New to Wappler/hosting and have some questions

Hosting General
#1

I’ve only ever used things like WordPress before and am trying to figure out how Wappler and hosting in general works. Lots of terms and services I want to make sure I have correct.

First off, Docker is just like a fancy FTP correct? It’s used to upload your site to your host. And is the free version fine or would I need to upgrade? Not exactly sure what image pulls, and concurrent builds are.

Second, the Google Firebase hosting, you cannot use server-side languages, does that mean you cannot use a database? Similarly, would you be able to still have a dynamic site by using JSON for example? And is this how it works for basic shared hosting as well? For example, I have shared hosting with Site Ground and it says they don’t support node.js. So, I couldn’t use a database and such, but a basic site made in Wappler would work on there?

Third, is there a big difference between managed hosting or a VM? On Digital Ocean they are very similar prices. I know managed is easier for newcomers, but would I be missing out on anything if I didn’t get the VM?

I’m also a bit confused on databases. Using Digital Ocean for example, do you have a database when you buy a Droplet or App Platform, or do you need to still get one? I see the option to pay 15$ for a managed database but I don’t know if that means I don’t have one if I don’t get that, or if it is just an upgrade.

I’m also confused on S3. Does it do something that my host and/or database can’t do?

Thats all the questions I can think of right now, any help or links to relevant resources would be appreciated.

#2

Hi. I’m using docker with digitalocean.

I’m almost a year on Wappler and I don’t really understand docker as well so all I can say is that Wappler handles the complexities.

When you create a database with docker and when you publish this, all you need is a droplet. I did separate this with a managed database hosting on digitalocean for the live app just in case I mess something up with docker as I don’t understand it well enough.
In development I do use the database within docker.

Since I started with Wappler there were new updates regarding hosting without the need for docker but I don’t have experience with that as I started my project with docker. Maybe someone that knows more about this can advise what the easiest / best setup is right now.

The S3 connector is to connect with the S3 storage services like digitalocean’s spaces. I use digitalocean’s spaces to host user uploaded pictures, videos etc for example.

#3

Thanks for all the answers! I’ll have to look around a bit and see if Docker is still the way to go or not.

#4

I have used a few hosting solutions.

In my opinion and what I use most often is a Digital Ocean droplet, which Wappler creates for me, as well as the internal database on the same droplet and a user uploads volume also directly on the Droplet, so one single droplet with NodeJS does 98% of it all. The other 2% is handled by one.com and then is for the domain name registration/management, and the email.

For this option I do it all directly in Wappler without even opening digital ocean at all, you may need to at least once to get an API Key or Secret Key, but after that all you need is Wappler.

I have used Digital Oceans managed databases for some projects, and I have also just gone and created my own blank droplet and installed a database on it, which i use to connect with multiple other droplets.
I also use Digital Ocean for some WordPress hosted solutions using their premade droplets, as well as some larger situations where I used a full WHM, with cPanel, and created my own dedicated server as such, which requires additional costs for cPanel licenses.

Personally i think using the built in Docker/digital ocean solution is simpler than full blown managed servers regardless if they are physical or VM servers.
On my managed dedicated linux server I have to go through WHM, then install a bunch of stuff like passenger to get nodejs working, if you only really doing php and database then i suppose it is not a major difference in setup time vs a nodejs deploy.

#5

Thanks for the input! A few quick questions if you don’t mind.

Do you use the free version of Docker?
It’s one website per droplet, right? You can’t run multiple sites off of one?
What is the difference between Deploy and Publish? I couldn’t find any documentation on them.

1835×36

Thanks again.

#6

I use the paid for version of docker, normally the smallest little droplet, which i think is 5 or 6 USD, I generally prefer the intel droplets which i think are 1USD more

I mostly use 1 droplet per website, which includes many containers inside the droplet, 1 for the website, 1 for the database, 1 for the user upload volume, 1 for portainer, 1 for traefik.
So 1 droplet with 5 containers inside it, all controlled and configured in Wappler UI.
This is not to say that you can not run 100 websites inside a single droplet, it just depends what your droplet consists of. If you wanted you could shove an entire WHM install inside the droplet, and configure 100 websites to all run via cpanel interfaces. The cpanel licenses would probably cost more than having multiple droplets though.
Keep in mind if you use Node, you do not have WHM/cPanel/Plesk nor Apache, PHP, etc, NodeJS requires no webserver software to run, its a self contained environment.

Deploy is generally to package and create a container locally using your docker desktop frameworks then deploy it onto digital ocean.
Publish is more like FTP and used for your cpanel type servers.
They are 2 different words that do slightly different things to achieve a similar result depending on the hosting type and server language you choose in your project setup.

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