Michael Akopov

I am a Software Developer with a primary focus in web based technologies, I’ve worked in the industry for roughly 13 year now in various capacities.

twitter: @makopov

Articles

Going Serverless With Laravel Vapor

By Michael Akopov

Recently, Taylor Otwell, the creator of Laravel, launched a new service for deploying your Laravel applications in AWS: Laravel Vapor. It doesn’t require maintaining servers or setting up your own AWS services, networks, or security group configurations. This article dives into what Vapor is, why you should consider going serverless, and how to deploy an application to it.

Published in Expedition PHP, December 2019

Containerizing Production PHP

By Michael Akopov

Most developers are aware of Docker, containers, and their general use cases. Maybe you even run it on your local machine. If you’ve ever wanted to take your application, containerize it and run it in production, this article is for you. Building applications for a container world requires a new way of thinking and building apps that are resilient, reproducible, and scalable. This article walks through taking a simple PHP application written in Laravel, containerizing it, building and deploying the images within GitLab, and then leveraging GitLab’s CI/CD pipeline to deploy to production.

Published in How to Tame Your Data, June 2019

Securing Your Site in Development and Beyond

By Michael Akopov

Why wait until production deployment to identify security vulnerabilities? Using tools like Burp Suite, you can find security vulnerabilities before they’re exposed on the web, establishing a firmer trust between your website and your client. We explore using tools such as Burp Suite and more to validate proper Apache/NGINX configurations, and to be compliant with modern configuration standards such as OWASP Secure Headers Project and SSL Labs recommendations. In this article, you will see examples of vulnerabilities which were detected early on, as well as how to integrate these practices into your daily workflow.

Published in Setting Up to Succeed, January 2018