Recently I needed to setup 5 WordPress based websites as quickly as possible to begin work on a new project. As there was quite a bit to be done customizing WordPress I wanted a solution to bring the sites online as quickly as possible but in such a way that I could move them to production in the future. Enter StandingCloud.

StandingCloud is cloud application marketplace that allows you to bring up applications in the cloud extremely quickly and easily. You can choose what application you’d like (from dozens), then what cloud provider you’d like to host your application with. Finally you choose how much memory and bandwidth you’d like and you’re on your way. Within a matter of minutes you’ll have your own cloud based server online and ready for use.

As I worked through all 5 of our sites I realized I’d made a mistake when setting up the initial server. As I wanted to be cheap I’d only given it 512MB of memory, not enough to run the 5 apps I’d launched. Disappointingly I found that there is no way to simply increase the amount of memory for an entire server. As StandingCloud takes an application focused approach (vs. server based) they had no way to adjust the base settings for the server.

While a little frustrating all was not lost as one of the most powerful features of StandingCloud is the ability to move applications between cloud providers. So I spun up a new server (this time with SoftLayer and 2GB of RAM). As that server was coming online I shutdown and backed up all 5 of my applications. Then once the new server was online I simply restored the applications to the new SoftLayer server. As StandingCloud also handles DNS for me (using simple CNAMES) I simply had to wait a few minutes (about 15) for everything to come online.

Less than 30 minutes later I’d moved 5 websites from one cloud provider on a small server to a new cloud provider on a much more powerful one. In a matter of a few mouse clicks. And I did it all without setting up any sort of account with the independent providers – StandingCloud took care of all of it for me.

Next time you need to quickly spin up a cloud based application I hope you’ll give StandingCloud a try.