We created Probo to solve a big issue we had with our software process: we needed to be able to test, verify, and approve development tasks as they were happening, rather than just at the end of a development sprint. Spinning up a sandbox site, or preview build, each time someone made a Pull Request in git transformed how we work as a team, as well as with our clients and partners. 

Whereas in the past we tested all changes to a site in a single QA or Test environment, now every individual pull request is tested inside its own isolated sandbox. Probo gives you a shareable link where you can see the changes, run your automated and manual tests, and get approvals, all before they code changes are merged into a master (or even a dev) branch. This enables non-technical individuals like project managers, clients, marketing teams, and other stakeholders to get involved from the very beginning, and speeds up the feedback process. 

While we do wish that every development team used Probo to build their sandbox or preview environments, we are excited to see many other platforms offer similar features, albeit normally in more limiting ways. Some of these tools are tied to a specific hosting platform, so they mainly useful if you have standardized on that platform, others work only with specific technologies and languages. Each solution varies in pricing structure and most use different measurements to determine your cost (disk space, concurrent builds, concurrent sandbox/previews, enterprise license, etc)  so how do you know which tool will yield the best results for you?

Let’s compare. 

We successfully completed the Probo Docker Images Restructure with minimal customer issues. The issues that have surfaced have workarounds in place for now. We'll be addressing any of the bugs we've encountered since the launch of the image restructure in the coming weeks when we release our Probo Beta Images.

We wanted to write a followup to our original post with some important details about the Probo Image Restructure. Several customers have already provided valuable feedback about our original plans and others are asking questions about the overall transition process. We want to ensure the least amount of confusion, issues, and downtime for our customers during this transition. Hopefully this post clears up some of the questions or concerns any of you may have.

Over the past few weeks, we added some new Probo features to our existing Probo Drupal Plugin. We even had help from one of our customers who contributed a pull request on GitHub. Thank you to joeparsons for the contribution!

Read about the new features below.

As Zivtech’s Marketing Manager, I’m by far not the most technical member of our staff. Since the developers see our website from a different perspective than I do, it’s sometimes challenging to communicate the changes that the marketing team would like to see. I can explain an idea, but I won’t necessarily know how it will look once it’s executed. This is where Probo comes in. 

Probo uses pre-built Docker images to power the docker containers that run each Probo build. These Probo Docker images were previously provisioned using Puppet, which is a tool we’ve used at Zivtech for server provisioning for a long time. Over the last year, we switched to using Ansible to provision these images, which was a fairly smooth transition after we figured out the new Ansible syntax. Overall, Ansible has made our Probo image builder code cleaner and easier to manage. 

Have you been meaning to give Probo a spin but haven't had a chance? We created this five minute exercise (seriously, we timed it) for you to see your first build in action:

Agile development was built on the idea that the development process should be collaborative. Cross-functional teams should work together to produce high quality results that are flexible to change. The agile development manifesto values individuals and interactions over processes and tools, so any tools used in the process should make it easier for individuals to work together. 

We built Probo from the ground up with open source software (OSS) as a top priority. Zivtech, the company that built and supports Probo, is an “OSS shop,” and our values are OSS to the core. We value open source in our own code and product as well as the OSS that the broader development community is building. We’re focused on making Probo free and easy to use for OSS developers via the Probo.ci SaaS app. 

In our last post, we covered how to set up a WPEngine site using Probo. This post will walk you through how to use Probo once your initial site is set up.