Welcome to Week 2, Post 2! I'm not sure how long I'll keep up this weekly posting trend, but for now, let's dive into another one. When browsing YouTube or reading tech articles, you often hear about the latest tech stacks, frameworks, and tools. As a systems engineer, I want to talk more about the back end things that keeps these sites running. So, today, I’m sharing my go-to server-side tech stack for a small, cost-conscious projects/hobbies. If you're aiming for something with a bit more hustle, a few tweaks might be needed, but this setup keeps things simple and affordable. To start, I recommend sticking with Docker Compose or MicroK8s for container orchestration. For small-scale or personal projects, there's no need to go overboard with more complex or costly solutions. These tools strike a great balance between functionality and simplicity. There is nothing better than standing up test and tiring it down fast. There is also enough to setup cool things like networking,shared resources,and load balancing. For your web server, you’ll want to run a container for your chosen framework. My personal favorite is Django. It’s reliable, flexible, and just works for me. That said, feel free to choose whatever suits your needs. Pair this with NGINX as a reverse proxy, it can be used as lot of other things thought I keep it at just reverse proxy and content caching. NGINX is fantastic for improving security and performance, allowing you to configure settings that make your web server more robust and protected. I also highly recommend setting up Fail2Ban. It works hand-in-hand with NGINX to block suspicious IP addresses that might be up to no good. You can customize its rules to block IPs for a short period rather than permanently. This approach slows down potential bad actors without being overly restrictive, as IPs can change frequently. If your project requires a database (and it probably will), my go-to is PostgreSQL. It’s hands-down my favorite for its reliability, ease of recovery (especially if you have my mental of making squares fit in round holes.), and seamless integration with Docker Compose. Setting it up is a breeze, and it’s a solid choice for most projects. Finally, I’m a big fan of Cloudflare for its excellent free tier, which offers robust features for small projects. While there are some horror stories about high costs with their paid plans, I consider those edge cases. For most users, Cloudflare’s free tier is a fantastic way to enhance performance and security without breaking the bank. For the system I run a ec2 instance t3small with aws Linux it’s less then 25 a month and runs great. That being said, that’s all that comes to mind for things you need for a basic project and hopefully this will save you a bit of time thinking of things you may need.