Webby Manager v2, Officially Launched

I have very exciting news this time. Very. Exciting. News.

We have delivered yesterday a major overhaul of our Manager application. It’s not only a new version: it’s a whole new application altogether.

There are a mind blowing number of changes, improvements and additions. Check out the highlights.

I have very exciting news this time. Very. Exciting. News.

We have delivered yesterday a major overhaul of our Manager application. It’s not only a new version: it’s a whole new application altogether.

There are a mind blowing number of changes, improvements and additions. Check out the highlights.

New Relic RPM seamless integration

The first noteworthy feature is New Relic RPM integration. You can now assign an RPM License Key to each of your Webbies. If you don’t currently have one, no problem: we can create a new one for you without even making you leave the Manager application.

When you redeploy your Webby using a ReadyStack, you will be presented automatically with an option to deploy your application using your key, and then you’ll have access to your application’s metrics dashboard from the Manager.

GitHub integration

Another awesome new feature is GitHub integration. You can now add your GitHub Username and API token to your account. Once you do that, all your GitHub repositories (public AND private) will be available to you.

What does this mean? It means that if you have a Rails application hosted on GitHub, you can now deploy using our rock star Rails ReadyStack and select what repository you want to install the application from.

By doing that, we’ll create a new SSH public key for your Webby, add it to your GitHub account and clone your repository for you. Just like that.

But wait, there’s more: we’ll also configure the cloned directory as your Rails document root. It doesn’t really matter if you chose Apache or nginx as your webserver, and it doesn’t matter if you chosen Passenger or Mongrel. The application will be there and configured. Talk about spoiling our user base!

But wait: there’s even more. We know it: most applications don’t come pre-configured when you clone them, do they? You always end up having to configure a database.yml here, adding a few gems there, and whatnot… I am sure you know the drill.

I am glad to say we thought of that too… We came up with a simple solution to this problem, in a very Railsist way… If you know all the steps it takes for your app to be configured, you can assemble them in a shell script and put that in your repo too, you just have to follow our convention. After finishing the repo cloning, we’ll go inside it and look for a file called webby_config.sh (yeah, convention over configuration… take that!). If we can find one, we’ll execute it. To sum up, you can achieve one-click deploy from GitHub now. How about that?

ReadyApps

Well, since we just finished the GitHub integration topic, it’s time to talk about yet another, sort of related feature: ReadyApps.

If you’re an active member (or even an active lurker, which may sound like a paradox) of the Rails community, you know that there are some applications that are widely adopted by the community. Our idea was to leverage those applications, by offering one-click installs of those as well.

Since those apps are very popular, we thought it would make no sense for each user to fork them and add the webby_config.sh file to configure it individually. So we did that for you. Do you love us already? Good. How about now?

The initial app offering comes with Mephisto (a blogging engine), Radiant (a CMS system), Tracks (a great todo manager) and Typo (another great blogging engine). That’s our first batch of apps, but more are coming soon.

I know what you’re thinking! But Mephisto doesn’t install with Rails 2.42.XYZ.1hb, right? Well, don’t worry. We won’t replace the rails version you chose. We will just install whichever version the app needs in parallel. Upcoming manager releases will address this in a more transparent way.

You can take a look at each application’s config script to understand how you can do the same for your apps. They are always going to be available under webbynode’s GitHub profile. This means you can fork them, make them cooler and make them available back to the community.

DNS Support

This one has to be the single most requested feature: DNS support. Wait no more, tho. Full DNS support is here, and here to stay. You can now (at last!) configure your DNS zones and add records, all from the manager, all in the interface you’re used to.

But that’s not all: we have Reverse DNS too. Click, click, bam! RDNS records in place.

Keyboard Shortcuts

OK, I have to say it: we’re all geeks on Webbynode, proud geeks if you will.

Like most geeks, we just can’t get used to mousing. I have no real statistics to back me up on this one, but that’s a feeling I have. Well, OK, at least I don’t like mousing and love keyboard shortcuts. There, I said it! And yes, this may have been selfish of me to come up with this new feature, but I think it will please a lot of our customers too… Right?

We have added a couple bunch of nice keyboard shortcuts to many features in the manager.

The first evidence of such shortcuts will appear when you log in. You’ll notice a little arrow on the left of your webby list. That’s our new “cursor”, that indicates which is the current selected webby. If you have more than one webby, you’ll be able to navigate up and down using the k and j keys, just like a vi junkie, or like Gmail does it.

By having a highlighted webby, you can take actions on it. To go to the dashboard, for instance, just press o (again, we followed Gmail on this and made the dashbOard shortcut o and not d). Some more actions you can take, just for fun: r goes to the redeploy page, c goes to the console page.

You can even execute common tasks right from the My Webbies page: press x then r to restart your Webby (don’t worry, a confirmation message will popup), x then u to shut it down (of course, if it’s up) and x then s to boot it (you got it: if it’s off).

Too much for you to remember? Worry about that you should not, Padawan. We have one last key that may be the only one you have to remember: h. Guess what pops up when you press it? You got it… A nice, heart warming help screen. Oh, wait: did I say it’s context-sensitive? Yes, it is. Depending on which page of the manager you are on, you’ll see more or less options on it.

Just as a final tip on this never ending topic: moving from one area to the other is also very easy. When you press g (as in Go), the top tabs of the Manager UI will have the shortcut keys underlined, so you can press one of those to go to the specific section. So g then w goes to Webbies, g then a goes to Account, g then d to DNS and g then s goes to Support.

Enough with keys? Enough with keys!

Conclusion

Those are the hot topics I wanted to cover, but that’s not – by any means – all the news we have. There’s a lot – and I mean a lot – more going on, so if you’re lucky enough to be the owner of a Webby already, you’ll soon be able to enjoy all that.

Well, if you don’t own a Webby yet – wait no more. We have a VIP sale going on and all I can say is that it will not go on forever. I can go as far as saying that it will end shortly after this launch. Call your family, spam your friends – this is the time to get yourself a Webby.

Speak up! We love comments, so leave yours please. We’re driven by our community.

Best wishes and until next time.

Yours truly,
Felipe Coury
(see, it even rhymes!)