Answers.Body: <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>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-11-18T01:12:55.900Z
Answers.Text: 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.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Jeremy Daalder
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-11-17T19:43:24.730Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2015-11-17T20:12:59.427Z
Answers.LastEditDate: 2017-04-13T12:51:00.253Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: RitterKnight
Body: <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>
  
Tags: <install><deployment>
Title: Digital Ocean: Dev + Production Droplets
ThreadText: # 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.  
  
  ---
  
  