Guides

1. Deploying a Next.js app to Prostack Cito

   On Vercel, a push builds and serves your Next.js app on their platform. On Prostack Cito it runs as an ordinary Node.js app on your own server, started and kept alive by Passenger, so there’s no process manager to set up. It needs one small file and a site to live on.

   In this guide

   • How Cito runs a Node app
   • Before you start
   • 1. Add an app.js
   • 2. Connect the repository
   • 3. Set your environment variables
   • 4. Restart after a deploy
   • 5. Check it on the preview URL
   • If something goes wrong
   • Scheduled jobs
   • Moving DNS

2. Environment variables on Prostack Cito

   On Vercel or Netlify you set environment variables in a dashboard, per environment. On Prostack Cito they live in a .env file in the site’s folder, owned by the site’s user. It stays put across deploys, and your app reads it the way it would on your laptop.

   In this guide

   • Where they live
   • Why they survive deploys
   • Next.js
   • Other Node apps
   • Laravel and other PHP apps
   • Staging and live
   • Keeping them safe

3. Rolling back a deploy on Prostack Cito

   Vercel keeps every deployment, so rolling back is a click. Prostack Cito deploys from git into a single live folder and doesn’t keep the version it replaced, so the way back runs through git, and through backups for the things git doesn’t hold. Here are the routes, quickest first, and how to make the next one easier.

   In this guide

   • Know what you’re undoing
   • Revert and deploy again
   • Check out a known-good commit
   • Restore from a backup
   • Before the next risky deploy
   • Try it on staging first

4. Keeping an internal tool private on Prostack Cito

   Internal tools built with coding agents tend to go live on a public URL with a login page someone wrote that afternoon. Prostack Cito can put a second lock in front of the whole site, let your office straight through, and keep unwanted visitors and crawlers out, all from the site’s Security settings.

   In this guide

   • Which lock does what
   • Password protection
   • Let your office straight through
   • Block addresses outright
   • Keep crawlers out
   • Sign-in inside the app

5. Letting your agent deploy to Prostack Cito safely

   The Prostack Cito MCP server lets Claude, Cursor and ChatGPT check your server, read logs, clone sites and deploy for you. It acts as whoever it signs in as, so the most useful safety setting is a login that only reaches the sites you want it near.

   In this guide

   • What the MCP server is
   • Connect it
   • What it can and can’t do
   • What a deploy does
   • Give it a staging-only login
   • A way of working that holds up

Looking for a single setting? The Cito documentation covers the control panel page by page. For anything else, ask an engineer.