo, say as origin -

git remote add origin https://github.com/neetiraj/hello-world-njs.git

Push the same app to github origin repo- 

git push origin master

Don't forget to install express npm for nodejs apps -

nodester npm install nraj express

3-2-1 BLAST OFF!  Nodester now runs Node.JS version 0.8.1 by default if you upgrade to our latest CLI v1.0.2!  You can upgrade from 0.4.12 or 0.6.17 to 0.8.1 by simply opening your package.json file and changing the following entry to:

“node”:”0.8.1”

Commit your change to git and push it to nodester:

git commit -am “upgrading to v0.8.1”

git push

Parando rapidamente para falar sobre o nodester, uma plataforma de hospedagem open source, feita utilizando node.js. É muito simples de utilizar, basta você fazer o pedido de um cupom. Você recebera ele em seu email.

A partir do email você devera fazer o seguinte. Instalar o modulo do nodester ( https://github.com/nodester/nodester-cli ) e seguir os passos, que são bem simples.

Para criar uma aplicação você deve utilizar os seguintes comandos:

nodester app create <nome-do-seu-app>

nodester app init <nome-do-seu-app>

O segundo comando inicia a sua aplicação e clona o projeto para a sua maquina.

Aqui esta a lista de comandos que você pode utilizar. 

http://nodester.com/api

No final de todo o processo você tera a sua aplicação funcionando em:

http://<nome-do-seu-app>.nodester.com

Algumas caracteristicas interessantes, é a possibilidade de atrelar um dominio a sua aplicação.

Bom acho que você esta pronto para começar a brincar e colocar aplicações interessantes para rodar usando o nodester.com;

Video em inglês, aplicação sendo distribuida.

Thanks to @_AlejandroMG and Jeremy Zevin, Nodester now runs CoffeeScript apps right out-of-the-box ( for files ending in .coffee)!  Here's a step-by-step example of how to get started with running your existing CoffeeScript application on Nodester.

Let's start with the following hello world app written in CoffeeScript.  Let's save it to server.coffee

http = require 'http'  http.createServer (req, res) ->  res.writeHead 200, 'Content-Type': 'text/plain'  res.end 'Hello, World!'  .listen 8000  console.log 'Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8000/'

Run the following Nodester commands to setup this app in the cloud:

nodester app create coffeescripttest server.coffee nodester app info coffeescripttest

Now we have an app created in the Nodester cloud and now we know it's git repository and production port.  Let's update our code to change the port from 8000 to your new Nodester production port and let's finish setting up our local git repo and remote by running the following commands in your new app's directory:

git init git add . git commit -m "initial checkin" git remote add nodester {your repo URL from running the nodester app info command} git push nodester master

That's all there is to it!  Now direct your browser to http://coffeescripttest.nodester.com to see your new CoffeeScript application running on Nodester live!

Hack the Planet! 

We are happy to announce the support of Node.JS version 0.6.17 on the Nodester platform.  This update was prompted from receiving an urgent notice from the Node.JS project related to an HTTP Server Security Vulnerability detected in versions prior to 0.6.17.  The full security article can be found at http://blog.nodejs.org/2012/05/07/http-server-security-vulnerability-please-upgrade-to-0-6-17/

Please update your nodester CLI tool so that newly created apps will default to v0.6.17.  This can be done by running:

sudo npm install nodester-cli -g

Upgrading existing Nodester-hosted Node.JS apps to v0.6.17 is simple.  Open your package.json file and change the following entry to:

"node":"0.6.17"

Commit your change to git and push it to nodester:

git commit -am "upgrading to v0.6.17"

git push