Introducing Node.js, Ruby, and Git

Kieran Jones -

Modern websites have expanded beyond the traditional so-called "LAMP" stack (i.e. Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) to encompass a range of new technologies which allow them to create amazing, immersive web applications at a much faster development pace than was ever possible before.

We want to ensure that the services which we provide to our customers enable developers to continue to create wonderful new applications, so we're delighted to announce that with the latest update to the Plesk control panel our standard web hosting and ULTRA hosting services now have native support for Node.js and Ruby (both Rails and Sinatra). Plus, to keep up with the pace of development, we now also support Git natively in the control panel.

Node.js

Node.js is an incredibly popular open-source, cross-platform environment for developing event driven, asynchronous server-side applications. Whilst Node.js has only been around for a few years, it has already gained considerable support among developers and is being used to make truly amazing applications. Based on the widely used JavaScript language, Node.js helps web developers write lightning-fast applications in a whole new way.

With this newly updated version of Plesk, you can now:

  • Add Node.js applications to your websites with just a few clicks.
  • Easily manage the application from Plesk (start/stop/restart the application, install NPM packages, run scripts, edit the configuration files - Plesk does it all).
  • Manage multiple Node.js versions and choose the version you need for your application

Ruby

Ruby is another extremely popular programming language among developers, particularly when combined with frameworks such as Rails or Sinatra which help to simplify and speed up development.

With the latest update to our Plesk hosting, you can now:

  • Quickly and easily enable Ruby support on any given domain
  • Choose which Ruby version should be used
  • Automatically install gems and their dependencies from Plesk using the Bundler tool
  • Specify custom environment variables
  • Edit configuration files

Git

To make developing and deploying the latest version of your website even easier, we now support the use of the Git Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS) directly within the Plesk control panel.

Here are just some of the highlights of having native Git support in the control panel:

  • Easily deploy your website content by either pushing it to a local Git repository or by pulling from a remote one.
  • Use GitHub, BitBucket, Travis, or any other software engineering service of your choice.
  • Create multiple branches in a single repository - useful for separating staging and production code.
  • Deploy manually for complete control or enable automatic deployment to save time.

There’s more!

These are just a few of the main highlights, the latest version of Plesk also introduces a host of additional minor features such as improved SSL support, DNSSEC, support for DKIM and SRS for email, and lots more.