What is WebOps & How it Scales your Websites

If your organization is managing multiple websites, you’ll understand the challenges involved in keeping everything updated and running smoothly. Deployment, modification, and approval are time-consuming tasks—but the WebOps approach means they don’t have to be.

So, what exactly is WebOps, and how does it help you scale your websites? Read on to discover more and learn how Platform.sh can help.

What is WebOps and how does it scale your websites?

WebOps, sometimes styled as web ops, is short for website operations. It’s an amalgamation of practices designed to streamline the creation of web-based applications from development all the way to release and maintenance. It helps development teams build better websites faster and continuously improve the digital experience. 

With cross-functional teams working in parallel, they can deploy and manage multiple websites and apps more effectively—which is ideal for larger organizations or those ready to scale. This is achieved through a dedicated WebOps platform, which streamlines every aspect of development, deployment, and maintenance.

WebOps platforms integrate DevOps capabilities and best practices alongside website creation and may also incorporate web hosting, load balancing, load testing tools, and CDNs. To qualify for inclusion in the WebOps category, a product must include:

• Developer-focused tools for website creation and maintenance
• Automation for repetitive processes
• Web-dedicated content management
• Support for traditional and headless CMS

Because teams can automate tasks for speed and consistency, they’re able to achieve more in less time. 

WebOps platforms may deliver any of the following:

• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaas)
• Database as a Service (DBaas).

Why use WebOps?

WebOps platforms are designed to optimize the performance of websites and apps. The key benefits include significant improvements in:

Speed: By  automating manual tasks associated with managing web applications, you can increase deployment times and free up staff to focus on other tasks.

Scalability: WebOps allows you to scale your applications quickly and easily, handling sudden traffic spikes and giving you flexibility during slow periods.

Visibility: You can view your app’s performance in real time, identify potential problems before they escalate, and gain insights on areas for improvement.

Collaboration: By merging the personas of dev teams and web creators within a shared environment, WebOps platforms enable teams to collaborate more efficiently.

Cost savings: Cloud computing infrastructure enables you to reduce operational costs and increase your WebOps ROI. Pay-as-you-go pricing models are ideal for low or unpredictable usage.

Security: WebOps platforms typically include encryption and authentication protocols, integrated firewalls, and breach detection systems.

User experience: Ultimately, WebOps helps you  provide end users with a better web experience, including faster load times, consistent uptime, and more relevant content.

Platform.sh delivers on all of the above through automation, built-in continuous deployment, and managed infrastructure. For example, Comic Relief’s technology team turned to us when they needed a more robust development platform. They wanted to iterate faster and create more preview environments, but their WebOps team was busy reviewing multiple features at once.

Our GitHub integration automates that process, giving every feature its own environment. Automation also covers setting up new environments and applying changes from the feature branch. Now, product managers can quickly show features to stakeholders—and the increase in productivity enabled 85% of DevOps/QA resources to be reallocated to other tasks.

Features a WebOps platform must have

WebOps platforms often include unified tools with multiple components. Here are the key features to look out for:

Automation: This is crucial for handling those time-consuming manual tasks, such as app deployment and scaling, and fault detection and resolution. Automation reduces the chance of human error, while automated testing helps you find bugs earlier. You can set actions like deployments or incident responses to be triggered automatically when specific events occur, enabling you to respond quickly when needed. Automated backups are a must-have, too.

Monitoring: By monitoring servers and databases, you can spot problems with web apps (such as inefficient or faulty code), respond quickly to outages, and proactively address performance issues. This includes server-side logging, which monitors the app’s behavior on the server side and shows you things like incoming requests sent by a user’s device and how the server handled those requests.

Analytics dashboard: Alongside monitoring capabilities, a dashboard helps you make sense of data about the application’s usage and availability, based on metrics like latency and response times. You’ll be able to detect any unexpected behavior and react to anomalies. Over time, you can spot trends or patterns that reveal a need for optimization.

Website staging: WebOps platforms typically include pre-production environments where developers can build and test site updates before committing to deploying them. Doing this without navigating away from the WebOps platform is a real timesaver. Look for performance testing functionality, which ensures that a new app version’s code is up to standard before going live—and helps reveal how different components respond under various conditions.

Role-based permissions: This feature is very important when different teams are working together. It allows administrators to assign different types of tasks by persona, making task allocation and handoff points clearer and building a more efficient workflow.

Other features to look for include:

• Website hosting: Many WebOps platforms offer a full hosting service—in other words, they provide and manage the servers that keep your websites live.
• Infrastructure management: These tools include virtualization technologies such as containers and serverless computing.
• Robust security: For example, authentication mechanisms, firewalls, and vulnerability management tools.

Platform.sh: Top choice among leading WebOps platforms

Platform.sh is a cloud-based WebOps platform in which you can build, deploy, and manage multiple websites and apps—at speed and at scale. In addition to  supercharged web hosting, we provide a secure, fully built, managed infrastructure so your developers and creators can focus on their core tasks.

Automation helps you to deploy faster and more often. Because it’s a unified PaaS package, with all the tools you need in one handy place, you’ll see further cost savings. And you can scale resources seamlessly to meet business demands.

Multiple choice

With us, you can host your apps and websites on the tech stacks or cloud platforms of your choice. It supports more than 100 frameworks and nine programming languages—including PHP, Java, Node.js, Python, Golang, Ruby, Drupal, WordPress, Symfony, Django, React, and Angular—so you can build exactly how you want, experiment with new technologies, and become more future ready. 

You won’t find this capability with managed hosting providers, IaaS providers, or traditional DevOps tools.

Global cloud hosting

We provide a single, global, secured cloud infrastructure for deployment, and offer you the option of data regions in North America, APAC, and Europe. This enables you to meet the needs of thousands of customers in different locations and industries, while still complying with local data protection laws.

Case study: BoardSpot provides custom website development for nonprofits via a portal with a set of integrated tools. To bring this vision to life, the BoardSpot team recognized early on that they’d need to develop this portal with a new set of tools and features. These needed to be powerful enough to support the needs of enterprise-scale nonprofits while still being intuitive enough for volunteer board members to feel comfortable with immediately.

They used Platform.sh to put it together, running multiple versions of the codebase in regions across the world. Their engineers are now able to work swiftly to roll out quick updates and take the time needed to properly plan and build big new features.

Git-based architecture

Because we use a Git-based architecture for managing changes and deployment, you won’t have to learn a new set of commands to deploy applications. All you need to do is set your project remote, then add, commit, and push your application as you’d do for GitHub. You can also create an instant application clone for every Git branch, giving every feature, team, or developer a perfect copy of production to work in, test with, or share with stakeholders.

Efficient management

From the management console, you can scale, run, and deploy your applications right from the browser—while the CLI lets you manage Platform.sh projects directly from your terminal. We can help you build, launch, and manage your websites and apps, even if there are hundreds of them. Our solution connects all your platforms, tools, and clouds, and reduces your carbon footprint.

Continuous integration and development

Platform.sh is built around the practice of CI/CD, which keeps your codebase updated and helps your application processes run smoothly—reducing technical debts, incidents, and disasters in your code or applications. Developers have the power to define what happens at every point in the two deployment phases (Build and Deploy), so they can test every idea in full and merge seamlessly into production. Apps and services are automatically containerized and deployed to the Platform.sh grid.

Case study: Web dev agency Thinkbean significantly improved its WebOps efficiency and stability with Platform.sh, and reduced technical support resolution times from days to minutes. The firm also leveraged Platform.sh integrations and automation, including backups, Drupal security checks, SSL expiration checks, and redeployments for certificate renewals. The team can now focus their time on creative thinking and solution building.

Top security

We understand that WebOps requires top-notch security and compliance. Our platform enables you to deliver your applications securely with the use of cryptography, permissions, and access management. Each environment is automatically secured with SSL, plus robust access control to tailor your workflow to your release process. 

We are committed to data security and undergo a SOC 2 Type 2 examination over Security, Privacy, and Availability annually. Additionally, we are PCI DSS Level 1 compliant for our platform hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). 

You’ll always maintain full control of your data, as well as governance over process, code, and infrastructure for distributed teams. And you’ll be informed instantly if a data breach is detected.

Choose the right WebOps platform for your business

WebOps platforms can vary greatly in terms of price, features, and functionality. But if you want a platform that’s fully flexible and scalable, and can handle high-performance websites, it’s best to choose an enterprise-grade solution—like Platform.sh.

Our service makes it easy to collaborate (you can share environments with a single click), and increases your overall efficiency with continuous deployment and automated workflows (such as one-click deployment of new apps).

With all your tools in a unified solution, you’ll boost productivity, improve the user experience, and reduce operational costs.

FAQs about WebOps

Who uses WebOps?

WebOps is used by a wide range of professionals. Web development teams are among the heaviest users, including DevOps specialists who use the platform to automate deployment processes as well as quickly set up environments and test code changes.

As we’ve seen, marketers and web creators also use WebOps to coordinate front-end operations such as managing website content and ensuring brand consistency across sites.

For web developers, web operations platforms make it easier to modify existing systems and deploy updates. IT managers use the software to ensure their operations are up-to-date and secure.

WebOps platforms help to identify inefficient processes and suggest improvements. And security professionals use WebOps to keep organizations safe from cyber threats and ensure they can respond quickly in the event of a breach.

What is the difference between DevOps and WebOps?

WebOps and DevOps are both about creating a more collaborative approach by getting teams to work together instead of in silos. And WebOps uses the principles and best practices of DevOps, so there are similarities. But when it comes to WebOps vs DevOps, how are they different?

You already know what WebOps does (or you should if you’ve read this article!). But what about DevOps? Short for development operations, it’s an agile approach to creating, testing, and releasing software. It uses continuous integration and continuous deployment to automate development tasks and accelerate the delivery pipeline.

While DevOps combines software development and software operations into a single team, WebOps brings in content creators and marketers to work alongside developers in order to manage websites more effectively.