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[need advice] Figuring out solid technical stack and how build assets (9)

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Hi everyone

I'm planning to setup a viable long-term db/server infrastructure and I thought it would be interesting and useful to share.

From my research I've picked up the following approach, would love to hear feedback (especially from big volume affiliates):

1. Use git repository on Github + CI/CD scripts (using Github actions)
2. Use DigitalOcean Kubernetes cluster & managed database service for automatic scalability, DO configs coded with terraform. This way if there's a spike in traffic, kubernetes cluster would automatically add more servers, and scale down when the spike is gone.
3. Use Cloudflare domains for SSL & CDN (also can be provisioned using terraform scripts)
4. Use Docker containers - containers can be stored either in DO registry or DockerHub. Anyway, kubernetes requires all apps to be packaged inside of a container. Containers also provide flexibility for any choice of a backend language - you can freely go with PHP, NodeJS, Python, you name it.

Price of this setup (using DigitalOcean) is $10 for kubernetes cluster of one server 1vCPU/2GB RAM (any additional server +$10, there are more powerful servers) + $10 loadbalancer (added automatically for any cluster), $15 for a minimal managed database server. Total: $35 per month.

Pros:

• everything is in a git repository
• maximum automation
• no backend specific packages are required to be installed on the server

Cons:

• time & effort overhead (write Docker files, automation scripts etc)

I'm not sure though how to efficiently organize landings in the repository. Would you go with a framework like Symphony/Laravel/ExpressJS and handle landings using a framework router like /en/sweeps/iphone/11 or plain folders with static files? Also using webpack could help with CSS/JS/image minification (which in turn requires time & effort).

Another question for me is building assets (users who visit landing pages) - how do you organize your retargeting lists?
For example, if a user visits one of your landings - do you add them to all retargeting lists possible? do you place scripts for Adwords, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Propellerads, you-name-it-traffic-source on your landing pages?

What information on your users do you collect in your database?

Would appreciate any feedback.

Cheers,
Eugene

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What’s the end result of all this, hosting static landers or are you building something more exotic? For anything that needs PHP, I would argue it’s better and faster to use client side JavaScript

For static landers, serving content from cdn’s file service will outperform anything on digital ocean. Deploy using github to their ftp if you need something slick

Most CDN’s will minify css, resize images for the device etc nowadays

Simplicity is key. Spend your time on marketing activities that add value to the campaign, not juggling servers.

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Great point, thanks! For static landers only - yes, CDN would do.

I'm thinking in terms of manageability (when you have xxx landers), so you can generate static files and share assets between them (countdown timers, popups, etc) -> quick setup of new landers. Or (geniune question) - there's no point in doing that?

Also, don't you use any server side code (with database involved), just static landers?

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Oh god, for a non techie with low knowledge about the server stuff, reading your post felt like reading something in Japanese

But anyways, at some point, my coder spent a month or more on developing some kind of system that would make it easy for us to manage LPs, change things on the fly, automatically generate simple banners etc... But in the end, it didn't really help us much... some things were easier to implement/change but to be honest, the simple and mostly static LPs performed the best. Same with the creatives... finding the right images was more important than having the option to automatically swap them with the templates he made.

I guess it depends on what you plan to build and work with... my approach is simple so I don't need complicated setups. I host with vultr, digitalocean plus have something on rackspace cloud files, works good enough. And apart from some simple code, my LPs are plain html or a bit of javascript from the most part.

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I agree with previous replies that simplicity is key and focusing on marketing/optimisation activities is more important.

If you just want a place to host your landers and add PHP stuff to them, I think a service from Zeno/Funnelflux where they offer landers hosting might be just enough for you. And I think it's about the same cost you've listed above...

I always say that usually you'd want your own server if you also plan to do email marketing and generally build lists (Push, Pixel lists etc) on a vertical/niche that commercial Email Service Providers would not allow you (e..g Adult). Not just for rotating landers and adding scripts. It'd be much faster and you'd have more control to do this manually as needed. Or you are planning on sending clicks in the million range on your pages (per month)

In regards to these questions:

You can have it page/url specific or site global. if the offers you'll be sending are in one niche you can keep it global (ie anyone that visits pages that contain your root domain). If you're going to have different vertical/niche offers then you'd need to be building custom audiences based on url. So url contains exact path etc.

I personally build invisible (pixel) lists off whatever I do. So I'd put both Google and FB pixels on my Landing Pages. And when I need to segment I do it via the platform rules.

What information on your users do you collect in your database?

When I hear the words database and assets, my mind goes to building lists of some sort . So on email list building for example, other than the email address of-course, I also collect where they came from (source), what LP they came from, visitor ID or a unique identifier that I append to my emails for cross domain tracking.

hope this helps a bit.

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Wouldn't recommend it.
I once had a developer talk me into such a setup with shared resources as it sounds more efficient in theory but in practice it made things harder.

Happened way too often that a split test was running and a lander accidentally got changed because it had some shared resource with another page... so the split test became invalid, money wasted, time lost, frustrations grew and I dropped the system.

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Appreciate your input, guys!

I'm fully convinced to stick to using CDN + static landers, and not lose time on unnecessary technical complexities.

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Landerlab.io is another great option worth giving a try

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A few points from a techie...

1) Someone already did this in 2017, using Symfony. See this post:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...o-Run-on-a-CDN

Unfortunately, the ZIP mentioned in the thread is not longer valid. I reach to Daniel by email a couple of days ago. If he gets back to me, I will let you know. But you can read the post, and see the libraries used on the picture

2) Regarding these questions:

Framework router means server rendering (PHP/Node) and will therefore cost you extra loading time for each user. I agree with others that static files work better. This is what Daniel did: only using Symfony to render static pages, and then upload them to his server.

WebPack means dependencies and additional JS sent to the user, and I prefer to just put the JS code you need, not starting with a big mess and trying to remove things with WebPack/PostCSS optimization. This gives you more control on the page.

Since 2017, the framework market has changed a lot. If you want to have a framework to organize your landing pages, I would use a static site generator, which allows for example to have your JS in one folder, accessible with shortcodes when you need them in a landing. Most of them allow you to deploy to AWS or Google Cloud.

See this article for more info:
https://scotch.io/tutorials/top-10-s...rators-in-2020

For affiliate marketing, you could consider 11ty, Sculpin, Hugo (I use this one). Gastby is popular too, but slower as based on React, so not that great for single landing pages.

But I agree with others, KISS is the way to go. I don't see the benefit of using GitHub for example.

I would say that it depends of what you want to do. If you are never going to do advertising on Twitter, it might not be useful to add the Twitter tag script on it. Anyway, if you want to place several tags on the same page, I would recommend you to have a look at Google Tag Manager. You place only the Google Tag Manager on your page, and then you configure it to trigger the tags you want from Adwords, FB...
https://tagmanager.google.com/

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