#Configuration

Two commands that keep three environments apart on one machine and one web server: one sets an environment's addresses and aligns every file that stores them, rendering nginx from templates and refusing on clashes; the other points the browser at one environment.

Three commands that take a tested release into production without overwriting what production owns: they promote configuration structure but keep its secrets and addresses, refuse to copy new secrets, and apply schema migrations the images carry.

Every new project needs a gateway, sign-in, and a first administrator before its backend exists. One generator command now builds that stack, working on first boot, by handling the values that fail silently when set by hand and a rerun that would keep the old database.

Release Workflow: Development to Production is the procedure every change of mine follows from my laptop to production — which steps I automated, which I deliberately left to a person, why each step sits where it does, how I diagnose a failed release, and how I recover from it.

This Laravel app answers HTTP and runs long-lived queue workers, yet a container is meant for one program. A process manager, FrankenPHP worker mode and a cache-ordered build put both in one image, instead of building the same code twice.

Staging and production shared 136 keys, but 21 had to stay different, including the one that decrypts years of data. Promoting a release's structure, not a file's contents, keeps that key in place and stops a schema migration from silently never running.

Three environments sharing one fixed domain name, separated at the socket rather than by name, with a banner on every environment except production — and live proxy config rendered from a template, never linked into a repository where a branch switch could rewrite it.

Point one environment's volumes at another's data and the restore succeeds, every health check passes, and the database is empty. Separating networks, state and runtime identity is what keeps three environments on one host from quietly erasing each other.