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Thursday, June 11. 2009
Server2Go - Apache, MySQL, SQLite, PHP and Perl all on a CD-ROM
The title's a bit misleading, Server2Go also works on a USB drive as well (and like most portable webservers, runs better on a USB drive). However, that's not why I'm all excited about this.
Recently, our web host's newsletter stated that users with Wordpress-MU installed would no longer be able to run it on a shared webhosting plan, it was just too resource intensive. If it was desirable to continue running it, a private server plan would be required. We were using Wordpress-MU, only had 5 blogs, and it hadn't been touched in about 5 months. BYE BYE MU! However, there was a lot of useful information on 2 of the blogs, and I wanted to give the users an opportunity to save their work.
I had two choices:
1. Use a spider, like HTTrack to copy all of the rendered HTML viewable by random visitors, or...
2. Try to find a solution that would let the author log in, view any unpublished pages/posts, and still get some educational benefit out of using a well-known web-based product. (Note: I was only looking for something that works on Windows.)
There were a couple (2) hits from Google explaining how to do it all manually, and a few products that claimed they could do it (if you bought their product; the free version only worked for USB drives, not CD). Server2Go came up as my last opened tab from my search, and it was what I needed. It was free (I wasn't going to pay if I could do it myself manually - though I may donate), and even looked really slick, and was configurable.
It took me two tries to get Wordpress installed and working with Server2Go. I needed to change "localmirror" to 0 while installing it and change it when done, but I didn't do that...so I had to reinstall it all. Wordpress' export/import feature saved the hassle of moving from Wordpress-MU to a single, standalone install of Wordpress, and after that, it only took maybe 3 minutes to set everything up.
If you need to have a product presented on CD to a client, I'd highly recommend Server2Go. USB drives will always work, but run the risk of accidental editing/deletion. A backup plan is always good! ...this is just yet another tool for the arsenal.
Recently, our web host's newsletter stated that users with Wordpress-MU installed would no longer be able to run it on a shared webhosting plan, it was just too resource intensive. If it was desirable to continue running it, a private server plan would be required. We were using Wordpress-MU, only had 5 blogs, and it hadn't been touched in about 5 months. BYE BYE MU! However, there was a lot of useful information on 2 of the blogs, and I wanted to give the users an opportunity to save their work.
I had two choices:
1. Use a spider, like HTTrack to copy all of the rendered HTML viewable by random visitors, or...
2. Try to find a solution that would let the author log in, view any unpublished pages/posts, and still get some educational benefit out of using a well-known web-based product. (Note: I was only looking for something that works on Windows.)
There were a couple (2) hits from Google explaining how to do it all manually, and a few products that claimed they could do it (if you bought their product; the free version only worked for USB drives, not CD). Server2Go came up as my last opened tab from my search, and it was what I needed. It was free (I wasn't going to pay if I could do it myself manually - though I may donate), and even looked really slick, and was configurable.
It took me two tries to get Wordpress installed and working with Server2Go. I needed to change "localmirror" to 0 while installing it and change it when done, but I didn't do that...so I had to reinstall it all. Wordpress' export/import feature saved the hassle of moving from Wordpress-MU to a single, standalone install of Wordpress, and after that, it only took maybe 3 minutes to set everything up.
If you need to have a product presented on CD to a client, I'd highly recommend Server2Go. USB drives will always work, but run the risk of accidental editing/deletion. A backup plan is always good! ...this is just yet another tool for the arsenal.
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Ha! Oops...I knew I forgot one acronym in the title! It supports PHP *and* Perl, if you get the full package. I don't use Wordpress enough to remember if there's any tiny little script that runs a *.cgi or *.pl file and was too lazy to check, so I grabbed the full package - it was going on a CD and it was only like another 40MB so I figured what the heck. The "lite" package (enough to run Wordpress) is something like 24 MB.
I thought I read somewhere that WordPress MU was going to get sucked back into WordPress (it has very little code over top of the core already). I wonder what your host will do then? They can't block all WP installs.
Actually, although they can't block all Wordpress installs, they can (and have) searched through all account's data to verify there aren't certain issues. They emailed users about security issues with older versions of Wordpress, and that if they did not update their versions of Wordpress within a certain period of time, their account would be locked. Similarly, I'd imagine they could run a bot to go through databases and look for signs that someone is running a multi-host install of Wordpress (presuming Wordpress and Wordpress-MU merge).
It would probably be discouraging to users, and bad for business if they did, which is unfortunate - but at the same time, I'm glad they are taking the steps they are; I've recently had a lot of issues with load averages well above the 100's when the average is between 4-8. (I use Dreamhost for both personal, and my employer's [public library] accounts.)
Perhaps at that time they'll simply do an automatic load balancing monitor to determine who and what are causing the issue(s).
It would probably be discouraging to users, and bad for business if they did, which is unfortunate - but at the same time, I'm glad they are taking the steps they are; I've recently had a lot of issues with load averages well above the 100's when the average is between 4-8. (I use Dreamhost for both personal, and my employer's [public library] accounts.)
Perhaps at that time they'll simply do an automatic load balancing monitor to determine who and what are causing the issue(s).