What the platform does, and why it does it that way.

Start here What you are choosing when you create a project, and in what order. Plans Shared or dedicated — what the difference actually is, and which one your site wants. Shapes A layout you draw, from one machine up, or a redundant web tier with a machine per service — and what each one asks of your application.

Teams and people Who a project belongs to, and what each role in a team can do. Projects One application, its settings, and what changing them does. Environments Production, staging and development — what each is for, and what you can add. Domains Adding your own domain, proving it is yours, choosing the canonical one, and where each certificate comes from. The edge The proxy in front of every environment — what it refuses on its own, what you can switch on, and taking a site offline. Deployments Connecting your repository, deploying on push, what a deploy does in what order, and going back to an earlier release. Variables Configuration that differs between environments, where it is set, and which names you cannot use. Machines The two kinds of machine, which way each can be resized, and what it costs in downtime. Upgrades The Upgrade tab — giving the database, cache or search a machine of its own after a site is built, and what each move costs in downtime. Storage Where your files and database live, how to buy more room, and what disk usage counts. CDN Serving your site from the edge, and how to clear the cache from your own code. Logs Where your application's output goes, how long it is kept, and how to send a copy somewhere else. Shell access Logging in to an environment over SSH, copying files and databases in and out, and what the shell can and cannot reach. Backups What is copied, where it goes, how long it is kept, and what you have to do to get one back. Integrations Services your team already pays for, connected once and used by any project. Monitoring and metrics What is measured on your environments, where you can see it, and how availability is watched. Notifications What the platform will tell you about, where it tells you, and who gets it. Support Opening a ticket, what the priorities mean, and the tickets the platform opens for you. Billing How a subscription is charged, when changes take effect, and what happens when an invoice goes unpaid. API Tokens for scripts and pipelines, what they can reach, and the endpoints they call.

Software stacks Everything that can run on your machines, the versions on offer, and which parts you choose. Configuration vallic.yaml — every key it takes, what each one does, and what a deploy refuses. Service settings The settings each service takes from vallic.yaml, what they do, and what stays with the platform. Service upgrade What happens when you change a version in vallic.yaml, which services survive it, and how to move a database to a version that cannot read the old one. PHP-FPM The PHP-FPM container every PHP project runs in Go A compiled Go binary serving its own HTTP Node.js A Node application serving its own HTTP — Next.js, Nuxt, Express or anything else that listens on a port Node.js for builds Node and npm available to build steps, for compiling a theme or bundling front-end assets MariaDB The database, and the default for Drupal, Laravel and WordPress MySQL 8 Oracle's MySQL, for applications and teams committed to it rather than to MariaDB PostgreSQL The other relational database Queue worker Laravel's queue worker Nginx Serves static files and passes PHP to FPM Redis In-memory cache Memcached A simpler cache than Redis: keys and values, nothing else, and nothing kept when it restarts Valkey Cache and sessions Meilisearch Search without ZooKeeper beside it RabbitMQ A message broker for work that outlives the request that asked for it Varnish Caches whole responses in front of your site, so a hit never reaches it Solr Search ZooKeeper Coordination for Solr OpenSMTPD Outbound mail relay for environments not using a hosted provider

Drupal Running Drupal here — the manifest, where updates run, and the settings file that reads the environment. WordPress Running WordPress here — the manifest, and a wp-config that reads the environment instead of committing it. Laravel Running Laravel here — the manifest, where migrations run, and the few lines Laravel needs to read the environment. Symfony Running Symfony here — the manifest, where migrations run, and the DATABASE_URL Doctrine wants. Node and Go Running an application that serves its own HTTP, and why there is no config file for it.