Bryght Logo

Some of you may have noticed we recently gave the Bryght hosting system a facelift and added some functionality under the hood. Bryght Drupal hosting combines a custom install profile with a tuned hosting environment, incorporating best practices used on Drupal.org, to make a fully functional, out-of-the-box VPS.

Raincity Studios' design touch is liberally sprinkled throughout the new Bryght.com site, as well as the install profile, with fresh themes and interface refinements. Along with the re-designed interface and improved sign-up forms, the new iteration of Bryght is available in Mandarin Chinese along with a fully translated Chinese Drupal install profile. More world languages are on the way to help spread Drupal to an even wider audience.

Bryght hosting comes in two flavors, Shared (Light) and VPS (in 3 service levels). Both run the Bryght install profile which is created with the Install Profile API and Profile Wizard available from Drupal.org.

With Bryght hosting, sites are easily provisioned and come pre-configured with TinyMCE, tags and other features to help quick-start projects, and include modules from CCK and Views to Feedburner and Mollom. With hundreds of hosted Drupal sites of experience and the stewardship of Narayan Newton (part of the Drupal.org infrastructure team), the Bryght server environment is tuned specifically for Drupal with Opcode caching, SNMP polling, Nagios/NRPE monitoring, Puppet central management and now including Cacti performance monitoring to assist support staff in finding and fixing client issues.

Bryght Homepage



Bryght hosting is powered by Hostmaster, the brain child of super-dev Adrian Rossouw and co-maintained by Koumbit. HM has evolved into Ægir which is fully Drupal-native and enables you to efficiently deploy and manage multiple sites. Of course, you are invited to get involved in Ægir development.

Beyond more world languages, additional configurations are in the works (i.e. install profiles for podcasters, for magazines, for events, etc.), as well as hosting for Acquia's new Carbon install. Raincity Studios' roadmap for Bryght also includes CDN integration, cloud services provisioning (such as automated Drupal deployment to EC2) and support for automated Xen Virtual Machine management.

The team of committed community contributors at Raincity Studios is pleased to offer these new Bryght hosting offerings to the market in hopes of introducing Drupal to a wider audience. Stop by Bryght.com to take Bryght Light for a 30-day test drive or consider hosting your next client project on a Bryght VPS.

Comments

JohnForsythe’s picture

Congrats on making the front page. The preconfigured site concept is very interesting, and anyone concerned with the hosting market should be watching closely. I'm especially interested to see how cloud services can be integrated with Drupal. In the long term, it's probably inevitable that everything will be hosted by a few huge cloud providers, with smaller companies providing the support services and customization/configuration.

PS: Any time line on providing Drupal 6?

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John Forsythe
Drupal Modules - Find the module you need for your project!

RaincityStudios’s picture

It has been an amazing experience to work with both our Shanghai and Vancouver team to relaunch Bryght !

Our team is committed to continue working on hosted products and new Drupal solutions.

I am also very happy with the new Acquia partnership; more information on this coming over the next few weeks..

The additions of 3rd party solutions such as Mollom, Amazon S3, etc are a part of our road map! We are working on providing hosting options from China, Europe and other international markets in addition to our current centers in Canada and the USA.

You can expect new updates, products and features being released on a more regular schedule over the next months and years.

Our next language release will be the Bryght French profile, due out in October.

As for your question John! Yes, we are working on releasing a drupal 6 hosted version this fall, most likely when we do the next upgrade to Aegir.

Robert Scales
CEO Raincity Studios
Vancouver - Shanghai

AgentD’s picture

I would be interested in seeing the "fresh themes" you've come up with for customers to utilize. I've noticed a number of Drupal theme sites popping up, some better than others, and I think this is an area that will be picking up steam.

Thanks.

BioALIEN’s picture

I'm really blown away by your setup. Hostmaster is a fantastic kit albeit a little difficult to get going when I last tested it. I know you are still working on HM2. There is a huge potential in the work you are doing here.

I haven't tried Ægir yet, I'll be sure to add it to the list of things to do. Thanks for the heads up!

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Dee
iScene.eu :: UK Drupal Consultancy

Amix’s picture

Love he way the site is set up, It was only last week that I went for a VPS for my drupal site. If i knew you guys i probably would have signed up.
__________________________________________________________________________________
www.DrupalBased.com - Showcasing Drupal Powered Sites.

toma’s picture

Great work, thanks for your share, nice design and your website is very fast
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Spread Google Chrome
http://www.spreadgooglechrome.com

seanray’s picture

Just curious, do you have a datacenter in China or you just own a support team in China?

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hunvreus’s picture

We have no datacenter at the moment in China but a complete production team; theming/design, development, management, support... Just have a look: http://raincitystudios.com/about/shanghai

bertboerland’s picture

and I am the only one that thinks this is written like an advertorial?

this should /not/ have hit the f/p of d.o!

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groets
bert boerland

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groets
bert boerland

Wondering’s picture

This seems (clearly) to be a commercial advertisement for a third party paid service. I am wondering on what merit it was published on the front page and I would like to ask if I could now publish a post on the first page to advertise my Drupal-based business also.

dodorama’s picture

Life is always confusing. This is an advertisement and an interesting news for the drupal community. Sometimes more (ads) is better than less (news)...

stephthegeek’s picture

How is it any different from the Do It With Drupal, Lynda course, or book announcements then? I'd rather see more "big news" on the front page, commercial or not. Book releases, major product announcements, significant Drupal events... these all seem relevant.

{ Drupal themes by TopNotchThemes } Gorgeous 100% original Drupal 5/6 themes with contrib module support, plus Ubercart themes!

joep.hendrix’s picture

No, you are not alone.
This is clearly an adverisement.

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Joep
CompuBase, Drupal, websites and webdesign

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Joep
CompuBase, Dutch Drupal full service agency

Amazon’s picture

As the community continues to grow, there's going to be more news about Drupal related products. I think not posting news about Drupal products and major business news in the Drupal community is a major mistake.

There are great Drupal products such as http://managingnews.com which are outstanding examples of what can done with Drupal that have a very low profile. Why? Because people might complain it's an advertisement if we post it to the front page! This is a very immature view of what's interesting to the community. The Drupal community has not been good at traditional marketing and fear of these "It's an advertisement!" claims have hurt our marketing efforts.

If we continue to boycott news about interesting Drupal products developed by a diverse community and innovative entrepreneurs then those entrepreneurs will find a community that is supportive of them.

But what's really bad, is the complete unevenness and lack of transparency around what qualifies for front page news. We've been working hard to open up the process of what gets to the front page. We've created guidelines for front page posts: http://drupal.org/node/281918, and created a schedule so we are more consistent about what gets posted.

But most importantly we've been putting the word out that it's okay to have diverse news in front page posts, from technical, marketing, and business stories. We been working hard behind the scenes to recruit, edit, and review stories for the front page. That makes the Drupal.org home page more interesting and helps to market that Drupal is an exciting and vibrant community. When companies and entrepreneurs try to co-market Drupal and their business and get shouted down that they are just doing advertisements it's very discouraging to other businesses that want to help promote Drupal.

If you've got some specific complaints about this post, then we can work to improve editorial content to ensure posts are topical and not a deliberate attempt to exploit the home page of Drupal. This post was an honest effort to talk about interesting things going on in the community.

Kieran

Kieran Lal

webchick’s picture

I think the complaints against this post could've been mitigated had the announcement also included some nitty-gritty technical detail like a typical front-page case study, which explains how the thing was built. What's the back-end setup like? How about details on HM vs. HM2 vs. Aegir? A nice OmniGraffle flowchart showing how you do things like run cron.php and update.php on all the sites. etc.

I think it's fine to promote commercial stuff on the front page, but it should also include stuff of value to Drupal.org's target audience. We are developers and site builders, after all. :)

That said, I agree that the knee-jerk reaction to remotely commercial posts every time gets old and tiresome, and we need to knock it off so we don't alienate people.

dww’s picture

I credit this front page post with introducing me to Aegir, which seems incredibly cool. The post is full of links to the technical stuff for interested parties like me. Adrian has done a stellar job with the Aegir group page -- IMHO it's a model for what project nodes should become. Why bother duplicating all that effort for a post like this? Just link to the info for those who want it.

Not everyone who reads the d.o front page are developers and site builders. That attitude is almost as narrowly focused as the knee-jerk reaction that commercial == bad. The criteria for a good fp post shouldn't be "includes content that developers and site builders will enjoy"...

___________________
3281d Consulting

webchick’s picture

Not everyone who reads the d.o front page are developers and site builders. That attitude is almost as narrowly focused as the knee-jerk reaction that commercial == bad.

Oh. That wasn't intended to be a knee-jerk generalization. That was a throw-back to Dries's keynote at Drupalcon Szeged. The people who read the Drupal.org front page (or at least the ones who fill out surveys) really are developers and site builders, for the most part. :\ Hopefully the d.o redesign will help broaden that audience. :)

JohnForsythe’s picture

I don't see that changing. Drupal is for developers and site builders. I think we're fooling ourselves if we're expecting Drupal.org to suddenly start attracting some other audience. You'll never get dentists or lawyers or brick layers on Drupal.org unless they're also strongly interested in web development. They're not interested in Drupal, and never will be, any more than you're interested in the company your plumber buys pipes from.

If the CEO of a lumber supply store needs a website, they will hire someone else to go find Drupal for them. Site builders are our core audience, and always will be.

Of course, I'm not saying we should ignore the random non-developer who happens to "Google it" and ends up on Drupal.org. We obviously need to make sure they get what they need to know about Drupal in a friendly and efficient manner. But don't expect them to go much further than page 1 or 2 before they get back to being a lawyer/plumber/brick layer, and let their web developer handle the details.

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John Forsythe
Need reliable Drupal hosting?

dww’s picture

Angie's comment that I replied to said (to paraphrase) "this post would be better with more low-level technical details so that the developers and site builders would get more out of it". I replied (to paraphrase) "not everyone who reads the front page is a PHP hacker that wants to see flow charts or code snippets".

"Site builder" and "developer" are incredibly broad terms that are often overloaded. My point was that the original post did a good job of providing an overview of the cool technical stuff with links to the details for the people who want them. You're saying "Drupal is always going to be for site builders". That's true, but not specific enough to really be helpful. Not every "site builder" cares about the low-level design of Aegir. Some (many?) of them just "click together" sites. Apologies for perpetuating the use of the ambiguous, overloaded terminology.

Obviously, everyone landing on d.o cares about building a web site of some sort at some level. But that "fact" doesn't really help us select good front page posts or craft our message(s) to fit our audience(s).

___________________
3281d Consulting

JohnForsythe’s picture

There's probably better threads where I could have made that post, and I'm sure you and webchick already understand what I was trying to express. There's been a lot of talk about the redesigned Drupal.org bringing in new audiences. I want to put some emphasis back on the core audience. :)

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John Forsythe

joep.hendrix’s picture

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Joep
CompuBase, Drupal, websites and webdesign

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Joep
CompuBase, Dutch Drupal full service agency

gloscon’s picture

Hoping to see some consistent standards across the board. Maybe the Acquia partnership got the nod on front page!

Roshan

bertboerland’s picture

Hoping to see some consistent standards across the board.

if you are referring to Kieran and me both being board members and disagreeing on this promotion: board members / the Drupal Association do(es) not control the content of d.o in any way. hence, we debate here as passionate users with a different angle, we do not speak here as DA members. We seldom do, except on association.drupal.org. see also the faq ( http://association.drupal.org/about/faq ) for more background.

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groets
bert boerland

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groets
bert boerland

roshan_shah’s picture

Bert - sorry for the confusion...

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/across-the-board

Nothing to do with Drupal Association. Getting on front page of d.o should not be a privilege of few just because of Acquia connections. I believe it will do well in the long run for Drupal and everyone of us - as a community if posts that go on drupal.org front page are carefully reviewed.

I have no visibility nor interest to know who drives the push to the front page. There would be many companies who would have some other commercial offerings and would request front page posting. They may not have Acquia connection (or partnership) and hopefully each of them (if having valid Drupal solution) and cleanly written post should get on Drupal.org front page.

Again this is my personal viewpoint and I think this discussion may be taken somewhere else as I still believe this is Raincity's thread and should be left alone for discussion about their solution.

Roshan

Michelle’s picture

Getting on front page of d.o should not be a privilege of few just because of Acquia connections.

Outside of your imagination, it's not.

Michelle

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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

Amazon’s picture

There has been a wide and diverse effort to get more stories on the front page. Guidelines have been posted to the news and announcement forum.
Front page schedule
Guidelines for promoting and demoting content to the front page
112 Drupal.org site maintainers who have permission to post to the front page

Kieran

Kieran Lal

stodge’s picture

If you assume that the support forums are a good indication of the success of a hosting company, then Bryght are obviously not doing well. The latest post on their forums is weeks (months?) old. So my assumption is that this story was posted to drum up customers. Though I can't access their site today.

sillygwailo’s picture

The forums are currently closed because they got taken over by a spammer. (Yes yes, use Mollom, we know.) We're planning to re-open them, and are also looking at using GetSatisfaction for public customer support.

Though I can't access their site today.

The comment is a few days old, so I'm sorry I missed it, but which URL were you trying to access?

(Username formerly my full name, Richard Eriksson.)

stodge’s picture

Ah thanks for the clarification. I was trying to get bryght.com but perhaps you were changing IP addresses as per your news story. I signed up for a free site so I could investigate Drupal more (thanks!), but I'm finding access very slow. It takes several seconds for each page to load.

sillygwailo’s picture

Can I get you to open a support ticket with us so that we can take a look at what might be causing the slowness?

(Username formerly my full name, Richard Eriksson.)

stodge’s picture

As is typical - as soon as I posted it was slow, it is now fast. :)

But thanks for the post, appreciate it.

druvision’s picture

Intresting stuff, but my head is full of questions...

* Will the shared hosting plan support SSH?
* Will it support my current drupal sites?
* Can the client add moudles to the shared hosting offer?
* How many domains can be hosted? Do you support multiple domain pointers?
* Will the upgrade to the next drupal version made automatically?

Thanks

Amnon
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Professional: Drupal Israel | Drupal Development & Consulting
Personal: Hitech Dolphin: Regain Simple Joy :)

sillygwailo’s picture

I'm a support guy with Raincity Studios/Bryght, so I can answer these.

* Will the shared hosting plan support SSH?

Bryght doesn't do shared hosting, but rather a hosted service and a VPS hosting offering. The first one is not like shared hosting in that it's a single install of Drupal running multi-site but with separate databases. That is, no access to the file system or databases directly. The VPS hosting service gives you root access via SSH to dedicated resources. It's not a dedicated server (that's a full physical hardware), but virtualized so that you get a certain amount of disk space and memory no matter what.

* Will it support my current drupal sites?
* Can the client add moudles to the shared hosting offer?

Those questions of course depends on what kind of traffic you need and which modules you'll run. The hosted service is limited to the set of modules that come with Bryght, but the VPS is not: that is, you can add whatever modules you like, and we can scale up or down or across the server resources based on traffic needs.

* How many domains can be hosted? Do you support multiple domain pointers?

Each individual site on the hosted service supports only one domain or subdomain. With the VPS option you can point unlimited domains/subdomains to a single site, or multiple domains to multiple sites (i.e. each having its own domain/subdomain).

* Will the upgrade to the next drupal version made automatically?

The hosted service gets updates to Drupal made by Bryght. The VPS hosting options are currently unmanaged, that is, we continuously update the Subversion repository from which the install of Drupal is based, but it's up to the customer or customer's technical team to update Drupal or the individual contributed modules. We have documentation for how to do it and can support you through the process. Otherwise, upgrades on the VPS servers would require a support contract and/or estimate.

(Username formerly my full name, Richard Eriksson.)

vkr11’s picture

I have been usgin Bryght for more then a year and I am very very happy with the support. The best in Drupal Hosting. Thanks you guys ..

- Victor
Better Way to Search Drupal.org | Drupal Jobs | Income Tax India

daveo’s picture

Glad to hear you are enjoying the Bryght hosting - thanks for spreading the word on our Drupal efforts.

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DaveO
Evangelizing Raincity to the People!
skype: northvandave

design dog’s picture

The thinking that and the assumption that Drupal dot org readers are just for builders and developers is ONE of the sole reasons that got Drupal narrowed out. And don't tell me it didn't or get me started.
Anyway..., it may or may not be the case that drupal dot org readers are mostly developers, but certainly, - that has to change.
If you restrict, focus, gear or inspire content based on "developer" mentality simply because it's the core majority, well, I guess you'll just stay in that realm. Super geeky. Which, don't get me wrong. Nothing wrong with that. I'm a major geek. If you insist that all content on your beloved drupal dot org website be, in fact, "developer" information, well, dare I say, yes, that is immature, and slightly selfish.
Whether people want to believe it or not there are many people who are interested, would read, or would consider reading about Drupal if it wasn't all just geek.
The truth of the matter is, there are many sites in which common news both commercial and non-commercial coincide to make a wonderful melting pot of informative variety. I won't mention any names. Also, you'd be surprised of the "new" style of audience that CMS attracts these days. Don't laugh but more and more, doctors who learn CMS in their spare time, accountants who are building sites for their church. I kid you not because I pick up the phone every day and talk to these people. Not to mention all the project managers, administrative people, investors, organizers, entrepreneurs, and or "just generally interested" people there are with Drupal.

Having said that.
The key to any good website though, is being able to "get to where you want to go," "find what you want in a hurry," and "get value for your visit."
Also certainly not wade through a deluge of commercial madness just to get somewhere. I kinda don't see that going on here though. And in terms of "organization" it sounds like work is being done or rework on drupal dot org. I won't even get into "call to action" or "incentives."

The only one thing possibly in my mind maybe is the decision process of what commercial related information is posted on the front page and to what order (or how its written up maybe.) But using information blocks to post more than one at a time or allow emphasis on real estate certainly might help with that somewhat. Along with guidelines procedures but, really almost, who cares. If it's good information value, stick it on the front page.

As a developer I want to see whats going on period. Commercial or non-commercial, doesn't matter. Commercial related news can be very important to me at times actually. But really, I just want to see the latest information regarding the software, and mostly, something "informative." Especially when it's written well. (which means also it doesn't have to be all specy. Engadget is great to read but it's not all specs and it's certainly not non-commercial)

So if it's something commercial that is doing well, or whether it's something done commercially that can benefit me as a developer or inform me about Drupal - I want to know!

[my apologies for having sidetracked the post / but wanted to comment]

Mlogs’s picture

Really good system,but a little expensive.
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techrobo’s picture

Bryght is no more in business now since April 09. See this announcement http://raincitystudios.com/blogs-and-pods/scales/the-end-of-a-bryght-era