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What you are choosing when you create a project, and in what order.
A project is one application — a site, a shop, an API. It holds your code, its environments, and the machines those environments run on.
Creating one takes a name. Everything else is a separate step called Configure, and the console will keep sending you back to it until it is finished, because a project that is half configured cannot be built.
#The order things happen in
- Create the project. Only a name. It belongs to the team the console is showing — switch team first if it is meant for another one. Starting a project takes the Admin role or above.
- Configure it. One page, worked down step by step: the plan, the shape, the application, where it runs, the services beside it, its bandwidth and CDN, the add-ons, support, and how you are billed. Every choice reprices the total at once, so the figure on the right is the figure you will be billed.
- Build the first environment. It is always production, and its name cannot be changed afterwards.
Steps 1 and 2 cost nothing and can be revisited. Step 3 is where machines are bought.
#What you cannot change later
Most of a project is adjustable. Three things are not, and they are worth getting right the first time:
| Setting | Why it is fixed |
|---|---|
| Plan | Shared and dedicated are different machines, not a setting on the same one. |
| Shape | Moving from one server to three is a migration of your data, not a switch. |
| The production environment's machine name | It is in DNS, in certificates, and in every log line already written. |
Everything else — machine sizes, support level, uptime promise, disks, extra environments — can be changed whenever you like. Disks only ever grow; machines grow, and some kinds can come back down — see Machines.
#What you can change later
- Machine sizes. Upwards on any plan, and down again on the kinds of machine that allow it.
- Support and uptime. Both up and down, from Commercial terms on the project's configuration page.
- Disk. Add space to the database, the web server, or any other service.
- Environments. Add staging and development environments, and remove them again. A site on a shared plan can have one staging environment and no development ones.
#Next
Read Plans if you have not decided between shared and dedicated, or Shapes if you already know you need more than one machine.
If you are setting up for other people rather than only yourself, start with Teams and people instead — who can change what is a decision worth making before anybody is invited.