Recently on his blog Rich Zygler has made some suggestions about building up a good development environment. His idea environment includes Linux, Apache, PHP and Subversion.
I do have some definite thoughts on the layout of development environments. And I find that there's a huge lack of information about this on the interweb, so here you go. We use Linux, Apache, PHP, and subversion in our development environment and so these instructions will be biased towards these topics but I think you can apply this method using various other technologies.
He talks about setting up the environment for multiple developers (with advantages and disadvantages) as well as the directory layout and subversion repository setup. There's not any configuration file examples here, but its a good overview of how things are set up in his environment to make a plan of attack for yours.
On the NETTUTS.com website today Alex Villmannwalks you through setting up a dedicated web server running Ubuntu, Apache, MySQL and PHP.
All great websites have a great server behind them. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to set up a dedicated web server (with Apache, MySQL, and PHP) using that old computer you have lying around the house and some free software.
The tutorial comes with plenty of screenshots for the Ubuntu install as well as the changes you'll need to make to the configuration files for the software to get things up and running. In the end you'll have a dedicated server you can drop anywhere and use to host your site.
This recent article from the Builder.com.au website shows exactly how simple it is to get a LAMP server up and running on your Ubuntu installation.
I can't tell you how many times I have been asked what is the fastest, easiest way to install a LAMP (Linux Apache, MySQL, PHP) server on Ubuntu. Well, I guess it's time I just post it here for everyone to enjoy.
You're just two apt-get calls and a few various commands away from pulling in an Apache 2 web server and a PHP5 module that has MySQL support already built in. Set the password for the MySQL installation and you're all set to go.
After looking around for different hosting for some of his projects (one that was a bit more PHP-developer friendly), Brandon Savage looked into Slicehost, a virtual server option that gives a bit more control than the larger, more typical shared hosting environments. Here's his review of the move.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but what I got was pretty amazing. Slicehost works by offering virtual servers for each account - that is, for each account they offer, you get your own box. [...] You're responsible for putting anything on it you want. And that's where the fun starts: you really can put anything you want on it.
The slices allow you to customize your PHP builds, add in MySQL, change up Apache - whatever you want. All you need to know is how to compile things and get them working together. Slicehost isn't a good option for someone that's not familiar with linux system administration, but if you know exactly what you want and how to put it there, their pricing is one of the best out there (plus they just got bought up by Rackspace so their future seems bright).
The other day our servers were overwhelmed with the rising traffic and I started profiling my application through Xdebug.[...] On this project we currently run with 100,000 visitors per day on average, our peak is Sunday night where we get a ton more traffic than usually. [...] Here are a few things, that helped us. Suggestions are in no particular order and I should add that whatever is applicable for my situation, doesn't have to work for you.
His suggestions include using APC for caching, using __autoload, caching of DB queries, and some Apache tweaks to reduce what it has to load/use for each request.
In a new post todayStuart Herbert asks the question "is it possible to secure a shared server with PHP and FastCGI installed on it?" His answer follows...
The challenge with securing a shared hosting server is how to secure the website from attack both from the outside and from the inside. PHP has built-in features to help, but ultimately it's the wrong place to address the problem. [...] Before we can look at performance, the first question is: how exactly do we get PHP and FastCGI running as different users on the one web server in the first place?
He follows through on this, giving a little mini-tutorial on getting the environment installed on an Apache web server. He includes some benchmarks on the difference between using the Apache 1.3.x series and Apache 2 (generated using the ab benchmarking tool).
On the PHP::Impact blog Federico has posted a sort of reminder about a method you can use to run PHP scripts as different users on the same system - suPHP.
suPHP is a tool for executing PHP scripts with the permissions of their owners. It consists of an Apache module (mod_suphp) and a setuid root binary (suphp) that is called by the Apache module to change the uid of the process executing the PHP interpreter.
suPHP runs as an Apache module and works with the local server's permission system to restrict script access to whatever the user's allowances are. He links to this tutorial for more information on setting it up.
Dhiraj Patra has posted a tutorial to his "LAM-PHP" blog today looking at a different-than-usual way for running PHP scripts - in the cron.
Lots of programmers like PHP for its ability to code and develop web applications fast. Code-debugging is a lot easier than with PERL or C. However, there is one thing a lot of developers are puzzled about, "How to run PHP Scripts with crontab?"
He explains how cron can be used effectively to replace including a backend script into another file (bad practice) and how to get started with PHP and cron. He includes how to find if you're using a CGI or Apache version of PHP and how to locate the binary. He takes this knowledge and shows how to apply it and put a sample script into the cron file. You can check out sites like this or this for more information on cron itself.
