I am trying to introduce a staging step in my company's code-production process. We currently have ~10 eng clients who commit code individually, update local codebase - debug/check locally, then we deploy the code to production environment and have other employees QA. Obviously we would like to have a better pre-production test process to help catch bugs before they go live to the public.
My first attempt is to create a staging environment on an extra ubuntu box with the most recent committed code from the eng clients. I then could allow the Product Managers to check this site and find bugs, test features, expose bottlenecks, etc.
What I have: The ubuntu machine (local server) is currently configured as a normal eng client. It has a local drupal installation, complete backup of the db, and all of this is accessible locally. Let's go with mysite.com = official site; and the local staging domain I use on the ubuntu box = ms.com. This local ms.com works just fine, so in essence, I need to just allow other people at the company to navigate to some URL and it acts the exact way ms.com currently behaves. I have DNS servers pointing to the ubuntu box and it is running some side projects out of the /www folder.
In an effort to keep the side projects running, I think my solution is to create a name-based virtual host that points to the directory of the local drupal installation. Is this the right thing to do to achieve my goals? Is there an easier way to open up this local config to the employees.
In trying to set up the virtual host I did the following:
I added the static ip address of the local server to /etc/hosts
I added a virutalHost to /etc/apache2/sites-available with the DocumentRoot dir/DrupalInstallation
I added a2ensite
Then restarted apache.
Halfway success. I can get to the main page, but none of the modules load, I tried loading more hosts/variations, started changing all localhost references to the external, but I don't really know what the underlying issue is and I do not know how to diagnose it. The one interesting bit is that if you click on some of the links, it kicks you back out to the index page of the www folder - I don't think the site alias is 100% sticking for requests.
Let me know if there is any sort of log or report I can share to help diagnose/debug this. Any and all help greatly appreciated - thanks!
It sounds like your specific error accessing pages beyond the homepage is related to not having mod_rewrite enabled/configured.
A different approach:
On a bigger scale, it sounds to me like you might not have what it takes to administer the staging server when something goes wrong. If you're unskilled at linux server admin, save yourself the headache and use a preconfigured virtual appliance (e.g. Quickstart, AegirDev, or Walid) instead of the dedicated box. If your staging box isn't beefy enough to handle hosting virtual machines, then just run the QuickStart install scripts over a base uBuntu build.
Now that you know your staging server is working and runs imported Drupal sites successfully, install git, create a shared repo, and make sure you and your developers are setup to use git as their source control in their IDE.
Related
What gives? When I view the page as "http://localhost:8080/" from the local machine, I can create the first (administrator) account and login without any problem. However, when I view the page from any other machine via it's public and/or private IPs, or even http://127.0.0.1:8080/ LOCALLY, I experience the "can't login or create the first (administrator) account" problem. What is going on?
First localhost exist only on your own machine. All other machines will try to look at themselves. Second, the reason for not being able to accessing your computer from another is dependent on your apache configuration. From what you say you probably have a WAMP configuration, these are usually only for development use as they are not secure enough. So, if you want you can of course change the apache parameters, which I don't think is a good thing. Or migrate the wp installation to a public server. If the problem persists on your localhost that is because of your settings in wordpress. Check reading settings in wp-admin or if you cannot connect you can also alter the settings by phpmyadmin. Hope this makes sense.
I have XAMPP running fine on one machine and I have 2 WordPress installs running fine on that machine. I would like to be able to access and work on those WordPress installs on other machines on my network.
Right now, I have it set so that if I try to access those directories from another computer on the network, all I get is either the XAMPP splash screen, or a 404 error if I try to access specific folders.
I've researched this and researched this and I have found numerous posts about how to do this.... but only in bits and pieces.
Does anyone know of a step by step, start to finish, guide of how to do this? In layman's terms?
Remote (from another network) would be great too. But I'll cross that bridge once I figure this out.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!
I would suggest rather than shared folders you use an FTP client / server - I use Filezilla server and client for my local sandbox testing server. This will give you additional info like file and folder groups and permissions.
Got to ask the question what OS? have you opened port 80 on the server machine?
Things like this can also occur on Linux if the folders and files do not have the correct groups for access and or permissions.
chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html
the above if on linux will assign all the folders and files to be accessed by the apache process. not having the correct groups assigned can give you 404 when you know the files are actually there.
also check the file and folder permissions,
different files and directories have permissions that specify who and what can read, write, modify and access them - this wordpress page gives a good overview of permissions
http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions
edit p.s. to access then from other networks all you will have to do is forward ports from your router to your internal server then your ftp and www services will be accessable from the outside world. I would suggest using a .htpass htaccess password to protect your services at this point.
so currently i am working on a wordpress site with webmatrix, and would like to view my progress in another computer in my network (at my workplace)
i want to either add the files to a shared drive for everyone on the network to view, or publish it locally with iis hosting
for the first method, i tried to change the url under settings from localhost:0000 to mycomputerIP:0000 but it did not work
for the second method i tried to enter the credentials of iss in the other computer into settings under publishing, so that it can be published locally, but it also did not work
i have looked for solutions online, but nothing seemed to be able to fix it, i am sorry for the vague description, but if anyone would like to help me i can provide more information
You should be able to follow the instructions at the following link to make sure everything is setup correctly:
http://blogs.iis.net/vaidyg/archive/2010/07/29/serving-external-traffic-with-webmatrix-beta.aspx
Edit
If you are using Windows Vista, 7, 8 or 8.1 you could look at installing a local copy of IIS and creating a virtual server for your WebMatrix site. It's not as much work as it sounds and it will give you a full management console, host name bindings and all kinds of other advantages. The following link should get you started:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/how-to-install-iis-on-windows-vista/
I yesterday received a zip file containing an old asp site from 2005. Its came in a folder called ivx.
I've unzipped ivx to c:\inetpub\wwwroot and then created an application in IIS called ivxapp and pointed it to c:\inetpub\wwwroot\ivx. Now when I type http://localhost/ivxapp, I am able to access the index page.
My problem is, whoever designed that site, designed it when IIS5 or IIS6 was around. He's used paths like more... which leads to http://localhost/new_posts.asp and not http://localhost/imagevertex/new_posts.asp
The whole site is some 21000 lines of code and contains many many references like this. Then comes the problem with <!--#include virtual = "/common/adminverify.asp" -->
Instead of having to manually edit the entire code, do you know a way to get things going?
This site worked perfectly well on a production server. Right now it's on my local machine on Windows 7 64 home premium.
Yes, you need to give this site a root-URL of its own, and not run it in a subdirectory of your localhost.
This is more of a web-administration question, but what you need to do is either run it under "localhost" directly, or add a domain-name to your network to run this site under.
The easiest for you right now is probably the first option.
If you aren't running a different site under localhost already:
Go to the IIS manager and click the 'localhost' site. On the right side of the IIS interface you can change the basic settings. Point the physical path to the ivx directory. You can reach the site directly on http://localhost.
If you are already running a site under localhost you need to keep:
Now, if you -are- already running a site on your localhost, the second easiest option is to run the ivx site under localhost, but on a different port. To accomplish that, click on the current ivx site in IIS, change the path in the same way as descibed above, and after that click on "bindings" in IIS, and change the PORT for the ivx site to something other than 80, for example 81.
The ivx site will then run on http://localhost:81, your current localhost will still run on http://localhost.
The hard way: adding a host to your network or PC:
The last option is to add a new hostname for the site to your network. You can add an A-record in your DNS for the ip-address of your server or add a host name to your HOSTS file in Windows on your server ("server" in the sense of the machine that runs the site, which can also be your local machine)
You can add a made-up name to the ip-address of the server, and in IIS' bindings add that name under "host name". this way you can run two different sites on the same machine, the "host name" seeting in IIS will make sure that calls to that specific hostname will reach the correct site. Adding it to the DNS of your network, or the HOST file in Windows will make sure the name is resolved to the correct machine (your webserver).
This last option is a little tricky of you've never done something like this before, but the first option works just as well.
Good luck!
Erik
I've tried looking around for a guide on moving a wordpress site into a dev environment, but all of the guides I've seen have been about CREATING one, as opposed to my situation, where I need to move an existin site to a local VM to create a dev/testing environment.
I'm fairly well-versed on how to create a dev environment from a regular old website, but just about everything wordpress-related gets me confused somehow.
Where I am now:
I've created a CentOS 6.0 VM using VMware on a Windows 7 machine. I've installed PHP, Apache, MySQL, and FTP-Server, along with all of the required updates and such. I have disabled SELinux.
I've moved the contents of the var/www/html/ folder from the live (production) server over to the var/www/html/ folder on my VM (currently exists within /var/www/html/my-website/)
My current issue:
When I attempt to access localhost/my-website/ I'm getting "Error establishing a database connection". An attempt at localhost/my-website/wp-admin/ tells me that either the database server is down (do I have to start this separately?) or that the username and/or password information in wp-config.php is incorrect (this was all simply moved from one place to another).
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Have you updated wp-config.php to include your localhost and database info for your local dev environment?
I bet wp-config.php is still pointing to your remote server DB which the MySQL DB wont allow for external connections
Also, make sure that the dev is using the same domain as the live version. On my windows machine, I do this by changing my hosts file. I'm sure there is something similar on your VM.
If I am unable to do this and I need the dev version to be under a different domain I would do the following.
Create mysqldump of live database
Edit the dump and replace
all occurrences of livedomain.com with devdomain.com (if you dont do
this at least check the wp_options table for the livedomain.com
occurences.
Change wp-config.php database settings.
I always ensure to use the same domain (controlled by local hosts file), and same db config in my dev environment as in my live environment.
If you've not changed the wp_options table for (option_name = siteurl or option_name = home), then chances are if you type in devdomain.com into your browser it will redirect to newdomain.com
Hope this helps
Blake
I know this was been answered but just to be perfectly clear:
on Centos6 you need to run httpd with php, and the mysql server. In the mysql server you have to import the database dump from the live website then you have to edit the config in wordpress to match the username and password on wordpress.
now when moved the db does not keep the username and password so I suggest you do this
commands to be run in shell:
service mysqld start
chkconfig mysqld on
that will take care of the db server running
then edit wp-config with username root and no password (I am pretty sure you have not added a password at mysql-server install)
post in here if you need further help.