Introduction to Backstage: Developer Portals Made Easy

About

Developers working in cloud native teams face the challenge of shuffling between microservices, external APIs, libraries, and other software components. Developer portals like Backstage can help teams reduce tech fragmentation, knowledge silos, and lack of ownership while promoting creativity and autonomy.

LFS142x is designed for DevOps engineers and professionals interested in or working in Developer Productivity or Developer Experience teams. The course starts with a discussion on developer portals, arguing in favor of implementing one in your organization. It then goes on to discuss Backstage, the leading open source framework for creating developer portals, covering the architecture, features (Catalog, Scaffolder, TechDocs, and Plugins). It then goes over running Backstage both locally and in production, and helps you map your organization's needs to what Backstage has to offer. Last but not least, you will learn how you can get involved and contribute to the Backstage project.

This course prepares you to create a Backstage setup that fits your organization's needs.

What you will learn

• Discuss the benefits of implementing a Developer Portal in your organization

• Explain what Backstage is

• Discuss Backstage’s architecture

• Map your organization's needs to what Backstage has to offer

• Set up a Backstage Catalog

• Explain how Backstage’s Scaffolder works

• Explain how Backstage’s TechDocs work

• Customize Backstage with plugins

Skills you learn

• Self Service Technologies
• Application Programming Interface (API)
• Toolchain
• Creativity
• Cloud-Native Computing
• Microservices
• DevOps

Auto Summary

"Introduction to Backstage: Developer Portals Made Easy" is a foundational course in IT & Computer Science offered by edX. It focuses on automating discoverability using Backstage’s Catalog, enhancing developer self-service with its Scaffolder, and integrating existing toolchains via plugins. The course spans 35 hours and is available through Professional and Starter subscriptions, making it ideal for those looking to streamline development processes within their organization.