Developer Tier

The Developer tier is designed for developers and agencies who need full control over their Drupal sites. It includes everything in the Pro tier plus multi-environment support and developer tooling.

Multiple Environments

Every Developer tier site comes with three independent environments:

Development

Your sandbox for trying new things. Test module installations, theme changes, and custom code without risk to your live site.

• URL: {site-id}.dev.creodrop.com
• Resources: 0.5 CPU, 512 MB RAM, 2 PHP workers
• Use for: Feature development, experimentation, debugging

Staging

A pre-production environment for final testing before going live. Share with clients or team members for review.

• URL: {site-id}.stage.creodrop.com
• Resources: 0.5 CPU, 512 MB RAM, 2 PHP workers
• Use for: Client review, QA testing, deployment rehearsal

Production

Your live, public-facing site with full resources.

• URL: {site-id}.prod.creodrop.com (or your custom domain)
• Resources: 2 CPU, 2 GB RAM, 8 PHP workers
• Use for: Live traffic, custom domain, full performance

Starting Images

When creating a Developer tier site, you choose a starting image that determines what code is pre-installed:

Image	What You Get	Best For
Creodrop Drupal CMS (default)	Full Drupal CMS with Redis, Drush, and platform integration	New projects, content sites
Vanilla Drupal 11	Clean Drupal 11 with Drush and Redis module	Developers wanting a blank slate
Bring Your Own Code	Empty runtime (PHP + Nginx + Composer + git)	Migrating from another host

The Bring Your Own Code option starts with an empty environment. After creating the site, add your git remote and push your existing Drupal codebase:

git remote add creodrop ssh://{site-id}-dev@ssh.creodrop.com:2222/srv/git/repo.git
git push creodrop main

Your project must follow the standard Drupal Composer structure with composer.json at the root and the webroot at web/.

Managing Environments

On the site detail page, Developer tier sites display an Environments panel with cards for each environment. Each card shows:

• Environment name and status
• Direct URL to the environment
• A Restart button for that specific environment

Environments are fully independent. Restarting development does not affect staging or production. Each has its own database, container, and URL.

SSH Access

Connect to any environment via SSH using your public key. The SSH gateway runs on port 2222.

Connecting

Use your site’s short ID and environment name as the SSH username:

ssh {site-id}-dev@ssh.creodrop.com -p 2222
ssh {site-id}-stage@ssh.creodrop.com -p 2222
ssh {site-id}-prod@ssh.creodrop.com -p 2222

The connection string for each environment is shown on your site’s detail page with a copy button.

Setting Up SSH Keys

Before you can connect, add your SSH public key in Account Settings:

1. Go to Account Settings
2. Scroll to the SSH Keys section
3. Click Add Key
4. Enter a name (e.g., “Work Laptop”) and paste your public key
5. Click Add Key to save

Your keys work across all your Developer tier sites. Creodrop supports ed25519, RSA, ECDSA, and DSS key types.

To generate a new key if you do not have one:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your@email.com"
cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

What You Can Do via SSH

Once connected, you have a shell inside the environment’s container as the drupal user. Available tools:

• Drush — drush cr, drush cex, drush cim, drush uli, drush sql-dump
• Composer — composer require, composer update, composer install
• PHP CLI — php for running scripts
• MySQL client — mysql for database access
• Git — git for version control operations

SSH Key Management

From your Account Settings, you can:

• View all your saved keys with fingerprint and key type
• See when each key was last used for authentication
• Delete keys you no longer need

Git Push-to-Deploy

Every Developer tier environment comes with a built-in git repository. Push code directly and the deploy pipeline runs automatically.

Setting Up Your Git Remote

Each environment has its own git remote URL. Find it on the SSH tab of your site detail page, or construct it manually:

ssh://{site-id}-dev@ssh.creodrop.com:2222/srv/git/repo.git
ssh://{site-id}-stage@ssh.creodrop.com:2222/srv/git/repo.git
ssh://{site-id}-prod@ssh.creodrop.com:2222/srv/git/repo.git

Add the remote to your local repository:

git remote add creodrop ssh://{site-id}-dev@ssh.creodrop.com:2222/srv/git/repo.git

Pushing Code

git push creodrop main

After the push completes, you will see a message confirming the deployment was triggered:

-----> Creodrop: Received push to branch 'main'
-----> Triggering deployment for dev...
-----> Deployment queued (ID: abc123)
-----> View status in the Creodrop control panel

The deploy pipeline runs in the background: composer install, drush updatedb, drush cache:rebuild, and a health check. View progress on the Deployments tab.

Branch-to-Environment Mapping

By default, pushes are mapped to environments based on branch name:

Branch	Environment
main	Production
stage	Staging
dev	Development

You can customize these mappings in the Git tab of your site settings.

Remote Command Execution

Run Drush, Composer, PHP, and other commands on your environments without SSH — directly from the control panel or the Creodrop CLI.

From the Control Panel

The site detail page includes a Developer Tools panel for Developer tier sites with:

• Quick actions — One-click buttons for Cache Rebuild, Login Link (drush uli), and Config Export
• Custom command input — Run any allowed command and see the output
• Environment selector — Choose which environment to run commands against
• Drush alias download — Download a .yml file for native Drush remote access

From the Command Line

Use the Creodrop CLI to run commands from your terminal:

creodrop drush @a1b2c3d4.prod cache:rebuild
creodrop drush @a1b2c3d4.dev sql-dump > local.sql

Or use native Drush aliases after generating them:

creodrop drush-aliases
drush @creodrop.a1b2c3d4.prod cr

See Creodrop CLI for installation and full command reference.

Allowed Commands

For security, only specific commands can be executed remotely:

Command	Examples
drush	cache:rebuild, cex, cim, uli, sql-dump, status
composer	require, update, install
php	Run PHP scripts
mysql	Database queries
cat, ls, find, grep	File inspection

Shell metacharacters, pipes, redirects, and dangerous operations (rm -rf, sudo, wget) are blocked.

Deploying Code

Developer tier sites use a structured promotion model to move code from development through to production. Each environment has its own deployment rules.

Environment	How to deploy
Development	Deploy any branch
Staging	Promote from development only
Production	Deploy a git tag only

This model ensures that only tested, tagged code reaches production. See Deployments for the full workflow.

Quick Summary

1. Push your branch to the git remote
2. Deploy the branch to dev to test it
3. Promote dev to stage for client review or QA
4. Tag a release (git tag v1.2.3 && git push --tags)
5. Deploy the tag to prod

Database Sync

You can pull database content downward between environments — production data into staging for a realistic test, or staging data into dev. See Database Sync for details.

Resource Allocation

Resource	Production	Dev / Stage
CPU	2 cores	0.5 cores
Memory	2 GB	512 MB
PHP Workers	8	2
Max Upload	128 MB	64 MB

Development and staging environments use reduced resources to keep costs manageable while still providing a functional environment for testing.