I am a big VPS nerd as I like to have full control (or as much as possible). I also enjoy OpenLiteSpeed better than Apache/Nginx, so I tend to install that stack.
I highly recommend Contabo or Hetzner VPS as their price to performance is very competitive to other companies.
For control panel, I recommend Server Avatar (stupid cheap, works beautifully), or Cyberpanel if you want free DIY.
Note: all links are affiliate-free. I just really like these services.
I have been using Siteground for my WordPress projects with great success and happiness for several years, yes. +1
Now that I’ve discovered Cwicly, I can say (after spinning up an instance there) that Siteground is a great place for Cwicly dev, staging and production sites.
Due to my experience, it’s very easy for me to provision a VPS, and indeed for many projects (fullstack, Ruby on Rails, etc.) I have been using DigitalOcean droplets. Some time ago, I began to like WordOps for self-hosting my own WordPress sites… with a 2-cpu droplet I was able to host quite a few WordPress sites, and it’s so easy to create and maintain them with WordOps, that the first thing I did upon starting with Cwicly (in the last few days!) was spin up a site on my server.
The bad news is I couldn’t get the license activated no matter what I did… and the guys on Cwicly support have been absolutely great bending over backwards trying to get that license activation going, but no luck after more than 24 hours of trying. I brought the PHP down to 8.0 from 8.1 (easy to do with WordOps command line) but still no luck. Tomorrow will try with 7.4 and see if that’s the problem.
I’m sorry for boring everyone with this anecdote (I’m beginning to love using Cwicly, love its philosophy and approach), but I was wondering if anyone at all here has ever used WordOps to support Cwicly instances??? If so, would love to hear what I might be doing wrong with my installation.
In the case of Webinoly, recommended above, does PHP 8.1 work? Or is it better to keep it down to a dull roar at 7.4 (as Siteground is doing, at least on my new install).
Another quick question: Any luck with using Flywheel Local? What’s the story on license activation on a Flywheel Local instance?
I prefer having server and app management separated from cloud or hosting provider, it’s more flexible and leaves options open to switch hosting providers easily and whenever you want. SpinupWP finally added staging, that is good news. I am currently on runcloud, which might be a bit more old fashioned, but supports litespeed server set-up and thus includes its pretty good litespeed caching plugin, and number of servers are not limited (with comparable pro plan). Any experience with runcloud in comparison to spinupWP from your side, e.g. @dranzer ?
I use Recknard for my demo sites because I grabbed their cheap deal from Appsumo last time. I believe it’s not the best hosting performance with this deal, as it’s only $10/year.
I believe it will perform better when I upgrade its hosting spec.
Anyway, I’m using Hostarmada.com. Their support is top-notch.
Update: I am thrilled to announce that the license activation works flawlessly on Flywheel Local, even setting up https before installing Cwicly. So that’s a load off my mind, happy about that!!
Webinoly have PHP 8.2 support. Cwicly works fine for me on it. It should work fine on Wordops also. Not sure what is the issue there. May be you should share credentials with Louis to check at once.
I have not used runcloud. I won’t be able to offer any comparison therefore. spinupwp uses ansible script to provision the server with the stack. There is no agent running on the server full time iirc.
I will also recommend you to check out https://enhance.com/. It works well in my tests and have a solid roadmap. I am using Ansible to deploy my custom stack for personal use and managed clients.
Thanks for reaching out! Finding Cwicly for me is the result (by chance viewing of the great David McCan series on Cwicly) of several years of trying to bring my web app process and practices to WordPress. Just a few weeks ago I had a personal discussion with a great full site editing educator (who will remain nameless here) whom I asked: With Toolset’s virtual retirement from WordPress FSE in June, 2022 after a great start, how can I fit my Content Modeling (necessary for any non-trivial web app) into full site editing, the great future and gift of WordPress? This person argued with me that WordPress was right to leave Content Modeling to one side. Their argument was in essence: “we don’t need no stinkin’ dynamic content, devs don’t know anything about it”. Shuddering, as I say, it was only through chance encounter with David McCan’s work that I found a shiny alternative that brings not only content modeling (packaging in ACF pro brilliantly!), but design systems and everything else right into the future of WordPress (and so the web, despite my enchantment with fullstack metaframeworks) with an optimistic and creative commitment approach opposite to that of Toolset. Wish I had found that back in June.
Soooo, if I can’t use WordOps for now, I’ll just use a Flywheel Local / SiteGround site dev, migrate and deploy workflow and done. The main thing is that my road is now free to travel! Once I finish a few projects I’m doing now, I can revisit the self-hosting VM alternatives, the wrinkles will be gone by then I’m sure.
I’ve used WordOps a lot in the past. Why doesn’t the license activation work now? I don’t know. The Ubuntu 22.04 server is provisioned “normally” for me (no terminal password logins, ssh only access, ufw firewall, then a one-line WordOps install, and one-line WordPress instance installs… nothing special I think). The newness of PHP 8.1, the new version of WordOps that just came out recently, may all be conspiring, or I may have done something wrong. The excellent Cwicly support thinks it has to do with certain functions used in the license activation logic that may have trouble with PHP 8.1, or???.
So as I say, I’m going to use the great Flywheel Local (PHP 8.1 is no problem there, all new default instances) for development and the great Siteground hosting for deployment (via really simple methods of site migration I can even do with bash scripts), for the next few months, and revisit the WordOps universe (if it becomes important to me) then.
Yet another exciting update: the hardworking and persevering Cwicly support team have determined and solved the problem, and there will even be license activation improvements in the next release! So I am free to use WebOps for production deployment if I wish right away! Amazing!
Just throwing out something: have you checked the server logs, especially the connection logs to see anything about the licensing issue? Perhaps the port or something is being blocked by a firewall or some other script.
VPS should definitely not be getting in the way of the licensing call-back feature, unless it got flagged somehow.
Getting the server logs to Louis and the team should really help. Also, I know I spam this but it’s because it really is helpful, install Jam chrome extension so you can record your session whenever you have issues and send that link to the team.
Thanks a lot for your suggestions. Yes, I sent the error and access logs to support right away! They persevered for days and finally found out it had something to do with some shortcomings of WordPress in reporting user agent under certain conditions (that I don’t pretend to understand ) that they’re going to take into account in the next version of the license activation code. So all’s well that ends well!
This is one of the reasons why I love the Cwicly team: they actually care about their users and are super quick to fix things, or at least have good communication when things take a bit longer than anticipated.
) that they’re going to take into account in the next version of the license activation code. So all’s well that ends well!