<blockquote>
  <p>Does the license allow this if I don't map a domain to it and operate it as an IP address OR use an obscure term (staging etc.) in a odd domain (vs. sub-domain as mentioned in docs)?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Yes. As far as I'm aware, Pixel &amp; Tonic consider a <a href="http://buildwithcraft.com/help/try-craft-client-pro" rel="nofollow noreferrer">development site</a> to be any <a href="http://buildwithcraft.com/help/license-enforcement#how-do-we-determine-craft-is-running-on-a-public-domain" rel="nofollow noreferrer">non public domain</a>.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Is this a feasible approach?
  Is there a better (noob-friendly, learnable) way to do this?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Lumping these 2 together since they're directly related.  <a href="https://craftcms.stackexchange.com/questions/10476/host-a-craft-app/10496#10496">This question and subsequent answers</a>  might help you out as well as <a href="http://buildwithcraft.com/docs/installing#additional-resources" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Craft's own list of resources</a>.</p>

<p>It really depends on what you want to learn. When you spin up a droplet or other virtual machine, there's a lot of moving parts there. You'll be dealing with a lot of server management and not necessarily Craft development. It's easy to go really deep down the rabbit role and come out with a lot of (depending on what you seek out) useless knowledge. If you're just tinkering around, you probably want it as hands-off as possible. </p>

<p>Instead of paying for 2 droplet instances, you could spin up a virtual machine locally, like Virtualbox or something prebuilt like Laravel's Homestead. A droplet is also on the internet, thus a "public" server, so unless you want people hacking your instance, you'll want to secure it down. That just adds another layer of complexity.</p>

<p>Virtual machines are great solutions but they're also overkill usually. I find the easiest approach is to develop locally and use something like MAMP and then push it to staging and/or production servers. You don't need to worry much about the nitty gritty of permissions, firewalls, etc.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-11-18T01:12:55.900Z
To add to the above, you can, to a certain extent, have the best of both worlds - use a service like Digital Ocean to make droplets but hand off the bulk of server and security management to ServerPilot.  In which case you could do droplet copies etc.  Not sure I would do deployments that way personally, but it's a really nice option that sits inbetween managed hosting and having to fully manage your own servers.
Jeremy Daalder
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-11-17T19:43:24.730Z
2015-11-17T20:12:59.427Z
2017-04-13T12:51:00.253Z
RitterKnight
<p>I've been learning craft and want to setup a production &amp; development environment. I've primary HTML CSS experience with limited backend or server related experience </p>

<p>One way I thought about doing this was setting up 2 separate droplets on Digital Ocean (w/ServerPilot) and copying digital ocean snapshots from the dev droplet to the production droplet.</p>

<ul>
<li>Is this a feasible approach? </li>
<li>Does the license allow this if I don't map a domain to it and operate it as an IP address OR use an obscure term (staging etc.) in a odd <strong>domain</strong> (vs. sub-domain as mentioned in docs)?</li>
<li>Is there a better (noob-friendly, learnable) way to do this?</li>
</ul>

<p>Thanks</p>

<install><deployment>
Digital Ocean: Dev + Production Droplets
# Digital Ocean: Dev + Production Droplets

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-11-17)

I've been learning craft and want to setup a production & development environment. I've primary HTML CSS experience with limited backend or server related experience

One way I thought about doing this was setting up 2 separate droplets on Digital Ocean (w/ServerPilot) and copying digital ocean snapshots from the dev droplet to the production droplet.

* Is this a feasible approach?
* Does the license allow this if I don't map a domain to it and operate it as an IP address OR use an obscure term (staging etc.) in a odd **domain** (vs. sub-domain as mentioned in docs)?
* Is there a better (noob-friendly, learnable) way to do this?

Thanks

**Tags:** install, deployment

---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2015-11-17. Score: 1

> Does the license allow this if I don't map a domain to it and operate it as an IP address OR use an obscure term (staging etc.) in a odd domain (vs. sub-domain as mentioned in docs)?

Yes. As far as I'm aware, Pixel & Tonic consider a [development site](http://buildwithcraft.com/help/try-craft-client-pro) to be any [non public domain](http://buildwithcraft.com/help/license-enforcement#how-do-we-determine-craft-is-running-on-a-public-domain).

> Is this a feasible approach?
> Is there a better (noob-friendly, learnable) way to do this?

Lumping these 2 together since they're directly related. [This question and subsequent answers](https://craftcms.stackexchange.com/questions/10476/host-a-craft-app/10496#10496) might help you out as well as [Craft's own list of resources](http://buildwithcraft.com/docs/installing#additional-resources).

It really depends on what you want to learn. When you spin up a droplet or other virtual machine, there's a lot of moving parts there. You'll be dealing with a lot of server management and not necessarily Craft development. It's easy to go really deep down the rabbit role and come out with a lot of (depending on what you seek out) useless knowledge. If you're just tinkering around, you probably want it as hands-off as possible.

Instead of paying for 2 droplet instances, you could spin up a virtual machine locally, like Virtualbox or something prebuilt like Laravel's Homestead. A droplet is also on the internet, thus a "public" server, so unless you want people hacking your instance, you'll want to secure it down. That just adds another layer of complexity.

Virtual machines are great solutions but they're also overkill usually. I find the easiest approach is to develop locally and use something like MAMP and then push it to staging and/or production servers. You don't need to worry much about the nitty gritty of permissions, firewalls, etc.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: To add to the above, you can, to a certain extent, have the best of both worlds - use a service like Digital Ocean to make droplets but hand off the bulk of server and security management to ServerPilot.  In which case you could do droplet copies etc.  Not sure I would do deployments that way personally, but it's a really nice option that sits inbetween managed hosting and having to fully manage your own servers.  

---

