New Cloud Features, Autumn 2012 Edition

By YJ Tso  |  November 1, 2012  |  3 min read
New Cloud Features, Autumn 2012 Edition

With MODX Cloud now in the soon-to-be-over stages of beta, we've been furiously solidifying the platform and adding tons of requested features. I'd like to share some of those new things we've done with you all.

Group Permissions

One of our initial requests for Cloud was the ability to lock down Groups (and the Clouds within) to specific Account Members. We've added this new feature, which can be seen when adding or editing a new Group:

group permissions

As you can see, this will "lock down" the group, preventing it from being seen or managed by anyone not in that Group. Also, it will hide any Clouds in that Group from Account Members that aren't a part of that Group. Neat!

Deleting Notifications

Each time you do something in Cloud, we send you a Notification via email whenever the process completes. This happens for all kinds of things; creating new Clouds, upgrading MODX on Clouds, and more. We also store a copy of that email in your "Notifications" section, which is used for record-keeping. They reflect the "read" status in your account via being grayed-out, and by a circled red number near your Account name.

However, we noted that many people wanted to be able to delete older notifications, rather than just mark them read. Well, we did it! Now you can delete notifications at will by just right-clicking on them in the grid, and hitting "Delete Notification". Boom.

Preferred Cloud URLs

In MODX Cloud, you start with 2 URLs when creating a Cloud. One, the Cloud internal URL which usually has a "paas1.tx.modxcloud.com" or similar URL makeup. This is a consistent URL that is used internally and is never changed unless you move the Cloud. Two, the UDN (user-defined name), which is based on your Account code and the name you gave the Cloud - i.e., my-site.shaun.modxcloud.com. However, Production Clouds can add even more domains to them, which means when managing your Cloud from the Cloud Dashboard, you might get a little dizzy trying to figure out which URL to load your site from.

No longer! We've added the ability for you to set per-Cloud the "Preferred URL" that Cloud will build all of its URLs from On your Cloud Edit page, you can see the dropdown now:

preferred url

This is very useful when building a site with cached URLs, as you want to make sure the URLs get cached to the right domain.

Other Stuff

We've also added the ability to delete empty groups, improved the notification process for succeeding or failed processes, added full Git support (when using HTTPS git URLs) via the command line in your Cloud, and fixed a ton of bugs across the system. Automatic backups now happen asynchronously daily with our system, speeding up dashboard requests significantly. (Did you know it only takes 10 seconds to create a Cloud after clicking the Purchase Cloud button now?) We've strengthened the underlying infrastructure behind Cloud, at the Platform level, to ensure that each server stays up with no hiccups, and are in the process now of adding even more monitoring, failover rescue, and improvements to our internal systems to make sure each Cloud and each Location has a full array of health monitoring and rescue functionality.

And, there's even more to come. Remember, the beta is soon to expire, so make sure to get into the beta today before it goes away!