Deployment, hosting and handover
The most common way a Ghanaian business loses its software is not a bug. It is that the developer who built it holds the hosting account, the domain and the only copy of the credentials, and then becomes unreachable.
So deployment is a handover problem before it is a technical one. Everything goes on infrastructure registered in your name. You get the credentials, the runbooks and the architecture notes. If you replace me next year, the person who follows can pick it up from the documentation.
What that includes
Infrastructure in your name
Domain, hosting and service accounts registered to you, not to me. This is the single biggest protection you have.
Repeatable deploys
Docker, Nginx or Caddy, TLS certificates and process supervision, set up so a deploy is a command rather than a ritual.
Backups you have tested
Scheduled backups, and a restore actually performed once, because an untested backup is a hope rather than a plan.
Written handover
Credentials, runbooks, architecture notes and the decisions behind them, so the next engineer is not reverse-engineering your business.
Where I have done this
Common questions
- Who should own the hosting and domain?
- You should, always. Accounts registered in your business name, with billing on your card. A developer who insists on holding these is creating a dependency that benefits them and exposes you.
- Do I need a VPS or is shared hosting enough?
- It depends on what you are running. A marketing site is perfectly happy on cPanel shared hosting you already pay for. A platform with background jobs and a real database needs a VPS. I will tell you which you actually need rather than up-selling infrastructure.
- What happens after launch?
- Bug fixes and technical support are included for 30 days after delivery. Beyond that, ongoing maintenance is a separate arrangement, and the written handover means you are free to take it elsewhere.