fortrabbit blog

Building a hosting platform, sharing our journey.

2024
How we are evaluating an infrastructure provider for our new platform
Need to reset your Craft CMS admin password but email functionality isn't working?
Next level collaboration features for the new platform.
How we use client feedback to shape our service.
Verbs first for interfaces with more natural language.
Why we plan to drop a signature feature of the Pro Stack.
Is something missing to bring together JS and PHP?
So many options - React, Svelte, Vue, Nuxt, htmx, Interia, Livewire. What to choose for our new web properties?
Fail early they say. Don't throw hardware on performance problems we say.contributions.
Changelog on new versions.
Update your Craft CMS 4 installation. There is a low-effort high-impact vulnerability out there.
Keyboard shortcuts are my productivity fuel. Navigating inconsistent keyboard shortcut landscapes across different programs feels like an obstacle course. A significant number of interactions remain universal across software. Why then, must we relearn basic actions like "insert link" with every new tool?
2020
Composer 2 will soon be available here. What you need to know.
Learn about JSON columns in MySQL and how to use them in Laravel.
Let's Encrypt will change its root certificates. Learn how this might affect you as a fortrabbit client.
Our command line tool to help with Craft CMS deployment on fortrabbit is now production grade ready.
What you might want to know about the upcoming EOL of PHP 7.2.
We are finally making MySQL 8 available. What clients need to know about the roll-out.
The new tool by Pixel & Tonic, can we recommend it yet?
The Privacy Shield is no longer valid. How to proceed?
Install the DDEV and power existing Craft CMS development sites.
What PHP development tools are available? What are the pros and cons of each tool?
How to check your website and how to clean up.
How we prepared for the virus and what you can do.
Changelog on new versions.
How our new invoice numbers are structured and what went wrong when we rolled it out.
2017
An opinionated field guide on Email as a Service providers.
Successful communication in customer support chat channels.
Why to use a service for transactional e-mails.
An opinionated field guide on developer-friendly video services.
An opinionated field guide on developer-friendly CDN services.
fortrabbit is now an official Hosting Partner for Craft CMS.
An opinionated field guide on developer-friendly domain hosting services.
Our real-live practices on auto-generated client e-mail communication.
You can now transfer Apps to your clients!
The update to the latest PHP versions caused a some downtime yesterday.
More powerful plans, same price level.
Learn how to use rsync from the command line to deploy code changes (to our Universal Apps) incredibly fast.
We are manually moving many Old Apps to Universal Apps to avoid downtime and data loss for stragglers.
Learn how to use CDNs as an easy-to-use edge cache.
We have released PHP 7.1 for all Universal and Professional Apps.
Now available: Automated backups for Professional Apps.
2016
See all platform changes with new Universal Stack.
Optimized for CMS driven websites - made for your needs: Backups, Git, SFTP, HTTPS & team collaboration.
Quicker boarding, App access links and more.
What took us so long to come up with a Drupal 8 install guide.
A new Hobby line, migration info for Old App owners.
Choose a framework or CMS to get started more quickly.
Better Windows support and smoother boarding.
A more helpful UI + forwarding naked domains.
Where we are, what we are up to.
Free SSL certificates for custom domains via Let's Encrypt are here now.
Thoughts on flat file CMS and static site generators, mostly PHP-related.
Learn how to enhance your workflows with this new feature.
How we tried to test the speed benefits of the new internet protocol.
A new integrated S3 compatible cloud storage is here.
Insights why we will not offer an Add-On program soon and what we have instead
New data center location, new currency
Insights on how we deal with bounced payments
Outsource that heavy lifting in the background — now you can.
Trends, pivots & troubles in PaaS hosting 2015
What's going on in e-commerce?
2015
Scalable, extensible and with even more features
HTTP/2 expectations and pitfalls
Are content management systems ready for the cloud?
Passwords in Git is bad, ENV vars considered harmful, now what?
How to enable Dropbox as your App's persistent cloud storage.
How to setup Amazon S3 as a cloud storage for your App.
Introducing the New Apps in BETA.
Which PHP versions we'll support when.
More Account security settings.
Our best practices in PHP application design
CSS, JS and Images, how to generate and to deploy.
What our users are saying and what we think it means.
Value-based VS cost-based pricing for a hosting service.
A stubborn analysis of hosting solutions for developers.
.env import and domain DNS checks!
Where we are heading to.
How hustling with accounting keeps us away from developing our service.
Discussing usability, culture and security.
We are listening. Feedback is welcome.
Helping existing users boarding the new dashboard.
That's one small step for mankind, a giant leap for us.
Tinkering with static site generation.
Blackfire profiler BETA is now available at fortrabbit.
2014
Another interesting story.
Learn what is going to change with the new dashboard.
SSL Poodle is already patched — no further action required.
What to expect from our new dashboard.
Finally we have a dedicated downtime communication channel.
A client interview from the real world client.
Price reductions for: Memcache, MySQL and Workers.
The SMTP Wrapper and the ReSync Tool will go away.
Just a fancy info-graphic to say happy birthday to PHP.
Those random 408 errors should finally be resolved!
We now have the New Relic demon running.
A state of the PHP cloud hosting scene overview.
Another interesting story.
This exploit is a vulnerability in the heartbeat of TLS in the OpenSSL implementation. We're patched up by now.
Enhancing our platform with professional & reliable developer to developer support.
Breaking news, fortrabbit releases a brand new stack.
Another interesting story.
Yep, we are going to replace our freemium with a free trial model.
Another interesting story.
PHP 5.5 is finally here. This and some other news.
Announcing upcoming maintenance work.
2013
What's currently happening here and what's not.
How to integrate the web IDE codio here on fortrabbit.
Claim an extra credit for an even better test drive of our platform.
Introducing a more fair and more fun freemium model.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!
Is freemium the right business model for our service or shall we switch to a free trial model?
What we have learned on the Laracon conference 2013 in Amsterdam.
Learn how to do continuous integration with Codehip on fortrabbit.
Results and learnings from our latest questionnaire among our users with 327 answers.
Another interesting story.
We have a new Add-On: Workers! Learn about it and what you can do with it.
What's more important in hosting? Performance or convenience?
A case study.
fortrabbit under attack.
Behind the scenes when something goes wrong.
Flat, unlimited and forever it shall be.
Abot a new security feature.
Welcome Symphony CMS, we now support XSL.
Our first 4 digits number! Thank you for your interest in our service!
As many of you requested: PHP and Git on the shell are here!
Have you seen our new PHP settings page?
Shutting down an old fortrabbit service.
Our plans for the year.
2012
Modularize everything!
New features in the dashboard.
IaaS, PaaS, bare metal, shared hosting, managed hosting — Quo vadis?
By 2009, computers will disappear.
We had the honor to present fortrabbit at the Berlin PHP usergroup.
This video shows you how easy it is to set up Symfony on fortrabbit.
This video show you how to install FuelPHP on fortrabbit with Git and PhpStorm.
The cloud: economically attractive, but what the about ecological impact?
What the hosting- and the meat-market have in common.
This videos shows you how to set up SlimPHP on fortrabbit with Git and Composer
This video shows you how to run Laravel on fortrabbit
This video shows you a simple example with PHPStorm and fortrabbit
Our iterative approach.
fortrabbit PHP platform launched
Some links on newish PHP.
How to setup a production/development work-flow for website development.
Bootstrapping in Berlin.
Looking for the perfect PHP hosting platform.
How to handle your dependencies with PHP Composer.
The private BETA for for our upcoming platform.
Analysing the answers of our questionnaire.
Asking developers about their preferences.
Musings about the comon www. subdomain.
About the the new fortrabbit knowledge base.
Web IDEs everywhere! Are they any good? What's the buzz?
Is there such actually free web hosting?
How bound are you to your hosting provider? Does this really matter?
Another interesting story.
New-school cloud or legacy LAMP style — what's state of the art in PHP hosting?
What PHP cloud platforms are currently actually out there?
Another interesting story.
Help us build the perfect platform for you — answer 20 questions.
The obvious first post claiming we are here to take over the world.