Open source hosting: for open source tools and your open source project

What is open source web hosting?

Open source web hosting (also sometimes called open source hosting) is a type of web hosting that uses open source software. Many open source software technologies are widely-considered some of the most powerful systems for building applications in the world. Leveraging open source software in your web hosting can help you unlock the full potential of the application or website you’re building.

How do I manage my web hosting?

You manage your web hosting through a web hosting control panel. DigitalOcean’s web hosting control panel has a simple user interface that makes it easy to deploy your application, manage your virtual servers, and use monitoring tools to improve the performance of your entire website or application. Create a DigitalOcean account to explore our web hosting control panel.

Managing your web servers should feel easy, which is why we built a web hosting control panel with builders in mind. You don’t need to be an experienced server administrator to manage your web servers through our control panel.

What is a web hosting control panel?

A web hosting control panel is the web interface you’ll use to manage your web servers and overall web hosting. Most web hosting services will have a web hosting control panel, an API, and/or other ways to manage your web hosting to ensure the web app you’ve built is as performant as possible.

You can visit DigitalOcean’s web hosting control panel by creating a free account.

How technical do I need to be to use a web hosting control panel?

At DigitalOcean, we want web hosting to be as easy as possible, which is why we built our web hosting control panel with simplicity in mind. Building a business or growing a project is hard, your web hosting services shouldn’t be. To check out our web hosting control panel, sign in or create a free account.

What can I do from my web hosting control panel?

Each web hosting company will have different control panel experiences.

Here are some of the control panel features with DigitalOcean web hosting:

• A simple UI for the control panel web interface

• Clear database management tools for managing databases you’ve attached to your application (and, if you choose, a powerful backup system for added security)

• Ability to add multiple user accounts with varying access levels to your virtual server

• Access to third-party plugins through our Marketplace experience (install applications for some of your favorite open source tools and frameworks in a few clicks)

• Advanced monitoring tools

• Advanced SSL for security

• Premium support

And more! Check out our control panel by logging in or creating a free account today.

Does web hosting at DigitalOcean come with managing databases?

DigitalOcean offers products that will help with managing databases alongside web hosting your web app. The web interface of our control panel allows for managing databases. We support MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Redis™.

While managing databases through DigitalOcean isn’t included with our Droplet web hosting, it is an easy add-on.

Do I need web hosting to contribute to open source projects?

Web hosting and web hosting services are necessary to deploy and manage your application or software on the internet. If you are contributing to the source code of an open source project (such as Linux and BSD systems) you don’t necessarily need web hosting. Your contributions to these software projects (likely through GitHub) aren’t applications that need standalone website experiences.

What are Linux systems?

Linux is a Unix-like, open source and community-driven operating system for computers, web servers, devices, and more. Our Droplet virtual servers use the Linux systems OS. If you deploy your application using DigitalOcean Droplets, you’ll get all the advantages and benefits of Linux.

Some of these benefits of Linux include:

• A greater degree of security among operating systems

• More stability and reliability

• Less disk space needed (more efficient memory utilization)

• Powerful networking capabilities

Linux and BSD systems are some of the most popular operating systems for web based software and are widely used across the web.