Introducing StackFu, Social Server-Provisioning. We’re beta testing a killer new system that allows you to create and install thousands of available server stacks.

Who can Apply as a Beta tester?

We will consider any developer who is interested in creating, testing, deploying and sharing their stacks. We focus a lot on the social aspect of our system, and collaboration with other users is highly important.

So, if you’re interested in creating stacks, apply now.

What can I expect from the Beta?

During the beta phase of StackFu we will focus on user created stacks, making sure that the sharing and deployment process goes smoothly. We expect that a lot of stacks will be created during this phase.

The most efficient beta testers will receive full free accounts for life, as well as some of the highest stacker levels in our community.

Hey there folks. Time for a brief update on things to come.

After our price drop, we are committed to continually amaze our customers and to offer top notch features. With that, we intend to keep offering one of the best values for the buck out there.

Last week we delivered our new and improved website and we’re very happy with the results and all the comments we received. Thank you!

Late next week we’ll promote a couple of changes to the Rapp engine, listed below. By the way, did you know that Rapp updates itself on your server? If we add new features, or fix engine bugs, you get them when you try to push your app again. Now, is that cool or what?

Node.JS experimental support

We are unleashing Node.JS support for Rapp. If you have a Node.JS application that you want to deploy to a Webby, please email me: felipe@webbynode.com.

PHP and Nginx improvements

Up until now, when you deployed a PHP application using Rapp on nginx, we would start a fastcgi server and keep it running in the background. This approach was not the cleanest around, but it served its purpose, up until now.

Now we’re migrating to use PHP-FPM, which is a very performant alternative. If you want to know more about PHP-FPM, click here.

New WSGI support and improved Django support

With the latest Rapp and Webbynode Gem release early next week, we’re also introducing beta support for Python WSGI apps. Again, if you have a deployment story using either WSGI or Django, please get in touch – we’re looking for beta testers.

For Django, we’re now transitioning from the fastcgi approach when hosting Python apps using Rapp and nginx, to using Passenger instead. Passenger is already installed and demands less configuration and administration from the user (that’s you!), so we think it’s a major win.

Future features

First, pardon the tongue twister. Seriously now, we’re always looking forward to improving the Rapp deployment experience, and after we release this upcoming version, we’ll be focusing on some requested features, like deploying an alternate git branch, adding the possibility to skip migrations (when using MongoDB and Rails 2 or 3, for instance) and other exciting features.

Another big feature we’re debuting soon is a public Rapp server, where Webbynode users and non-users can experiment with Rapp and get a feel for how it works.

If you have a suggestion or a bug report, please create an issue on our GitHub issue tracker:

http://github.com/webbynode/webbynode/issues

Now, it’s your turn: don’t be shy and let us know what’s on your mind and what features you’d like implemented!

Hey guys, we are looking for a a few blogs to sponsor. We would like to specifically offer sponsorship for developer focused blogs with about 2k visits per month min.

Email sponsorship@webbynode.com directly so we can chat. Pass this message along: maybe we can sponsor someone you know.

Thanks!

Carlos.

After today’s big release we have received a lot of requests for helping new customers migrate to Webbynode from other cloud & vps providers.

It’s that time of year again. Very exciting news from your folks here at Webbynode.

It has been a few months of being very quiet, but we have been very busy working on today’s release – wich we are very excited about.

This release is part of the process to provide more value to our customers, and we have brought a lot of new features as well as a new pricing structure.

The new pricing structure is now live for new customers, and also for active customers – who will be charged the new prices on next month’s invoice.

We’re proud to present the new pricing table:

* Webby 256 $9.99
* Webby 384 $14.99
* Webby 512 $19.99
* Webby 768 $29.99
* Webby 1024 $39.99
* Webby 2048 $79.99
* Webby 4096 $159.99

Rapp Officially Live

Our Rapid Application Deployment framework, Rapp, is now publicly available. And there are tons of new Rapp features too!

Extensive Engines Support

• Full support for Rails 3 RC1 and Bundler RC;
• Improved Rails 2 support;
• Bundler support for Rails 2 and Rack applications.
• Beta support for Django 1.2.1;
• Improved PHP support;
• Node.JS support being released in the upcoming weeks as an alpha preview.

Improved Usability

Alternate SSH Port: You now can use Rapp even if you changed your SSH port to make your Webby more secure.

Smart defaults: We now don’t require you to tell us which Webby you want to deploy to, if you happen to have only one. It was kind of obvious, right? We also add your SSH key to the remote server by default, so you don’t have to type your password over and over again.

Add-ons

One of the most exciting news regarding Rapp is the addition of addons (pun not intended).

With one command you can manage which addons you want to install along with your application.

We support Memcached, Beanstalk, Redis and the long awaited MongoDB.

Multiplatform

Rapp already worked great in Linux and Mac OS X. However, a very requested feature was always Windows support.

We have now a dedicated tutorial to explain what you need to install to make Rapp work in your Windows machine. Go check it out.

And, on top of that, you still have all the goodness Rapp brings:

* Amazon S3 Backups
* Git Workflow Deployment
* DNS Integration
* PHP / Rails 3 / Rails 2 / Rack side-by-side support
* Webby handling (reboot, restart, etc.)
* Deployment hooks

32bit & New OS versions.

Alongside with these exciting Rapp improvements, we have released more two long awaited features: 32-bit OS support and Ubuntu 10.04 support, both 32 and 64-bit. With that pack, you also get the following new OSes:

* Ubuntu 10.04 (32 and 64-bit)
* Ubuntu 9.10 (32 and 64-bit)
* Ubuntu 9.04 (32 and 64-bit)
* Debian 5.03 (32 and 64-bit)
* CentOS 5.4 (32 and 64-bit)
* Fedora Core 12 (32 and 64-bit)

Thats the news for today! Enjoy the new pricing and new features. Let us know what you think and leave a comment.

Today we noticed that the amount of email from our contact web form had diminished. It turns out it was totally down for a few days. We just received a lot of emails and have replied to them all.

We’re really sorry for this, easy communication is one of our personal pet peeves.

If your email was not replied please send it again via the web form, or email us directly at service@webbynode.com so that we can take care of you.