(It is a sponsored publish.)
It’s in all probability no shock to you that CSS-Methods is (proudly) hosted on Cloudways, DigitalOcean’s managed internet hosting arm. Given each CSS-Methods and Cloudways are a part of DigitalOcean, it was only a matter of time earlier than we’d come collectively this manner. And right here we’re!
We had been beforehand hosted on Flywheel which was a reasonably boutique WordPress internet hosting supplier till WP Engine bought it years again. And, to be very trustworthy and up-front, Flywheel served us extraordinarily properly. There reached a degree when it grew to become fairly clear that CSS-Methods was just too massive for Flywheel to scale alongside. That may’ve led us to check out WP Engine within the absence of Cloudways… nevertheless it’s in all probability good that by no means got here to fruition contemplating current occasions.
Anyway, transferring hosts all the time means no less than a smidge of contest-switching. Completely different server names with completely different configurations with completely different consumer accounts with completely different controls.
We’re a fairly low-maintenance operation round right here, so being on a totally managed host is a profit as a result of I see little or no of the day-to-day nuance that occurs on our server. The Cloudways workforce took care of all of the heavy lifting of migrating us and ensuring we had been arrange with every part we would have liked, from SFTP accounts and database entry to a staging setting and deployment factors.
Our growth circulation used to go one thing like this:
- Hearth up Native (Flywheel’s native growth app)
- Futz round with native growth
- Push to primary
- Let a CI/CD pipeline publish the modifications
I do know, ridiculously easy. But it surely was additionally riddled with errors as a result of we didn’t all the time need to publish modifications on push. There was an actual human margin of error in there, particularly when dealing with WordPress updates. We may have (and may have) had some form of staging setting moderately than blindly trusting what was working domestically. However once more, we’re kinduva a ragtag workforce regardless of the large company backing.
The circulation now appears like this:
- Hearth up Native (we nonetheless use it!)
- Futz round with native growth
- Push to primary
- Publish to staging
- Publish to manufacturing
That is one thing we may have arrange in Flywheel however was trivial with Cloudways. I gave up some automation for high quality assurance’s sake. Switching environments in Cloudways is a single click on and I like a bit guide friction to really feel like I’ve some management within the course of. That may not scale properly for big groups on an enterprise undertaking, however that’s probably not what Cloudways is all about — that’s why we now have DigitalOcean!
See that baseline-status-widget
department within the dropdown? That’s a bit function I’m enjoying with (and can publish about later). I like that GitHub is built-in straight into the Cloudways UI so I can experiment with it in no matter setting I would like, even earlier than merging it with both the staging
or grasp
branches. It makes testing an entire lot simpler and manner much less error-prone than triggering auto-deployments in each which manner.
Right here’s one other nicety: I get snapshot of the variations between my environments by way of Cloudways monitoring. For instance, I used to be making an attempt to replace our copy of the Gravity Varieties plugin simply this morning. It labored domestically however triggered a deadly in staging. I went in and tried to smell out what was up with the staging setting, so I headed to the Vulnerability Scanner and noticed that staging was working an older model of WordPress in comparison with what was working domestically and in manufacturing. (We don’t model management WordPress core, in order that was a simple miss.)
I hypothesized that the newer model of Gravity Varieties had a battle with the older model of WordPress, and this made it ridiculously straightforward to check my assertion. Seems that was appropriate and I used to be assured that pushing to manufacturing was secure and sound — which it was.
That little incident impressed me to share a bit about what I’ve favored about Cloudways to date. You’ll discover that we don’t push our merchandise too laborious round right here. Anytime you expertise one thing pleasant — no matter it’s — is an effective time to weblog about it and this was clearly a type of occasions.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that Cloudways is right for any dimension or sort of WordPress web site. It’s one of many few hosts that may allow you to BOYO cloud, so to talk, the place you’ll be able to maintain your work on a cloud server (like a DigitalOcean droplet, as an example) and let Cloudways handle the internet hosting, providing you with all the liberty to scale when wanted on high of the advantages of getting a managed host. So, for those who want a totally managed, autoscaling internet hosting resolution for WordPress like we do right here at CSS-Methods, Cloudways has you coated.
A Few Methods That Cloudways Makes Working This Web site a Little Simpler initially revealed on CSS-Methods, which is a part of the DigitalOcean household. It is best to get the publication.
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