It’s most likely no shock to you that CSS-Tips is (proudly) hosted on Cloudways, DigitalOcean’s managed internet hosting arm. Given each CSS-Tips and Cloudways are a part of DigitalOcean, it was only a matter of time earlier than we’d come collectively this fashion. 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 sincere and up-front, Flywheel served us extraordinarily properly. There reached a degree when it grew to become fairly clear that CSS-Tips was just too large for Flywheel to scale alongside. Which may’ve led us to check out WP Engine within the absence of Cloudways… nevertheless it’s most likely good that by no means got here to fruition contemplating current occasions.
Anyway, shifting hosts at all times means a minimum of a smidge of contest-switching. Totally different server names with totally different configurations with totally different consumer accounts with totally 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 crew took care of all of the heavy lifting of migrating us and ensuring we had been arrange with the whole lot we would have liked, from SFTP accounts and database entry to a staging setting and deployment factors.
Our growth move used to go one thing like this:
- Hearth up Native (Flywheel’s native growth app)
- Futz round with native growth
- Push to major
- Let a CI/CD pipeline publish the adjustments
I do know, ridiculously easy. Nevertheless it was additionally riddled with errors as a result of we didn’t at all times need to publish adjustments on push. There was an actual human margin of error in there, particularly when dealing with WordPress updates. We might have (and may have) had some type of staging setting slightly than blindly trusting what was working domestically. However once more, we’re kinduva a ragtag crew regardless of the massive company backing.
The move now appears to be like like this:
- Hearth up Native (we nonetheless use it!)
- Futz round with native growth
- Push to major
- Publish to staging
- Publish to manufacturing
That is one thing we might 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 just a little guide friction to really feel like I’ve some management within the course of. Which may not scale properly for big groups on an enterprise mission, however that’s probably not what Cloudways is all about — that’s why we have now DigitalOcean!
See that baseline-status-widget department within the dropdown? That’s just a little function I’m enjoying with (and can publish about later). I like that GitHub is built-in instantly 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 method much less error-prone than triggering auto-deployments in each which method.
Right here’s one other nicety: I get a great snapshot of the variations between my environments by way of Cloudways monitoring. For instance, I used to be trying 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 operating an older model of WordPress in comparison with what was operating 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 just a little about what I’ve preferred about Cloudways to this point. You’ll discover that we don’t push our merchandise too arduous round right here. Anytime you expertise one thing pleasant — no matter it’s — is an efficient 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 measurement or kind 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, for 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, if you happen to want a totally managed, autoscaling internet hosting resolution for WordPress like we do right here at CSS-Tips, Cloudways has you lined.
