Hosting and Deployment Options

Hosting and Deployment Options

Stephen FierbaughDirector of IT

<[email protected]>

What's it take to deploy a PHP application?

• You need a domain name.

• You need an SSL certificate if you want to be secure.

• You need someplace to store all the HTML, PHP, CSS, & Javascript files.

• You need a database to store all the dynamic content.

• You need a web server to put it all together and send it over the Internet to whoever asks for it.

The LAMP Stack

• Linux provides the basic operating system of the server computer.

• Apache provides the web server.

• MySQL provides the database.

• PHP provides the server-side programming language.

Other Alternatives

• WAMP substitutes Windows for Linux.

• WIMP substitutes IIS for Apache.

• LAPP substitutes PostgreSQL for MySQL.

• Contributed modules work well with LAMP, but are untested under other architectures.

Special Requirements

• CiviCRM– Drupal 6.– MySQL.

• OpenAtrium– PHP 5.2.– Drupal 6.

• It's not uncommon for major modules to lag on PHP or Drupal versions.

• Checking versions & prereqs carefully can save a LOT of headaches.

DNS Domain Name Service• Lots of used car salesmen. Watch out for all

manner of fraud & deception.• Cheapest - Lots of fly-by-night.

– GoDaddy.com is least disreputable & has good SSL Certificates.

• Convenient - Wherever you host will do it for you.

• Best - EasyDNS.com– More expensive than GoDaddy. (~$35/year)– High quality.– Easy to use.– Lots of tutorials.– Email spooling alone is worth far more than the

price.

Accessing your site...• The two ways of interacting with your site are

a web-based Control Panel and Secure Shell (SSH).

• Control Panel is very easy to use but slower, less secure, and limited in flexibility and power.

• SSH is somewhat harder to use but much faster, flexible, and more powerful.– The Gold Standard for security.– Passwordless log-in rocks!– Secrets: 90% of the time you use the same dozen

commands over and over again. It's not nearly as hard as it seems. The [Tab] key is your friend.

– Professionals use SSH.– Root (Administrator) is only available with SSH.

Diffi-culty

Cost Security Reliability Flex-ibility

Control Panel

SSH Root

Drupal Gardens & WordPress

Easy $ Medium Excellent Bad Yes N/A N/A

Cheap/Free Shared Hosting

Medium $ Bad Bad Low Yes No No

Not-so-cheap Shared Hosting

Medium $$ Bad Medium Low Yes Maybe No

Virtual Private Server

Hard $$ Medium Medium High Installable Yes Maybe

Self-Hosted Hard $$$ Excellent Medium High Installable Yes Yes

Colocation Hard $$$$ Good Excellent High Installable Yes Yes

Managed Hosting Easy $$$$$ Good Excellent Medium N/A N/A N/A

“The Cloud” Medium /Hard

$$$ ??? Excellent High Kind-of Yes Yes

Software As A Service• If you're just doing a simple blog, use

WordPress.com.• If you're just doing any other kind of

simple (or not so simple!) website, use DrupalGardens.com.

• Both these services rock. It's just not worth your time to do anything more.

• Neither has any expandability beyond what they provide built-in.

• DrupalGardens.com does have good export.