Guide

Web hosting can be daunting because it involves multiple moving parts which all have to operate together. Matador EP is designed to expose each part without attention to irrelevant detail. The parts of a Web site are:

• One or more domain names which users will type in to access the site
• One or more Web servers which offer the site files to users
• One of several access points to the Web root filesystem where versions of the site files are stored

For historical reasons, Matador EP's Web servers are known as heads. A head is a machine which serves your website. Each head has a static IPv4 address. Most users will want to allocate one head near their expected audience. You are able to create and delete your own heads on a self-serve basis. You will be billed for each head which is successfully serving your website; heads which are not available or serving outdated versions will not result in a charge. Creating or deleting heads will not change the content of your site.

Setting up a new site

From a fresh management link, here is how to get going for customers with their own domain name at their registrar of choice.

1. Add domain names in the "Domains" section with the "Add a domain" form
2. Allocate at least one head in the "Heads" section near your expected visitors with the "Create a head" form
3. Wait 15-30min for all heads to allocate IP addresses
4. At your registrar of choice, add custom DNS records for each domain name: one type "A" record per IP address per name
5. Optional: wait 20-60min for all domain names to display a Matador EP parking page
6. Upload an SSH key with the "Add an SSH key" form in the "SSH Public Keys" section
7. Upload your website!
8. scp/rsync: create a new version in the "Versions" section
9. Wait 15-60min for all domain names to display your website!

Matador is happy to handle domain names for an annual fee which is rolled into the cost of hosting. When requesting a management link, we will negotiate the desired domain names, hold them at Matador's preferred registrar (DreamHost LLC in California), and handle the first five steps above.

When are multiple heads a good idea?

Here are some situations when multiple heads might be useful:

• When a website has high load
• When a website is popular in multiple regions
• When high availability is desired

As always, feel free to reach out to us if you would like free advice.

Access via git

The following workflow provides basic git access.

1. Allocate an SSH keypair on your home computer; never share the secret key
2. Copy the public key to the clipboard and paste it into the "Add an SSH key" form in the "SSH Public Keys" section of the management page
3. Wait for 15-60min for the key to become available on the git.matador.cloud git server
4. Use your git client of choice to access the git repository URL given at the top of the management page
5. Any versions committed and pushed to the main branch will be deployed to heads over the next 15-60min