I’ve been interested lately in using virtualization to setup a “computer” to do local web development on. I’m looking to configure it it closely as possible to my paid hosting, so that it will be as easy as possible when I take a project and migrate it over to to the host.

If you haven’t had any experience with virtualization, it’s basically a way of running an operating system inside whatever operating system you are currently using. The nice thing about it these days is that more recent processors have hardware extension to improve performance to the level where it’s quite usable. The software mimics all aspects of a basic computer with standard hardware. So you take your operating system install disk and go through the process as you normally would.

I am currently using Windows Vista Ultimate x64. So looking at the easiest option, I downloaded and installed Microsoft’s free “Virtual PC 2007″ program.

I’ve used it before, but don’t recall doing anything of consequence with it. It’s a simple program, but it seems quite stable and provided everything that I need.

I considered using it with my copy of say… Windows 2000, but that would be pointless as my hosting is Linux based. Seeing as while I’m coding I want to deal with paths as they would be in Linux, I’ve decided to try going that route.

I started by downloading Ubuntu server. I installed it with success, but when the OS restarted, I was greeted by some crazy looking visuals. According to various sites on the net have pointed out, Virtual PC does not support a 24-bit graphics rendering in the virtual video card, and Linux defaults to 24-bit… Seeing as the terminal was nearly unusable, I went back to unbuntu.com and downloaded Xubuntu, which is a lighter weight version that uses XFce. The only negative here is that I will have to manually install and configure the “LAMP” server. A key thing to remember when installing Xubuntu is that when it gives you options before starting the install, select F4 and change the video more to fail-safe mode.

I’ll try to provide updates as I work through the issues.

It’s been while since I have used the language, so I thought it would be fun to try making a few new ideas with it.

I did a quick search to see what PHP IDEs were available.  I’ve used Eclipse quite a lot, but I’m not particularly fond of it, so I wanted to try something else.

I plan on giving NetBeans a chance to see how it fairs.
http://www.netbeans.org/features/php/

Seeing as I am currently using Vista Ultimate 64-bit, I decided to just use IIS. I had a few quips getting it working.

I had modified IIS beforehand when I was doing some old VbScript coding, so needless to say when I tried installing PHP it didn’t work out of the box.

In the IIS configuration program (use the start button search in vista on “InetMgr”):
- Install PHP as a ISAPI filter.
- In your selected application pool advances settings, make sure that “Managed Pipeline Mode” is set to “Classic” mode.
In the list of global settings:
- Add a default document “index.php”
- In ISAPI Filters, add a new filter that points to (most likely) “C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP\php5isapi.dll”
- In Handler Mappings, add a PHP entry “*.php” that also points to “C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP\php5isapi.dll”
- In that same screen look over to the right for “View Ordered List…” to make sure that the PHP entry is at the top so it gets priority over the static page handler.

What I also did was have my IIS Site point directly to the default NetBeans project directory. The issue I had there was file permissions. I changed the “Basic Settings…” option to connect as my personal login. Seeing as this is only for development, I don’t see any issues with that. I also changed my default binding to “127.0.0.1,” which should only allow access from the computer itself. Not that it matters as this computer is behind a router

I’ve been modifying Drupal (drupal.org) for a neighborhood organization website. It took a little research as, like most similar open-source projects, the documentation leaves something to be desired. I now have the site to a point where I want to put it up on the Internet. I have some hosting, so I got the domain… and bam, it’s on the web right? Well no.

I feel it is necessary to make a general process overview as it took a good deal of research and tweaking to get it working:
-I have “reseller hosting.” That means I can host multiple domains with the space/bandwidth that comes with the yearly fee. I bought the neighborhood domain, added a special hosting plan (defines storage, bandwidth, and other properties), and tried configuring the dns information

-Seeing as I have not done too much with the whole domainname-dns-nameserver-whatever configuration process I had some trouble figuring it out. What I ended up doing was having my domain name registrar create 2 name servers from the IPs that link to the hosting server(s). Then I used the hosting’s name servers as well. ns1.site.com, ns2.site.com, ns1.hosting.com, ns2.hosting.com… all being able to process the name translation. On the hosting side for “editing DNS Zones” I set it up with ns1.nameservice.com as NS records, the IP as and ‘A’ record, the www as a cname for site.com…. etc. Most of the data was preconfigured by cPanel, but for some reason I had to change a few things from the defaults to get it working properly. This whole aspect will take a lot more research to understand fully.

-Copy by hand or install Drupal from cPanel (assuming your host uses cPanel)

-If you are developing on a windows machine, make sure you reconfigure your temporary directory from c:\windows\temp to /tmp. Drupal will most likely make a folder for you. I didn’t do this the first time and it made a crappy “c:\windows\www” folder on the server that was a pain to remove.

-Login into your local mysqladmin (assuming you use that to manage your sql databases) and make a backup of your local Drupal database. I had to set the compatibility to an earlier version of mysql. For some reason at the default options for the export would not work.

-If you installed from cPanel, drop all of the tables in the pre-created Drupal database before you import the backup file. Otherwise, create a sql user and database for Drupal (make sure to add the user to the database access list). Configure the settings.php file in the Drupal files to reflect the database information (there is a connection string in the php file).

-Copy over any themes or modules that you added to your local Drupal install. I didn’t bother with the hassle that is the sites directory… Just put the modules and theme into the standard directory instead.

-Configure your www-root .htaccess file on the server to reflect things like url rewriting, default page (index.php), and standardizing the site path (only allowing www.site.com, not site.com or vice versa). More specifically the properties DirectoryIndex, RewriteEngine, RewriteCond, and RewriteRule