21 9 / 2011
Check out the new Nodester site resource panel at http://site.nodester.com! This little Node.JS application was written by WeAreFractal and allows admins and users to get real-time stats and configuration details of the actual nodester.com hosting platform.
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24 5 / 2011
Tropo Sponsors Nodester!
We are proud to announce today that the super smart cloud communications geeks at Tropo have offered to sponsor our open source Node.JS hosting project!
What does this mean for Nodester? It means that our open source project just got even better! Tropo is now paying for the hosting of our free Node.JS hosting services running on http://nodester.com and has offered to help us hire a few Node.JS developers to extend the platform!
If you or anyone you know is interested in getting paid to develop on our open source Node.JS hosting platform, please send job inquires to jobs@nodester.com.
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01 2 / 2011
Nodester’s New Command Line Interface (CLI)
Thanks to @DanBUK, Nodester has a new Command Line Interface (CLI) that makes it easier to use than cURLs! Installing it is simple:
npm install nodester-cli
Once installed, here are the commands available:
nodester <command> <param1> <param2>
nodester coupon <email address>
nodester user create <username> <password> <email address> <file containing ssh public key> <coupon code>
nodester user setup <username> <password>
The commands below require you to have run ‘user setup’ before/
nodester user setpass <new password>
You should run user setup after running setpass.
nodester user setkey <file containing ssh public key>
nodester apps list
nodester app create <app-name> <initial js file>
nodester app info <app-name>
nodester app start <app-name>
nodester app restart <app-name>
nodester app stop <app-name>
nodester appnpm install <app-name> <package name>
nodester appnpm upgrade <app-name> <package name>
nodester appnpm uninstall <app-name> <package name>
Here is how you would install a new Node.JS app on Nodester using the CLI:nodester app create myapp hello.js
git remote add nodester the_url_returned_by_our_api and git push nodester master
NPM modules? nodester appnpm install express
nodester app start myapp
Let us know what you think! Help us by contributing to our project located at http://github.com/nodester!
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27 1 / 2011
Nodester News!
Hey Nodesters,
A TON has happened since our alpha project launched nearly two weeks ago!
- Our project launch made the front page of Hacker News, Mashable, and Read Write Web!
- We received over 10,000 coupon requests!
- Our database was compromised and all of our data was maliciously deleted. (We are still working with our CouchDB provider to restore this data and help with forensics to hand over to the FBI.)
- We changed our project’s name from NodeFu to Nodester so no one is confused by ninjas or oriental themes - plus we think our new domain is even better!
- We moved our source code repository to http://github.com/nodester
- We started a Core Team with the addition of our second member! Please welcome @DanBUK (http://twitter.com/#!/danbuk) to the Nodester Core Team! We have also received a few pull requests from contributors and we have identified a few more potential Core Team candidates to help!
Here is list of the new features that we have added to our open source Node.JS hosting platform:
- We have added chrooting and sandboxing for securing Node.JS apps running on Nodester!.
- We have secured the user git repos.
- We have added post-commit hooks to restart your Node apps on subsequent pushes.
- We have added new APIs including: list all user apps, stop/start apps, add NPM modules to an app, and update user’s password and rsa key.
- We have added a detailed installation guide for you to deploy your own hosting platform to Amazon EC2, Rackspace, GoGrid or your own datacenter if you choose.
- We have identified the issue causing the permission problem with some of the RSA keys. If you have a + plus symbol in your key, it mus be encoded manually with %2B
While our platform was just deployed two weekends ago, we are still focusing on our RESTful API and platform stability rather than the website. We are asking for your assistance to help with testing and feedback as we look to improve our Node.js hosting services.
Since our data was deleted, you will more than likely need to recreate your account. Check your email inbox for our latest coupon code. You can register for our services at http://nodester.com by clicking on the “Register” link at the top of the page or you can curl our create user API listed on http://nodester.com/api.html and including coupon=secret in the data post. Important note: If you have a “+” plus symbol in your RSA key, you will need to replace it with %2B or you will have permission problems access your repo. If your account already exists and you are receiving permission denied errors, you can use our new update user API to resubmit your RSA key with the %2B in place of the + sign.
You will soon learn that our platform is heavily inspired by Heroku including a create app API followed by a git remote add nodester and a git push nodester master. Subsequent application changes can be deployed again with the same git push nodester command. You will need use your own credentials and replace the appname and start parameters with your application’s subdomain and starting filename.js as follows:
1. curl -X POST -u “username:password” -d “appname=myapp&start=app.js” http://api.nodester.com/app
This API will return a JSON response which includes the port address that your application will need to include as well as the name of your private git repository such as:
{status : “success”, port : “8134”, gitrepo : “ec2-user@nodester.com:nodester/apps/1-5708c…3050.git”}
After updating your application’s port address, run the usual ‘git init’, ‘git add .’, and ‘git commit -m “initial commit”’. Next you will need to add the nodester remote with the git repo returned from the App create API as follows and then push your app:
2. git remote add nodester ec2-user@nodester.com:nodester/apps/1-5708c…3050.git
3. git push nodester master
4. start the application with the following command.
curl -X PUT -u “testuser:123” -d “appname=myapp&running=true” http://api.nodester.com/app
If you have any NPM modules included in your application, you will need to register them with your application’s sandbox using the following curl (one call for each module - we will soon support a list of modules…):
curl -X POST -u “testuser:123” -d “appname=a&action=install&package=express”
That’s all! Now open your browser and goto your site using your own appname in the URL like:
Hopefully you’ll be impressed with our early platform and you’ll want to help us spread the word about our successes on Twitter (http://twitter.com/nodesterjs) and overlook our flaws. We are intentionally giving you early alpha access to our platform so please forgive us if it crashes - alot! If you would like to contribute to our open source Node.js hosting platform, please fork our repo at http://github.com/nodester and send us pull requests.
Happy Nodestering!
Cheers!
@ChrisMatthieu
