
PHP Fog to be discontinued on December 21st - ianpri
http://docs.appfog.com/migration
======
timjahn
This sucks.

But actually, I'm glad to hear it. Over the past 2 weeks (since we upgraded
matchist to a PHP Fog dedicated server), their support team has basically
dropped off the face of the earth.

Their support live chat disappeared. Their phone number goes to voicemail. And
there's no way to get a hold of them other than their ticketing system (which
they respond to every few days if you're lucky).

I loved PHP Fog when I first heard of it and started using it 6 months ago.
But honestly, I'm not sure we're going to switch to AppFog since it's the same
team. Not sure I want that level (lack) of service.

~~~
ckeck
I'm very sorry to hear about your experience with our support team over the
past few weeks. While there have been some changes to live chat we are still
available via phone during business hours depending on volume and are highly
responsive with tickets (hours turnaround if not quicker on average).

Was there a particular ticket I can review for you to see what happened? I
want to make sure we don't drop the ball here.

~~~
anthonys
What are business hours when you are a developer platform used by developers
globally?

------
ianpri
Just got the email:

Dear Fogger,

It is with a heavy heart that I let you know that the PHP Fog service will be
discontinued in December in favor of AppFog, which is PHP Fog 2.0. I am
incredibly sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Creating PHP Fog has been an amazing experience for us and it could not have
happened without you––thank you for your support. With your help, we’ve built
an amazing PaaS for PHP developers. And along the way, we’ve applied what
we’ve learned to creating our new product, AppFog.

AppFog is the future of our business, and we very strongly believe it is also
the future of PaaS. So, in order to focus our team and efforts on continuing
to build a better solution for developers, we will be shutting down the PHP
Fog platform this coming January and focusing solely on AppFog.

We have considered this change very, very carefully because we understand that
this could present challenges for some of our users. But in the end, we are
confident that moving to AppFog will give you additional flexibility,
additional languages, additional infrastructures, and the ability to deploy
your apps to private cloud infrastructure as well as leverage the strengths of
the OpenStack and Cloud Foundry ecosystems.

To help in the migration, we will do be doing everything we can to help this
be as easy and painless as possible: 2GB of RAM in our Free Plan We will be
releasing a series of blog posts that walk you through the migration to
AppFog. We will also be publishing documentation of the migration path as well
as solutions for some of the edge-case differences between the platforms. To
start with, we have created a migration FAQ that should help you begin the
migration process.

I am committed to making AppFog a product that will make you look back at PHP
Fog and think, “I’m really happy I switched.”

~~~
fdgwhite
Same here.

PHP Fog had its share of problems, but AppFog doesn't support Git.

~~~
meritt
Purely informative but it seems you can add commit hooks to your version
control to connect to theirs: <http://blog.appfog.com/553/>

Seems pretty stupid to drop support of git in favor of their own product.

~~~
fdgwhite
I only used them for development but at least I never had to worry about the
application server and the git workflow worked perfectly. Didn't use their
shared database, which didn't support stored procedures etc, but it was easy
to connect RDS. They came out with their own "dedicated DB" product but it was
just RDS with a 100% markup and no other advantage. Not that I blame them for
trying to monetize since it sounds like it they weren't making money off the
basic stuff.

------
Liongadev
I had the worst experience with appfog/phpfog. They ignore emails and state
things on their hp that are clearly not true (like they would support .NET
which they are not).

Should have been warned whem some time ago a 15year old hacked their system
and controlled all their servers.

------
johnmurch
As a current customer since 7/11 (over a year) I am SHOCKED they aren't
working on automating a process to migrate over to AppFog. I guess they don't
want my business - off to heroku and/or ec2.

~~~
cardmagic
John,

I am so sorry for the inconvenience, we are working on some tools to make the
process easier, but for now here is a tutorial:

[http://blog.phpfog.com/2012/11/12/migrating-your-php-apps-
fr...](http://blog.phpfog.com/2012/11/12/migrating-your-php-apps-from-php-fog-
to-appfog/)

~~~
benatkin
That doesn't really seem to be about migrating, but about setting up an
arbitrary php app with AppFog. Here's a few things that are wrong with it:

* It assumes you have the directory locally. Can't it be downloaded from phpfog?

* It doesn't say anything about copying environment variables.

* It doesn't talk about making sure you have at least as much system resources. It should say how to find how much memory you had with phpfog to make sure you have enough with appfog.

* It doesn't cover data migration.

* Even without covering data migration, it could at least have covered migrating the database configuration, but it doesn't.

* It leaves with an appfog domain name. It should say how to switch them.

* Too much of the post is devoted to going through AppFog's features.

* It has some cheesy marketing for AppFog like "af-plus-php-equals-win" and "Lots more functionality where that came from".

I don't think I could bring myself to call it a migration tutorial.

~~~
luc_perkins
Please note: this is the first in a series of tutorials. This tutorial in
particular is devoted solely to migrating application code. Tomorrow, we will
post the first of two data migration tutorials that will walk users through
the data migration process.

~~~
benatkin
I know, I know. It's all that was available at the time this was announced, a
little over a month before free accounts are scheduled to be shut down. Some
people are probably already migrating.

Is it true that appfog's filesystem is volatile? Does this mean that it could
be wiped without a system fault or a user shutting down the system? If so,
there doesn't seem to be a clear migration path to appfog for PHP users that
are using the writable directory support. If not, it should probably be
documented that writes will only go to the one instance and that if you're
using multiple app server instances you need to set something up.

------
ericcholis
A bit of a positive note here, I found that PHP Fog was more difficult to use
than AppFog. I had some higher-level issues with Apache on the PHP version of
AppFog that I brought up and were quickly addressed.

It might sting now, but those that used PHPFog might like AppFog more.

~~~
luc_perkins
You're right. I think people need to give AppFog a chance.

Once they do something like, for example, cloning an app in Singapore and re-
deploying it in Ireland in less than a minute, they'll see the value in what
we've built.

------
dia80
Well done, a lot of people are going to be unhappy about this. I think it
takes courage to take the pain upfront and concentrate on doing one thing
really well.

------
tomjen3
Which has a pretty low limit on the database (100mb), no dedicated database,
no persistent file system (there goes a large portion of PHP downloadable
software), no monitoring and you have to retool the way your database works,
using json, in a way that no other hosting service does.

------
fdgwhite
Personally I will give AppFog a try. If you're the sort of person who liked
PHP Fog, the alternatives are not THAT great. Here's a good roundup from last
month:

But regarding the business transition over at App Fog, you know what's really
strange: Why does the 'dead simple' migration process start with creating a
new account? Isn't it the same company? At the very least, if I were in charge
of AppFog I wouldn't make everyone sign up again. Just saying.

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __Signing up for AppFog

First things first: score yourself a free AppFog account at
console.appfog.com. It’s the same thing we’ve all done a million times:
e-mail, password, and then e-mail verification.

~~~
fdgwhite
Oop, here is the link about PHP PAAS
[http://philsturgeon.co.uk/blog/2012/10/cloud-hosting-php-
pip...](http://philsturgeon.co.uk/blog/2012/10/cloud-hosting-php-pipe-dream)

------
timjahn
Other than dotCloud, what are some other PHP as a platform competitors?

~~~
cardmagic
AppFog is PHP Fog 2.0, it does PHP and has way more functionality

~~~
timjahn
AppFog is also run by the same team as PHP Fog, which in my experience in the
past few weeks, cares very little about customer support. I'd like to see what
else is out there.

------
useritos
I think the solution is to find another service. How can I trust appfog after
this terrible surprise? Tomorrow I will receive an email. We are very sorry
but appfog will be dicontinued.

~~~
luc_perkins
AppFog is absolutely NOT being discontinued! We are incredibly proud of what
we accomplished with PHP Fog, but we think that the AppFog is the true future
of PaaS: polyglot and poly-infrastructure. We simply don't think that single-
language PaaS on a single infrastructure is the future, and we're working on
rolling all of the functionality from PHP Fog into AppFog, where you'll be
able to deploy Node, Java, Python, Ruby, and other runtimes and deploy to a
variety of infras.

AppFog is absolutely thriving right now and will be around for quite some
time, we assure you.

~~~
phthalo
Sure it is. And I'll bet if you look through your archives you'll find that
you made the same assurances about PHPFOG...

------
tedchs
I feel sorry for all the small businesses relying on PHP Fog who maybe don't
have an in-house IT team and will really struggle to meet this very short
deadline. I'm talking about the kind of business, who may have hired someone
to build a small app for them on PHP Fog, and to do anything with IT they have
to hire an outside IT consultant by the hour.

I would encourage App Fog to offer a "fully managed" migration option, even if
it's for a token fee.

------
ckeck
Just to clarify, all free tier services are being shut down in late December
and paid (dedicated) services in late January.

~~~
timjahn
What kind of migration support are you providing if we decide to switch to
AppFog? Your support quality and service level has dropped off a cliff in the
past 2-3 weeks, in my experience.

------
ranza
You could always migrate to <https://pagodabox.com/>

------
colinsidoti
Argh.

PHPFog was my goto place for self-hosting Wordpress blogs, is AppFog as
simple?

~~~
cardmagic
AppFog is just as simple and way more powerful too.

~~~
Kiro
But will WP work without a persistent file system? Doesn't that mean you can't
upload pictures to your posts?

~~~
luc_perkins
AppFog does not currently support persistent file systems, but we're working
hard on adding this feature. In the meantime, we strongly recommend Amazon S3
as a persistent file store.

