DEV Community: Paul Onteri

How to Bulk Upload Images from your Website to Pinterest Automatically

Paul Onteri — Sun, 30 Jan 2022 05:34:30 +0000

Pinterest has a feature that allows business accounts to connect a website's RSS feed and auto-post to a Pinterest board.

Wait for up to 24 hours to see your first Pins created in the board. As your RSS feed is updated, Pins will continue to be made on a daily schedule.

Create an RSS Feed

Pinterest currently supports RSS 2. and RSS 1. (RDF) formats. They don’t support Atom.

Create an RSS Feed that resides at a path in your website for example at /feed.xml that will be used in the next steps.

Example Feed

<rss xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" version="2.0">
    <channel>
        <title>Example E-Commerce Store Products</title>
        <description>Ea dolore culpa adipisicing nostrud est reprehenderit aliqua cupidatat laboris. Exercitation irure quis et cillum commodo quis magna commodo minim nulla mollit magna cillum. Reprehenderit minim ipsum elit dolore elit dolore consequat ipsum occaecat nostrud. Fugiat mollit et nisi et. Et nulla excepteur adipisicing irure est Lorem ipsum eiusmod sit. Fugiat Lorem est officia dolor pariatur est Lorem mollit in aute sint.</description>
        <link>https://www.example.com/products/</link>

        <!-- ... -->
        <item>
            <title>Tempor voluptate ipsum id proident minim duis aute voluptate amet elit magna ad ullamco occaecat.</title>
            <description>Elit reprehenderit reprehenderit nostrud fugiat labore sint laboris eu id sint in commodo occaecat. Reprehenderit tempor minim ut non esse qui eiusmod dolor occaecat. Sint duis fugiat eiusmod cupidatat duis nisi ad aliquip duis officia velit et do ad. Occaecat laborum ipsum ex consequat esse non aute culpa proident cupidatat minim do. Et proident aute sint aliquip minim mollit.</description>
            <link>https://www.example.com/products/product-one</link>
            <media:content url="https://www.example.com/images/product-one.webp" medium="image"/>
        </item>

        <item>
            <title>Duis ea consectetur pariatur commodo in qui.</title>
            <description>Magna ad fugiat reprehenderit anim qui minim reprehenderit. Deserunt adipisicing anim nulla commodo nulla minim officia duis Lorem dolore. Consectetur enim nisi reprehenderit ad nisi labore officia. Magna laboris id veniam mollit qui commodo duis sint. Tempor cupidatat non consequat consectetur anim mollit ex qui pariatur cillum.</description>
            <link>https://www.example.com/products/plan/product-two</link>
            <media:content url="https://www.example.com/images/product-two.webp" medium="image"/>
        </item>
        <!-- ... -->

    </channel>
</rss>

Verify Domain

Verify a domain in which the RSS Feed is hosted.

Click the down arrow at the top-right corner of Pinterest
Click Settings
Select Claim from the menu on the left
Under Websites, click Connect RSS Feed
- This option will only appear if you have a claimed website

Connect your RSS feed

Add the path to your RSS feed to Pinterest.

Click the down arrow at the top-right corner of Pinterest
Click Settings
Select Bulk Create Pins from the menu on the left.
- This option will only appear if you have a claimed website
Under Auto-publish, click Connect RSS Feed
Paste your RSS feed URL into the field
Choose the board you want to publish from the dropdown menu or create a new board
Click Save

References

You don't have Imposter Syndrome (as a beginner)

Paul Onteri — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 04:23:39 +0000

Get the original version of this article here: https://paulonteri.com/blog/beginners-syndrome

During my time as a Google Developer Student Clubs (GDSC) Lead, a lot of my fellow students who were just starting out with various tech related concepts often approached me with various problems. A lot of them were in the form of "I just got started with technology $x$. How do I get started working on / completing projects or applying for jobs? I feel like I still suck at it, and have imposter syndrome."

How can an absolute beginner be a fake / an imposter? Imposter syndrome had become a very common term, especially on Twitter, that everyone thought the difficulties they encountered when starting out were signs of imposter syndrome. It's very likely people starting out might have beginner syndrome instead.

Why you might not have imposter syndrome as a beginner. Let’s talk about it.

What Is Imposter Syndrome?

Imposter Syndrome is the overwhelming feeling that you don't deserve your success and accomplishments. You become convinced that you're not as intelligent, creative or talented as you may seem or people may see you to be. And you suspect that your achievements are down to luck, good timing, or just being "in the right place at the right time." One of your biggest fears is that one day you'll be exposed as a fraud.

You may feel that you need to work harder because of your perceived inadequacies, to avoid being "unmasked." This may even lead to further success and recognition – and feeling like an even bigger fraud.

Beginner Syndrome

Learning to do anything worthwhile when you’re just starting out is hard. Freaking out about not knowing anything is totally normal, and every budding beginner feels overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of all that they don’t know. This is not Imposter Syndrome, this is Reality.

Those feelings of inadequacy are just “beginner’s fear.” Trying something new can induce so much anxiety that it causes many to quit something they may have dreamed of starting for years. Not knowing how/where to start, how to catch up to the experts, things feeling very difficult, e.t.c - All this is normal for a beginner.

Impossible for beginners to have Imposter Syndrome

An actual imposter’s sole goal is to be what they’re not. They hide behind a mask, and they base their strategy on deceit and dishonesty. In addition, experiencing imposter syndrome means you have accomplished something in the specific area you are experiencing it in. Most of us feel like we’re imposters, but we’re just beginners, we’re just starting out.

Imposter syndrome is more of “somebody who doesn’t feel like they know what they are expected to know” and beginner syndrome is “not knowing much and not being expected by others to know much”, technically impossible to be an imposter.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect. Credits: expertprogrammanagement.com

Imposter syndrome usually shows up in the middle, and beginner syndrome in the complete beginning of The Dunning-Kruger effect chart. The chart explains how the less someone knows about the topic, the more confident (and sometimes arrogant) they are about their understanding of it (this comes right after beginner’s syndrome). Imposter syndrome describes the opposite: it manifests when people who are experts on a topic do not feel confident in their understanding and show modesty. While it is common for us to experience such feelings, they’re signs that we are often unable to accurately assess our own competence. Note that in the beginning, both confidence and competence are very low. This is what encompasses beginner’s syndrome.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

~ Ira Glass

Conclusion

All beginners should realise that there is a tonne of stuff they don't know, their confidence is low and this is not a sign of imposter syndrome.
However, they are also not expected to know that much and will typically not be punished for not knowing.

The easiest way to deal with the above problems is to learn, practice, be dedicated and work hard enough to overcome the obstacles (that almost all beginners do encounter).

Serverless Python on Azure: Django with App Service

Paul Onteri — Sun, 13 Sep 2020 16:19:19 +0000

Over time, one of the most tiresome and non-rewarding tasks to some developers I know is the setup, maintenance and scaling of servers. Something often goes wrong.

Don't get me wrong, some developers like me enjoy that process.
However, it doesn't scale well and the repetition of tasks can get tiring.

Doing all of this on your own can take some time:

Operating system maintenance
Capacity Provisioning - increase or reduce servers(or capacity) to handle different traffic
Availability and fault tolerance
Load balancing
Networking

It's not a wonder that many companies like Netflix, Uber, CodePen, etc are using Serverless technology.

This article will cover the basics of deploying a basic Django(Python) application to Azure App Service, a serverless offering by Microsoft Azure. This will allow you to stop stressing or even stop thinking about servers in your development lifecycle.

What we'll cover:

What is Serverless anyway? 👀
Azure App Service
Django Application setup
1. Setting up a basic Django application
2. Pushing the code to GitHub
Deploying to Azure App Service
1. Provisioning the target Azure App Service
2. Deploy to App Service from GitHub
3. Your App is now Deployed!
What Next?
Shameless Plug 😭😭

Prerequisites:

Basic web development understanding.
Experience with git and GitHub. Here's a simple guide.
Basic Python and Django experience. (If you'll follow the exact steps under the app setup)
An Azure Account. (If you'll deploy)

What is Serverless anyway? 👀

Serverless is a cloud systems architecture that involves no servers, virtual machines, or containers to provision or manage.
Your cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation and provisioning of servers.

This allows you to build and run applications and services without thinking about servers.

This reduces the time and money spent on DevOps, allowing developers to focus on the actual coding. Sweet 👌

“Focus on your application, not the infrastructure”

PS, the application will still be running on servers, it's just that you are not the one managing them.

Azure App Service

Azure App Service is a service for hosting web applications, REST APIs, and mobile back ends. You can develop in your favourite language, be it Python, Node.js, .NET, etc without managing infrastructure. Applications run and scale with ease on both Windows and Linux-based environments.

In English, it basically a hosting service that allowing you to host your app or backend without thinking about the server(s).
Find out more here.

Django Application setup

You can skip this step by cloning the code from here:

paulonteri / django_azure

Serverless Python on Azure: Django hosted on Azure App Service

Django on Azure

The web application used as an example in my writing of the article on Serverless Python on Azure: Django hosted on Azure App Service

Tech

Written in Python3 and Django 3.1.1.

Setup

First, clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/django_azure/core.git
cd django_azure

Create a virtual environment to install dependencies in and activate it:

mkvirtualenv <envname>
source <envname>/bin/activate

Install requirements in the virtual environment created:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Run database migrations with this command

python3 manage.py migrate

Run server to ensure everything is working properly.

python3 manage.py runserver

Article Introduction

Over time, one of the most tiresome and non-rewarding tasks to some developers I know is the setup, maintenance and scaling of servers. Something often goes wrong.

Don't get me wrong, some developers like me enjoy that process However, it doesn't scale well and the repetition of tasks can get tiring.

Doing all…

View on GitHub

Basic Application Setup

We are going to use the basic Django starter for this.

If you have Django installed, create a new project with the command: django-admin startproject <yourprojectname>

In my case:

$ django-admin startproject django_azure

Test that your application is ok by starting the application by running migrations and running the server(from your app's directory):

$ python3 manage.py migrate
$ python3 manage.py runserver

That should give you the default Django starter page running by default on port 8000 of localhost:

The commands I ran:

For the purposes of this, change your ALLOWED_HOSTS setting to allow all hosts:

ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['*']

A more secure way of doing this is to add the following host to your allowed hosts: <instance-name>.azurewebsites.net
In my case:

ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['django-on-azure.azurewebsites.net']

We should also create a requirements file that will be used to list our python dependencies. By convention, it's named requirements.txt

In the root of the project directory create a new file called requirements.txt and add the dependencies your Django app is using in my case (Django default):

asgiref==3.2.10
Django==3.1.1
pytz==2020.1
sqlparse==0.3.1

If you are running your app in a virtual environment, just run the following command instead:

$ pip freeze > requirements.txt

Pushing the Code to GitHub

We are going to initialize our repository, make a commit(s) and push the code to GitHub. This will help in the deployment process.

If you aren't well familiar with git and GitHub kindly use this article as a guide.

Start by creating a new GitHub repo.

Set up the git repo locally

Initialize the project directory as a git repository:

$ git init

Add all the files in your new local repository. This stages them for a commit.

$ git add *

Commit the files that you've staged in your local repository.

$ git commit -m "first commit"

In Terminal, add the URL for the remote(GitHub) repository where your local repository will be pushed in the next step with the command: git remote add origin <remote Repository Url>

$ git remote add origin <remoterepositoryURL>

In my case:

$ git remote add origin https://github.com/paulonteri/django_azure.git

The remote Repository Url can be found from the GitHub repo you created as shown below:

Push the changes in your local repository to GitHub.

$ git push -u origin master

The commands I ran:

Deploying to Azure App Service

FYI, this 2-5 minute process is a one-time thing.
You set it up once and your website/app will be updated automatically whenever you push code to GitHub.

Provision the target Azure App Service

Navigate to your Azure Portal then search for the term 'App Services' then click on the App Services item.

Once in the App Services section, click on the 'Create app service' button. Then create your web app.

Configuration:

The following is the configuration I used:

Subscription

This lets you manage deployed resources and costs.
A resource group is a collection of resources that share the same lifecycle, permissions, and policies. Use resource groups like folders to organize and manage all your resources.
Configuration:

Subscription: default
Resource Group: created a new one

Instance Details

The name is basically a name. What you'd like to name your app.
Under publish you decide whether you are going to push code or a docker image. in our case it's code.
The runtime stack lets you define the underlying programming language for your app, in our case, Python.
The region is the geographic location where your app will be hosted.

Name: django-on-azure
Publish: Code
Runtime stack: Python 3.7
Operating System: Linux
Region: Central US

App Service Plan

This lets you define the compute resources, features and costs that will be associated with your app.
Be careful to choose an appropriate Sku and size as some of them might get pretty expensive.
I would suggest starting with the 'Dev / Test' packages to find the Free option. To change the Sku and size, click on 'Change size' to bring the 'Spec Picker', like so;

Configuration:

Linux Plan <Region> : created a new one

Sku and size: Free F1, 1 GB memory

Once done, click on the 'Review + Create' button.

Then click create.

That will lead you to such a page:

Under the next steps, click on 'Go to resource' to manage your service.

Deploy to Azure App Service from GitHub

From your resource's dashboard search for the term 'Deployment' then click the 'Deployment Center' button from the sidebar(menu).

You'll see a list of Source Control services that can be used.
Since our code is hosted on GitHub, click GitHub then continue. This might ask you to connect your GitHub account.

Next, we'll see a bunch of build providers
These are the services we can use to automatically build and deploy our web app code. In my opinion, the easiest method, that is also free, is by setting up continuous integration(CI) with GitHub Actions.

Continuous Integration (CI) is a development practice where developers integrate code frequently, preferably several times a day. Each integration can then be verified by an automated build and automated tests then deployed.

Let's select GitHub Actions and click continue.

GitHub Actions are workflows that can handle common build tasks, like continuous delivery and continuous integration. That means that you can use an action to compress images, test your code, and push the code to your hosting platform, etc. Learn more here. In this case, we'll use GitHub actions to automatically deploy our code to Azure App Engine.

The next step will involve configuring the details of the GitHub repository you set up for the web app. Fill in the details then go to the last step.

Under summary, you confirm that all the details you had provided are correct then click Finish

Your code is now automatically being deployed from GitHub to Azure App Service.

If you navigate to your GitHub repository, you'll notice that there is a new file that has been added under the '.github/workflows' folder. If you didn't manage to create a GitHub repo, you can check out the one I created here.

This is a GitHub Actions workflow file
To see the workflow in action, got to the Actions tab in your Github Repository then click on it.

You will be able to see live logs of every workflow step/ job from there. Once it's done, your web app will be live.

Your App is now Deployed! 😎

Like a boss!

Navigate to https://<instance-name>.azurewebsites.net to see it.

Anytime you push code to your repo, this process will happen automatically and your live app will be updated. You set it up once and almost never worry about it again.

It's that easy!

What Next?

Learn how to deploy to Azure App Service from VS Code 🔥
Learn about some other Serverless technology like Azure Functions - it has a very generous monthly free tier
Check out the Microsoft Student Ambassadors, Kenya page for more articles, events and generally anything tech!
Last and definitely not least, Try to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more!

Thank you for reaching the end of the article!

I hope you learned something.

Shameless Plug 😭

I ❤️ anything around Software Development.

I currently work as a Frontend Dev at a company called Inuua Tujenge, working with React, React Native and Django (Python & JavaScript) almost daily.

Feel free to connect with me. 👌

Check out my most recent project - a Remote Code Execution Engine, similar to the ones used for coding on HackerRank and Leetcode.
It currently supports Python, JavaScript, Java, Go, C#, etc.

paulonteri / remote-code-execution-environment

Have you ever wondered how code execution on competitive programming websites like leetcode works? Code that runs code. Tried implementing that.

Remote Code Execution App

Remote code execution app built with JavaScript (React, NodeJS & Express).

Try out the live system here.

Have you ever wondered how Remote Code Execution works?

This happens on sites like HackerRank & competitive programming websites. You write some code then it's executed on another computer(server). The results are then shown to you.

I tried implementing that.

Feel free to go through the code, fix bugs, add new features, e.t.c

Local Setup

Requirements

For development, you will only need Node.js and a node global package, Yarn, installed in your environement.

Node

Just go on official Node.js website and follow the installation instructions Also, be sure to have git available in your PATH, npm might need it (You can find git here).

If the installation was successful, you should be able to run the following command.

$ node --version
v8.11.3
$ npm --version
6.1.0

If…

View on GitHub

Thanks for your valuable time.

Peace!

DEV Community: Paul Onteri

How to Bulk Upload Images from your Website to Pinterest Automatically

Create an RSS Feed

Example Feed

Verify Domain

Connect your RSS feed

References

You don't have Imposter Syndrome (as a beginner)

What Is Imposter Syndrome?

Beginner Syndrome

Impossible for beginners to have Imposter Syndrome

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners

Conclusion

More reading

Serverless Python on Azure: Django with App Service

What is Serverless anyway? 👀

Azure App Service

Django Application setup

paulonteri / django_azure

Serverless Python on Azure: Django hosted on Azure App Service

Django on Azure

Tech

Setup

Article Introduction

Basic Application Setup

Pushing the Code to GitHub

Start by creating a new GitHub repo.

Set up the git repo locally

Deploying to Azure App Service

Provision the target Azure App Service

Configuration:

Subscription

Instance Details

App Service Plan

Deploy to Azure App Service from GitHub

Your App is now Deployed! 😎

What Next?

Shameless Plug 😭

paulonteri / remote-code-execution-environment

Have you ever wondered how code execution on competitive programming websites like leetcode works? Code that runs code. Tried implementing that.

Remote Code Execution App

Local Setup

Requirements

Node