My last invoice from Azure was quite high. I started thinking about what I have there and why it costs so much. Couple Web Pages with custom domain, 3 databases (one contains just a small table) and some other “Legacy” resources. Even if had squeezed my services it still would have been much. Too much.
That’s why I stared to looking for new hosting provider tailored to my needs. I chose Webio and in this post I will write why and how I configured deployment of CiuchApp dashboard there.
Ok, lets start with what I needed. For sure websites (not many, let’s say 10 – I think more about it as my playground, not commercial investment). Suport for lukaszsadlocha.pl domain – for sure I wanted to keep links like blog.lukaszsadlocha.pl, resume.lukaszsadlocha.pl and other. I also needed to move this WordPress site, so it would be great to have autoinstaller for well know CMS, Forums etc. couple databases, .NET support and trial period to play around with hosting before actually paying for this. I started 3 different trials periods and Webio in the winner. It meets all my needs (14 websites, 2 domains, 2 MsSQL, 2 MySQL, WordPress, ASP.NET Core and many others) and it is offered in quite good price.
Below you can see few screen captures and quick demo how I deployed part of CiuchApp (ASP.NET Core empty application that will be a dashboard once done)
This is how Webio dashboard looks like:
Very clear – I liked it. It is also more modern then 2 other free trials hosting that I took into consideration
I went to domains and connected my domain with my account on Webio
Before that I had set DNS in my domain provider to new server and I created couple sub domains. After couple hours domain pointed to the right server.
For every subdomain I was able to create website, so in the end I had 4 websites for subdomains and I will redirect lukaszsadlocha.pl to this blog.
Once you click on any application name you get simple view
I was surprised that there are so many option customizable. Of course it isn’t Azure WebApp with great scaling, CI/CD and other. but it’s not bad at all.
I hit the website URL and it was as I expected. (Site under construction – but in polish :)). To keep some order I decided to create seperate ftp account for publish each site. So here are are
And tested over FileZilla – all works – great!
Now I moved to CiuchApp Solution (described in my previous post) and started instance of ASP.NET Core website CiuchApp.Dashboard which is a simple out of the box Website from VS2017
By default it runs over https (not provided for my playground area) so to changed it I edited launchSettings.json by setting sslPort to 0 and replacing https to http
in Visual Studio I created publish profile for my ASP.NET Core app
and filled it with FTP account and domain details
Rename publish profile name to make it more memorizable. Clicked publish and here we go
What I need to investigate further in Webio?
- WebDeploy approach instead of FTP
- MS SQL database with Entity Framework, migrations and code first approach
- Check option to install free SSL certificate for the server from Let’s Encrypt
Ok, What I missed when I moved from Azure to
- nice integration with Visual Studio
- set of 100+ customization of website – majority of them are not avaliable in Webio (But have I ever need them??)
- exposure to latest Microsoft Cloud trends