Preview servers
How throwaway preview servers work: lifetime, limits, and what persists.
A preview server is a temporary PHP server we start so you can run what you are building. It is separate from your live *.zizbe.com hosting and acts as a scratch environment.
Starting one
Hit Start preview server in the toolbar. We provision the server, upload your project’s files, launch it, and issue SSL. The first start can take a minute or two while the certificate is issued. Later starts are faster.
Lifetime and limits
- One at a time. Each account runs a single preview server. Starting one for another project asks you to stop the current one first.
- Shared projects share the preview. If a project is shared, whoever hits Start starts one preview that everyone in the project sees and uses, with all of your edits kept in sync on it. It only counts against the person who started it. See Sharing a project.
- Idle shutdown. The server shuts down after about 15 minutes of inactivity in the tab. The countdown up top shows the time left and resets while you work.
- Hard cap. Every session has a 2-hour maximum, after which it stops regardless of activity.
What persists
Your files live on your account and persist. The preview server does not. When a server stops, nothing you saved is lost; start a new one to run again. Data written by your code at runtime (uploads, the SQLite database file, and so on) lives on the temporary server and is cleared when it is recycled.
Going live
When a project is ready, publish it to hosting. See Publishing to hosting.