BitBucket

Bit Bucket! This is a bit of a niche website for porn webmasters. Around mainstream circles, BitBucket is pretty much a household name. But, it’s pretty much a site built for hardcore programmers and the occasional script kiddie. Porn webmasters usually deal with marketing platforms and WordPress. It’s pretty rare that you’d actually need a code repository like BitBucket. Most of your content and website software can be held on the actual web server. You don’t exactly need high-quality version control for a porn tube. But, there are ways in which BitBucket might work into your formula without it being completely fucking unnecessary.

If you’re using any of Atlassian’s other tools, like Jira, for example, then BitBucket is just the natural fit for your entire goddamn project. Another reason to use BitBucket for your website is in case you have several websites running in parallel and you’re afraid that your web developers might fuck something up. Then there’s also the multiple affiliate marketing possibility where you’re scared of misplacing or breaking your tracking pixels. Accidents happen. If you were dealing with a regular coding project, then a repository would be a no-brainer no matter the scope of the project. With porn websites, it’s more that you don’t need the repository at all until you scale past a certain point and the whole project becomes unmanageable. That’s where BitBucket shines best. Well, that and the integration with other Atlassian solutions. They’re all made by the same company, so you get direct communication between all of your systems.

The Upsides of Using a Repo

You get version control and top-level admin access to your site, whether it’s on a git repo or on WordPress. The basics are exactly the same, but the way they’re implemented differ wildly. WordPress and similar web engines are built for simplicity and quick deployment. You want a website; you press a button and boom, you’re ready to go. You can theoretically run with both, if you’re in love with WordPress. You can host your entire WordPress site on a fucking repository and hook up your development team over Jira. Or, just add them to the BitBucket repo and have at it.

The upside you have to look forward to is the modularity that comes with combining a proper programmer with a proper repository. If you’re coding your own shit yourself and you’ve never taken a coding class in your life, no repo is going to help turn your system into less of a bundle of spaghetti. But, a proper developer knows how to compartmentalize. So, once you set up an affiliate marketing integration and built it into your site, then make some custom interaction to help you automatically switch that campaign on and off… well, you can save that code as a module. Or I should say, your programmer can save that as a module. And, just like that, you’re growing your own personal site template that can be edited on the fly with perfect version control and overview.

Staying on Top of Site Changes

Operating multiple porn sites with various affiliate programs will inevitably lead to having numerous developers. Whether you’re hiring separate freelancers or an affiliate network lends their developers to you for an integration, you’ll have two sets of hands-on one project at a time at some point in your career. That’s going to fuck you up royally if you don’t have a repo. There’s just no way around it. Oh, sure, you can have your developers write down logs of everything they’ve altered on your WordPress or just use Wordpress’s built-in version control system and track file changes, but that’s a fucking nightmare compared to how easy BitBucket is to use. You just get better flow control.

Not to mention, the damn thing is built around the concept of analyzing and documenting all conventional types of code and web code falls under that umbrella. Whether it’s Wordpress’s dumbass PHP or something sensible like JavaScript, this bad boy will track it all properly. That means that you can see all of your site’s modules and how they interact with one another. You can see the dependencies and stay on top of version control for plugins that get new updates. You can mix and match code any way you see fit and most importantly, you can roll back sections of your site that are either broken or underperforming. It’s like having a magic wand that you can wave at all your problems to make them go away, even if your developers happen to fuck something up. Oh and speaking of the developers…

Access Control

The thing I like most about BitBucket is, well, my favorite thing about Jira and Atlassian’s solutions in general. They’re built around the concept of simultaneous team access. They are well aware of the fact that running an online porn empire is not unlike an orgy. You want to have a nice chat in advance about who gets which hole and how much time they should spend on that hole. You also don’t want two dude programmers accidentally touching tips, because that’s gay. So, you have to set up the team in such a way that they don’t clash with each other.

Before I jump into an orgy, I like to make sure that everyone’s got their roles down and that they know where they should be bending over so I don’t accidentally get a full view of man ass in my face. Though, that’s not a huge problem for me; I mostly have orgies with women. But hey, we’re not here to talk about my epic sex life. We’re here to talk about BitBucket. When you introduce any kind of employee, whether they’re temporary, on retainer or full-time, you set up their BitBucket access with specific credentials that only grant them access to shit that they should be changing. You don’t hand out your WordPress password and let them rip.

If you need a WordPress plug-in modded for extra functionality, you can give the coder direct access to all the parts of your site that they need to make it work. They can also pull a copy of the necessary parts to test locally, then just push the changes when they feel they’ve done everything right. And, you don’t have to push those changes live until you’re satisfied with the results. It’s perfect flow control that ensures that everyone does their jobs right and that people don’t actually clash with each other. In theory, you can have 100 developers running 100 separate integrations on one site, without running the risk of your site imploding in on itself.

Self-Managed Payment Tiers

The payment tiers for BitBucket are split into two, depending on whether you want to host the site yourself or have it on the actual BitBucket servers. This decision is ultimately up to you. If you’re running a problematic website, you might want to go with some sort of offshore hosting solution that has you pay anonymously with Bitcoin or whatever. That’s the best choice if you want some cloak and dagger. In that case, you can use the self-managed option which, as far as I can tell, comes with a one-time fee.

Their price points are kind of strange and steep, though. I honestly can’t make heads or tails of this. So, check this out. If you want to buy a perpetual server package license, that’ll run you $10. That’s it—just ten bucks. But, you’re limited to 10 users. Ok, so far, so good. So, how much does the next tier cost? It comes with 25 users, so how much do you think they’re charging for it? Go ahead, take a guess. Did you guess $2,900, because that’s how much it fucking costs to get a license for 25 people. I cannot for the life of me figure this shit out. That is the steepest tier ramp I’ve ever seen. You don’t get extra features for that upgrade, just the additional 15 users and it boggles my mind.

They also have a data center offer for $1,980 with 25 users, but it’s unlikely you’d need that kind of license. I haven’t heard of porn webmasters who aspire to run a data center. But, if that’s your cup of tea, by all means, have at it.

Cloud Solutions

Some good news – the basic cloud solution tier is actually free, forever, with up to 5 users and 50 build minutes a month. For a small project, this is more than enough. I don’t see why you’d ever need to upgrade. Luckily, the more expensive tiers that you’ll need when you scale up don’t ramp up like the self-managed tiers. The standard package costs $3 a month per user and the premium is only $6 a month.

These tier upgrades bump up your user limit to unlimited, as well as scaling up the file storage and built minutes. There are also some extra goodies in the premium package like enforced merge checks and deployment permissions, so if you’re using their cloud services, you will inevitably upgrade to premium. At that price point, you can’t exactly afford not to. It’s worth every penny.