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Guide → Deploy the Roe app

Site Sync

How Sites are published from Roe

In Roe there are Deploy and Site Sync:

  • Deploy = Put the Roe app on a host
  • Site Sync = Sync (publish) all the content of your site to a host

Deploy deals with the app itself. Site Sync deals with your website.

In Roe you have two paths to publishing your site:

  • Publish your Static Site (just HTML, CSS, and JS)
  • Deploy the Roe app to a host

Which of these you choose will determine which hosts you can use. All hosts support static sites. The Roe app requires Ruby on Rails and so hosts that support Rails are required. There are many of these.

You can learn how to publish a static site here: Guide → Publish a static site

When to use a Static Site vs deploy the Roe app

A static site has no server. This is one of it’s major benefits and why static sites load so fast. They don’t have to talk to a server to retrieve anything. All the files needed are in the static site as HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Almost any webhost will offer static site hosting.

With Roe, this means that features like Members and Newsletters won’t work. Those features require a server. However, the Store feature and Snipcart don’t require a server. These will work on a static site.

Site Sync connects to your host, and pushes all your static site files. Once you’ve pushed your files once, it will only offer to push files that have changed since your last sync. This means you don’t have to push your entire site every time you make a change.

When to use a static site:

  • for a content only website
  • content + store site
  • cost of hosting is an important factor

If you want to have members, newletters and take payments, you’ll need to deploy the Roe app.

When to deploy Roe as an app

In addition to features like Members, paid content, Payments and Newsletters, hosting the Roe app means you can sign into Roe from anywhere. It’s not tied to your personal computer. This means you can edit your site from anywhere.

When you have the Roe app locally and deployed to a host, Site Sync helps you keep your published or live site in sync with your locally isntalled site.

Site Sync will:

  • inform you when there have been changes in one place but not the other.
  • give you a simple way to sync these changes so both live and local match.
  • will backup an encrypted copy of your live (or production) database locally.

When to deploy the Roe app:

  • you need the Members, Newsletter and/or Payments features
  • you want to be able to sign into your live site and make edits

You can learn about deployment of the Roe app here: Guide → Deploy Roe