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Webslice Containers & Webslice Serverless Documentation

Getting Started

This guide will help you get up and running on Webslice Containers and walk you through creating your first container. It will take around 15 minutes, and only requires you to have a Webslice account with a valid credit card.

Step 1: Provision a Webslice Container server

The first step is to provision a Webslice Container. The easiest way to start the process is to click the Servers in the main menu and now it’s time to make a few choices:

  • Name – Choose something simple, descriptive and memorable.
  • Location – Choose the location which is closest to the majority of your customers.
  • Plan – You can change your plan later, but the 2GB plan is good starting place.
  • Additional Services – If you’re hosting mission critical applications or want advanced features select Management.

Now click Provision Server and relax or take a quick break. This will take around 6 minutes as our systems are doing a lot behind the scenes to get your server ready.

Step 2: Create a container

Now your server is ready it’s time to create a container. Head over to the Containers menu on the left and create a container type and image of your choice. We hope it’s a simple process but you can also follow the instructions in our Creating a container article.

If you need a database, good news, by default your server has a MariaDB container ready to go. Click on Databases, and from here you can create a database, and an associated user.

Step 3: Access the container

Next you need access to the container. Click SSH + SFTP and create a user assigned to the container you want to access. This user will work over both SSH and SFTP and will allow you to uploads files or execute commands. You can find more details in our SSH & SFTP section.

Step 4: Deploy your website

Access the container with the user you created above via SSH or SFTP. You can use the IP address of your server if you haven’t set up DNS yet.

Once logged in you will see a directory named /container, all files for each container will appear here, no matter the type of container you are accessing. We go into more detail in the Folder Structure article. Navigate to the /public folder which is where your website will be served from, for a standard web container the path will be /container/application/public and you should see a index.html file, which is our default “It works” landing page. You can delete this file and upload your website via a method of your choice:

  • If your website resides within a git repository, you may wish to clone it directly into your container.
  • Files can be securely copied directly to your container using SCP.
  • Files can be securely uploaded to your container using a file transfer client that supports SFTP.

If you’ve already updated your Domain/DNS to point at the IP address of your server your website should be live. Welcome to Webslice Containers, it’s that simple!