Big App Time.
April 30, 2009
Growing up I always wished I was a member of the Star Trek crew.
Did I want this for the cool deep space fighting? No.
Being able to work with a cool multinational crew with an almost unlimited number of red shirt guys to off? No.
It must have been for the phaser right? No, not even when it's set to kill. Not even for the for the rare phaser rifle!
It was the tricorder! I was (am) this uber geek and loved the idea of a machine that could scan for aliens, detect trace elements of dilithium crystals and monitor vital signs.
Fast forward to about a month ago when my web host (DreamHost) announced a API for controlling the accounts. I've done my share of work around some popular web apis and I took a peek at what it could do.
So, there I am staring at the "Big Boy " blog post, looking at the API and almost while I'm watching a new API appears (I kid you not, I hit refresh and boom there was a new API call)
So I start thinking
how could you use an API like this? And it occurs to me that like many of you, I depend on my web site a lot -- I run a small business off of it and I use it for sales, support and a general one stop shop for my customers (phone support? pheh I don't give no stinking phone support -- it's email or twitter baby!)
And the thing is I'm constantly checking the status of my web site, sometimes to monitor email, sometimes to verify the payment system is working and sometimes just to make sure many of my fancy pants systems are still running! When things appear wrong I do the 'check the web panel, check the dreamhost support blog, look at the support feeds, visit the site, verify it's not me reboot my private server, email support "dance" (by the way support dudes, you rock!))
Only bummer is that if I'm not in front of my computer some of those steps are a PITA. And then it hits me -- What if I had a one stop app for monitoring the health and status of my web site and being able to perform critical maintainance & updates? And what if that app was on a device I carry every day ! Best of all -- It's like having a tricorder for your web site!
With that long winded introduction I proudly present DreamApp -- Your one stop shop for managing your web site on the go.
There are a ton of features, but let me point out a few highlights -- When you first launch it, the app pulls up all of your domains and pings both the server as well as goes to the actual site and verifies that you can still download the home page -- Above you can see my server responded in 32ms while the home pages were about 2-3 seconds to load. You can also see that one is a secure server and that my memory usage is close to critical (captain, the delithium crystals can't take it!)
Drilling in a bit you can visit your site, verify it's not just you, view your domain settings and if you have a private server check your memory & cpu usage. Hell if you have a private server you can even reboot it if you are really stuck -- I make you go through a Fort Knox like process but it's there when you need it (and I gotta tell you guys, I took one for the team testing that feature!)
But what about if your sitting at the cafe drinking your cappuccino talking to the guy next to you and realize you share the same interest in steam punk! Back in the day you would have to say "Hey, go to my steam punk website and get on my newsletter" -- No more my friend, now you just whip out the app and add him to your newsletter (can you feel it now?).
Not only that but if you get an irate call from someone who no longer wants steampunk news you can remove him from the list -- Easy Peasy!
Finally there are a lot of times you really want to know 'What type of DNS record is a CNAME', well I've also got, wait for it, help. This is something I'm especially fond of because here is the cool thing.... It's built into the app but the content comes from those powerful DreamHost servers! I can update it and instantly thousands of adoring dreamhost customers get updated docs (Not that any of the folks reading this post need it mind you -- it's for everyone else) but to them it's *built in* and it looks spectacular -- No fumbling around trying to navigate desktop web pages for you -- Just get the info you need and move on.
So here is the thing though -- the app is Done in the way that Laundry ever get's done. You get caught up, but the next day you're behind again. The DreamHost elves are super busy adding features and as they do I'm trying to figure out if it makes sense to include, and if so how to add them in a way that doesn't overwhelm the user (gotta keep the app something you can pop in, check or do something and pop out in 30 seconds -- Thats the DreamApp promise!)
But wait -- There is one more thing. While I built in a bunch of nice features I realized that there is some stuff you crazy cats might want to have as part of website monitoring that I can't even begin to imagine! Originally I had a bunch of different non-api related reports I generated and one day about a week ago I realized I was going to kill myself creating and managing all of these custom non api reports -- Why not let people write their own!
See that "Custom" category? (ok, I need to capitalize the "C") you can add all manner of crazy cat reports -- I've written three so far in about a day. One is for current uptime -- that is what I call a 'one line' report that slides right into the domain view (see, I've only been up one day due to testing the reboot feature!)
I've also got a 'pie chart' report format -- Good for seeing current memory usage by application *at this moment* (and hey, notice the shiny chart, Bling!)
Finally I've got one that monitors all of the current people on your website (Yo cheapnet guy from italy -- I see you!)
And the thing is anyone can write these. You just create a small php file (well, you can use whatever language you want) that spits out data and DreamApp will present it for you. Right now I have 4 report types but I've already thought of a few more to add.
So I need you, gentle reader, to help me -- You all have crazy different configurations and crazy different use cases but I *want help* to for the last little bits -- Interested? Then send an email to support@dreamhostapp.com and say "Yo John, get me into the beta program" I'll need you to send your device ID (which you get by clicking on the serial number in iTunes and then hitting cmd c (or ctrl-c if you aren't cool enough to own a mac)) Drop me the line and I'll be sending it out to begin the broad testing.
Oh, and Josh Jones, yours is in the mail.