# From Dev to Deployment at Breakneck Speed

I’ll always remember my first time trying to deploy a website to production. Partly because it was **maddeningly frustrating**, and partly because of the guy from HostGator tech support who patiently helped me stumble through it.

My very first production deploy was about as simple as it gets: an HTML file with some interactive JavaScript and CSS. I was using [shared hosting from HostGator](https://hostgator.pvxt.net/VxVkxO), which I *assumed* would be easy. It quickly turned into my first major **Google-or-bust moment**.

I was in my second year of college, coding in the lab late at night — brimming with excitement about learning to build real things. But the moment I opened cPanel (for the first time ever), I was greeted by a wall of unfamiliar icons and a file manager that looked like nothing more than a jumble of letters and colors. I thought I’d just drag and drop some files into a folder and boom — deployed.

I was very wrong.

Fast-forward a few years (I’m getting old, I can feel it in my bones, Gandalf 🧙🏼‍♂️) I’ve now used just about every deployment method out there:

* Pushing files to shared hosting from my local machine
    
* FTP transfers to mapped drives
    
* Repo-to-server deploy hooks
    
* [Full CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI](https://blog.hypertextcoffeepot.com/how-to-deploy-an-aspnet-core-6-application-using-nginx-on-ubuntu-2004)
    
* Even container registry-based deploys
    

It’s amazing how many ways exist to move your app from local dev to production. And that’s exactly the problem.

For new devs, **deployment is one of the most overwhelming parts of learning to ship software**. Not just because it’s technically complex — but because it’s rarely taught in a clear, streamlined way. You end up wondering:

> *Does this go in the* `public_html` folder? Or `www`?  
> *Why isn’t my build running on the server the same way it does locally?*  
> *Where do I even start?*

I’ve spent years refining my own deployment workflow, and I finally landed on a setup that’s **simple, fast, and feels modern**:  
**GitHub + Docker + DigitalOcean App Platform.**

So I’m turning it into a short, focused course — built for developers who just want to ship:

✅ Build a .NET Web API  
✅ Containerize it with Docker  
✅ Auto-deploy to production with GitHub + DigitalOcean

No fluff. No DevOps jargon. Just the real-world steps I wish someone had shown me back in that college computer lab.

👉 The waitlist is now live — use the signup form below to get early access and updates when the course drops.

* %%[devops-deploy-form] 
    
    [![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1749522173655/b95b54f9-c497-414c-ade4-3b3586007816.png align="center")](https://hostgator.pvxt.net/c/3299179/215653/3094)