Seasons changing

The leaves may be falling and the weather may be changing, but the one thing that’s not changing is our weekly digest. Check out posts from our authors below.

Make Fewer HTTP Requests: What This Means and How to Do it

Thanks to advancements in JavaScript engines, the performance of websites has considerably improved in recent years. However, there are aspects of websites that are out of the control of engines and yet to be adequately optimized by browsers. One of these aspects is the number of HTTP requests that your webpage makes. So if you want to learn how to improve your website, look no further than Faraz Kelhini’s post on Raygun’s blog.

What Is End to End Testing? A Helpful Introductory Guide

No company would release a piece of software without testing it. But there are many ways of testing software. End to end testing is one way. It might even be the most important way, though often the most time- and resource-intensive one. Luckily, there are ways to automate end to end tests. Learn more about them from Peter Morlion at Testim’s blog.

ITIL V4 Change Management in 2019: Everything You Need to Know

IT service management (ITSM) requires solid change management capabilities. Change management helps align IT activities with business objectives. If you’ve ever tried to get a change approved or even implemented, you’ll likely know about the struggles that go along with it. In order to smooth this process, Michiel Mulders can help you explore the best practices the ITIL framework proposes related to handling changes on Plutora’s blog.

Debugging is a core skill for every developer. Do you use a print()statement regularly, or do you prefer to use debugging tools? Head over to Scalyr’s blog to find out how you can improve your debugging experience by understanding the Python stack trace and by using it to fix bugs. Michiel Mulders can fill you in on more here.

DevOps and TEM Go Hand in Glove

DevOps is overall a healthy practice for most development teams, but it doesn’t come for free. Enterprises are eager to adopt the practice but their tools often lag behind DevOps practices. This is a bit like walking out into the winter cold with bare hands and being overwhelmed by Mother Nature’s bitter force. Like hands and gloves, DevOps and test environment management (TEM) are a practical pair. Find out more from Mark Henke on Enov8’s blog.

Chef vs Puppet: Differences, Similarities, and How to Choose

Chef and Puppet are two popular tools for configuration management. What about database connection strings where you have a different one for dev, test, and prod? Yes, Puppet or Chef can handle these. So to find out more about Chef and Puppet, head over to Stackify’s blog and hear more from Christian Meléndez.

How to Monitor IIS Performance: From the Basics to Advanced IIS Performance Monitoring

We also updated a few posts this week, like one on IIS performance. Without monitoring IIS performance, you could end up leaving your site (and your users) hanging. At best, this will leave a bad taste in your user’s mouths. At worst, they’ll stop using your services. So do you need help on how to monitor IIS? If so, learn more from this guide on Stackify’s blog.

Another post we updated is on the Apache error log. It seems that information about the Apache error log is so scarce that people can’t agree on where to ask questions, let alone get answers to them. Luckily, Scalyr’s blog is here to change that. Get the answers to all of the questions you might have come looking for—if you googled the term—while also providing a broad narrative for regular readers here.