Does this mean it'd be waste of time to write up my "let me tell you about my favorite database" story as part of an application for a job at compose.io ? (serious question)

I just submitted mine. The job looks attractive for a techie who likes writing. Mind you, I'm not entirely sure I like the idea of big blue sitting there in the background, metastasizing its woes everywhere.

Good writeup for your experience with Rails and EBS. I've built my project, Zejoop dot com, in Java/Groovy/Grails and deployed on AWS Elastic BeanStalk - and I'm very happy with my setup so far.

As for your comment about the multitude of services available on AWS, I agree. They've recently added ACM certificate manager which simplified my maintenance considerably.

Their ACM easy implementation probably saved me at least 20 hours of cert renewal agony, plus it was free!

...seems like pretty basic advice, but I find it very helpful - thanks for making this comment; my own project, zejoop dot com would benefit from a landing page makeover along these lines. I have struggled with this (a clear landing page and CTA) so, a straightforward, easy-to-implement formula helps. Thanks!

(edit for clarity)

Subtle..

Anyway your website looks only half finished, odd spacings and the default blue link color, non capitalised when it should be etc.

Thanks for looking, and I agree with your assessment. I'm no designer, and only a novice developer. I have a friend who is helping me address weaknesses by designing UI/UX for eventual package as iOs app. I checked your guide; that may be helpful as well. Your feedback /help is appreciated. Will fix.

Guide is great, except my environment (which can't be renamed) is "My First Elastic BeanStalk Application" - this results in error on CLI "Value 'My First Elastic BeanStalk Application' at 'environmentName' failed to satisfy constraint: Member must have length less than or equal to 23"... stuck

I figured out my own mistakes: [1] the actual name was 'Default-Environment', and [2] I had used the wrong zone when I set up AWS CLI using the 'aws configure' command. Fixed both mistakes and zejoop dot com is back online with a working SSL Cert.

Thanks for documenting that! Now if I could only remember where I put my I put my 'AWS Access Key ID' and its corresponding 'AWS Secret Access Key' so that I could 'aws configure' from the CLI I'd be golden! The guide looks great though.

I have since fixed my problem by creating a new key/key-ID pair.

Buying SSL Cert through Bluehost (my domain registered, and blog hosted) and figuring out how to apply it my web-app, zejoop.com, hosted on AWS was far and away the most annoying and difficult chore in my development/deployment process as a relatively junior SW developer. If I could solve all inhouse within AWS (at reasonable cost) is be very happy. My cert just renewed, so until I roll change to AWS my https:// is down. If update is as difficult for me as original install was, then I guess it will be about 18 hours of aggravation. So I'll look into this, if the OP title is a reality.

FYI (and disclaimer I work here) CloudFlare provides SSL as a service for free and you can host your site anywhere: https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/

Thanks, I will investigate. Not clear though if I'll need to convert the cert though to AWS load balancer accepted format... that was the bulk of my earlier problem, especially handling the chain bundle. The AWS cert service, I assume, would eliminate the conversion problem for me. Thanks... I'll check it out

problem solved

I can't ssh into instance using the AWS documentation (I was pretty careful following the instructions and know I have the right instance id and region)--> "Permission denied (publickey)."

(I've since fixed this - I hadn't chmod'd right, and didn't account for working from an ubuntu machine)

I commend the spirit and attitude of your post as well, especially having also gotten a rejection. I am curious though, what exactly did you learn from this experience? I'd love to be able to claim the same, but given absolutely zero feedback from the process, I'm at a loss to do so.

I do commend yours and the above's attitude!

Specifically I felt that going through the YC application forced me to think through questions that any other investor/incubator/accelerator (and even some customers) would also have.

Additionally, since the answers I had to those questions didn't pass muster with the partners I can either shrug it off (YC is extremely competitive and even they admit they make mistakes all the time) and take the rejection as additional motivation or I can take their decision as truth and take a closer look at my current business model to see what can/should be tweaked. Either way it can be helpful :)

Of course it would be nice if the rejection emails were more personalized, but I just don't think that's possible with the number of applications they receive.

- rejection postmarked 1:59 pm for zejoop.com - one view of founder video - zero views of demo video - I am a single founder - this was my third YC application, all for Winter sessions

- I don't want to live in a world where someone else is making the world a better place than Zejoop.com is making the world a better place

I think this is a great response; it may come in handy for what I am up to.