---
title: "Best practices for working with code on Acquia Cloud"
date: "2025-02-05T23:36:23+00:00"
summary:
image:
type: "article"
url: "/acquia-cloud-platform/help/94351-best-practices-working-code-acquia-cloud"
id: "3c42fde1-a8e8-4ffc-8d64-c3dbbf415245"
---

**DISCLAIMER** _\- This page assumes that you are already familiar with [Git basics](/node/92996) and are looking for how to best utilize it on Acquia Cloud._

Git offers a few workflow options for managing your code releases but on Acquia Cloud, we strongly recommend using [Git tags](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Basics-Tagging) for your Production environment for the following reasons:

*   It will make it easier for the team to roll back changes to the previous release/tag in case something goes wrong with the new release that is being deployed.
*   It helps you keep track of the release/version number of your project, and refer to that release number when talking with other members of the team.
*   It allows you to document the release notes of your project, which is useful for your team and stakeholders.
*   It allows you to compare changes between two separate releases.
*   It allows you to deploy a previous release in your local in case you need to investigate when issues that are hard to identify were introduced.
*   It helps reduce the risk of untested code getting accidentally deployed to Production when pushing to Acquia Cloud.

NOTE

_We **strongly** recommend creating a [database backup](/node/56287) before deploying your code to Production in the case that you need to roll back due to an issue with your deployment._

### Tagging off of _master_

In general, most workflows will involve creating a tag after merging the feature branch (where the development work is being done) into _master_. Let's say you have merged your feature branch into _master_ and are ready to deploy that release. Our default tag format is _yyyy-mm-dd.version_ and if you are on version 1, then you can create the tag by running the following commands:

    $ git fetch
    $ git checkout master
    $ git pull
    $ git tag -a 2019-10-02.1 -m "my release message"
    $ git push --tags

This will make sure you have the up-to-date repo/_master_ branch, tag the branch with your specified tag name, and then push it up to your application on Acquia Cloud. You should then be able to follow our [Code workflows with Acquia Cloud](/node/56318) documentation to deploy that tag to the desired environment.

### Checking out a git tag locally

Perhaps you've noticed a small bug in your application after deploying a release via a tag and need to make some changes. You can accomplish this by running the following:

    $ git fetch
    $ git checkout tags/2019-10-02.1

Your local repo should now be on the desired tag!

Pro Tip: Check for changes in traffic after code deployments
------------------------------------------------------------

After your code has been deployed and traffic has been accessing the site for a few hours, it's a good idea to see if there have been any significant changes in traffic patterns. You can easily download your logs directly from the Cloud UI: [https://docs.acquia.com/cloud-platform/monitor/logs/#cloud-download-logs-ui](/node/56379)

*   Check your [Apache logs](/node/56388) for any significant increase of uncached pages after cache has
*   Check your [Views & Visits](/node/56375) for unexpected increases.