December 2013 Summaries

The DigitalOcean team is reflecting on an issue with their API integration with fog.io, where some users were able to see prior data on a newly created virtual server due to the default behavior of not scrubbing the data after destruction. This was caused by an initial mistake in determining the default behavior for the "scrub" feature, which was intended to be user-initiated and controllable. The team realized that they should have notified customers about this change in default behavior and provided explicit guidance on how to implement it. To address these concerns, DigitalOcean has updated their code base to ensure a clean system is provided during creates, regardless of the method used for initiating a destroy, and will continue to provide an extra level of precaution with the scrub feature. The team has also acknowledged that they need to improve their communication with customers regarding updates, changes, and features, and will strive to maintain sane defaults with security at the forefront.

In May 2012, a company started writing educational Linux articles to help people set up their droplets, and soon realized they needed community help. They launched the "Get Paid To Write" initiative and received submissions from around the world, leading to a significant increase in their community. The company is now offering $200 of credit to new sign-ups over 60 days.

DigitalOcean has been named the world's fastest growing cloud hosting service, according to a report by Netcraft. The company has seen significant growth, with a month-on-month gain of 6,514 web-facing computers in December 2013. This growth has earned DigitalOcean the 15th largest hosting company in terms of web-facing computers, despite starting the year with only 280. To celebrate this milestone, DigitalOcean will continue to invest in adding datacenter capacity worldwide and roll out community-suggested features such as IPV6 and private networking usage graphs. The company is grateful for the support of its community and plans to give back by investing in these initiatives.

MEAN is a popular one click image that provides a simple, scalable, and easy starting point for full stack Javascript web development. The MEAN stack serves as the ideal beginning for MongoDB, Express, AngularJS, and Node.js based applications by taking care of common integration problems between existing frameworks. Seasoned devs and those new to node can utilize MEAN, which offers pre-bundled and configured modules like mongoose and passport to efficiently start developing MEAN-based web apps.

DigitalOcean has added a new Amsterdam Datacenter with shared private networking capabilities, allowing users to set up features such as database replication and host-to-host communication across a private network. The new datacenter offers expanded server capacity in Europe and provides a feature previously only available in the NYC2 datacenter. Users can enable private networking when creating or managing their droplets in the new AMS2 datacenter by selecting the Private Networking checkbox from the creation screen or in the settings tab of the control panel. DigitalOcean plans to continue investing in its infrastructure, exploring expansion in locations such as the UK and sharpening its focus on adding more capacity throughout Europe.