Python for Entrepreneurs Transcripts
Chapter: Welcome to the course
Lecture: What you're going to learn
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0:02
We can group these general topics we are going to cover into five big areas. First one is building your online product.
0:11
This is web development and web design. So we are going to talk about how to actually build your web app and how to make it look good.
0:18
We are also going to talk about managing your development process, with your editors, source control, that kind of stuff.
0:25
Then we are going to take your online product and show you how to turn it into a functioning business.
0:30
How do we integrate credit cards, how do we integrate email, all the various things that you need to actually have a working online business.
0:38
Then we are going to talk about putting that business online, how do we deploy it, how do we setup our servers, and virtual machines,
0:44
how do we monitor for errors in performance and production. And finally we are going to talk about growth.
0:49
Remember the opening section, that dusty set of motocross riders? we are going to talk about how you can break free of that pack and get ahead.
0:57
So if we look at the technologies that we are going to use to build our web app, it's going to start with our web framework, Pyramid.
1:03
There are many web frameworks we can choose in Python, the three most popular probably are Django, Flask and Pyramid,
1:09
and Pyramid is a really nice balance between too much hand holding and too small, it's the goldielocks framework, in my opinion.
1:17
We are also going to talk about Python some of the core language concepts that you need for your web app to work
1:23
and we are going to use SQLAlchemy to talk to our database and create a data-driven web application.
1:28
So, this is the code side; on the other hand, we also need it to look decent. Now, we don't assume that you are a designer,
1:35
but we are going to show you enough CSS and HTML that you can build something that is functional and - not terrible - let's say,
1:42
and if you're great at design you could probably do way better than that,
1:45
but we'll get you started so that you are at least comfortable with HTML and CSS and some of the front-end frameworks,
1:50
we are going to use Bootstrap but there are a couple of options there. So, these are the technologies involved in building your web application.
1:56
And while you are building it, we are going to talk about what you need for the development process. We are going to be using PyCharm as our IDE,
2:04
our enhanced editor that will let us do all kinds of things, we can create a Pyramid web app with it,
2:09
we can of course edit the Python code access and manage our database, work with JavaScript and CSS and HTML,
2:16
it's a great all-around editor for what we are trying to do. We are going to use Git and GitHub to manage our code, make sure that it's safe and sound,
2:24
we can always get back to a previous working version and most importantly, it will let us aggressively experiment
2:29
and try new ideas without fear of breaking it irreparably. Once we have our application built, we are going to have to make it a real business,
2:38
so we'll have to deal with users, users' accounts, all the various things around resetting their passwords and sending them receipts,
2:45
that kind of stuff, so we'll have to have inbound and outbound email, and most importantly, to us, probably is accepting money from them,
2:54
so we are going to integrate Stripe and credit card processing into our application.
2:58
Once our app is ready to go live, we need to put it on web server somewhere. So we are going to deploy it onto Ubuntu, using Digital Ocean,
3:06
so we want to create some virtual machines on Digital Ocean that are Ubuntu servers and we'll push them out. Of course, for accepting credit cards
3:13
and working with user accounts and passwords, we are going to want to use SSL so we'll see how to integrate SSL into our web server,
3:20
we'll use nginx as the front line web server and then we are going to use uWSGI, to run our application behind the scenes.
3:28
Once we get it all up and running, we want to make sure that it's working right, so we are going to integrate Rollbar error monitoring
3:34
into the system, that will send us messages on Slack or email or whatever we want if something happens to go wrong,
3:40
and we may know if there is a problem before even our users do. Finally, we are going to talk about growth, because,
3:46
having the technical pieces in place, as we said, is not enough. These days, running a business is as much about marketing and positioning
3:55
as it is about the technology, technology is of course required and table stakes, but to really break free you have to work on getting the word out,
4:03
standing out on Google, reaching the users where they are. So, we are going to talk about SEO in Google,
4:09
we'll talk about mailing lists, acquiring interested users, converting them to paying users,
4:13
and a whole bunch of other things that fall into this banner called growth hacking, a bunch of techniques that are non-obvious
4:21
and maybe users never see but actually attract attention, attract users, and grow your business.