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{{outdated}}[[Category:How-To]] [[Category:Computers]] [[Category:WSO]][http://wso.williams.edu WSO's web site] is a work in progress. You can always see "the next step" at http://wso.williams.edu:3000, where the latest "stable" (stable being a relative term) version of the next update to the site lives. If you're impatient about the new facebook, or you know web design or PerlRuby, or if you just want to see how it's done, you're welcome to check out a copy of the code and go to work. This page will tell you how to get started.
== Get a Subversion account ==
Working on the WSO site will require running your own development copy of the site. There are two basic ways to go about this. 1. Run your development server in your account on WSO's user server. This requires the following:* A WSO shell account.* A WSO subversion account.* A computer with an ssh client (ssh on *nix or Mac OS X, PuTTY on Windows).* Some familiarity with the command line.2. Run your development server on your machine. This requires the following:* A WSO subversion account.* A computer.* Familiarity with installing command line software (preferably via a package manager). Though setting up a dev server on your own machine may require more investment of time up front, it is ultimately more flexible, since you have more control over and easier access to your environment. ==Option 1: Set up a development server in your WSO account== ===SSH to WSO=== If you don't have a WSO account, email root at wso.williams.edu. One of them will hook you up. A WSO account is not your 06abc or abc1 account. It is the first letter of your first name followed by up to seven letters of your last name. Once you have an account, go ahead and log in:
'''Windows''': get yourself a copy of [http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html Putty]. wso.williams.edu is the host.
'''Mac/Linux''': Open up a Terminal or a console, and type
ssh username@wso.williams.edu
Before breaking out the champagne, we need to check to see that the server actually works. Unfortunately, you can't just pop open a web browser and surf to your new site. WSO's servers are behind a firewall. The firewall only allows connections on certain ports. Yours is not one of them.
===Setting up port forwarding===
The way through the firewall is to pretend that the web server is running on your computer and not on WSO. We'll use a technology called ''port forwarding'' to send web requests to your machine ''through an SSH connection'' to your server on WSO. This is, simplyawesome, awesomeand not too hard.
Putty lets you do port forwarding, too. You can read more about it here:
Here are the settings you'll need:
Source port: 80003000
Destination port: (your special port)
Destination host: localhostursula Continue to the Common Instructions. == Option 2: Run on your own machine== Disclaimer: The author has done this on various flavors of *nix and on Mac OS X, but knows nothing about Windows. It is possible on Windows, but no guarantees that it will just work. Google is your friend. ===Install software=== ====With your package manager==== Using your favorite package manager, install the following: * subversion* sqlite3* ruby (1.8.6)* ruby ldap (rb-ldap 0.9.1)* ImageMagick* ruby gems, a package manager for ruby packages =====Notes=====Make sure that these appear in your $PATH. On Mac OS X Leopard, the built-in ruby comes with ruby gems installed, so you may be able to skip those two. On Tiger and earlier, use MacPorts to install all of the above (mongrel is still optional). ====With ruby gems==== Using gem install the following: * rails* RedCloth* simple-rss* sqlite3-ruby* rmagick* optional: mongrel You can install all of this with the command gem install rails RedCloth simple-rss sqlite3-ruby mongrel -y On any *nix system or Mac OS X, you'll probably need to run this with sudo. No idea about Windows. If you have any trouble with this, post to [[Talk:WSO web development]] or email bwood at wso. ===Check out the code=== In your home directory, or wherever you'd like to keep your copy of the WSO site, run the following command to use Subversion to check out the code. This will spew a whole log of output onto your screen, listing all the files it's checking out. You can replace "wso-devel" with whatever name you want for your local copy of the code. svn checkout svn://wso.williams.edu/wso-on-rails/trunk wso-devel Now change directory into the code directory: cd wso-devel We need to create a log file for your site so it doesn't complain directly to you. touch log/development.log Now your site is ready to run! ===Start the server=== To start the server run the following command in the wso-devel directory. script/server If you see something like the following, then you're in business. (This is what you'll see if you installed mongrel, otherwise, you'll see similar output from WEBrick, the default server.) => Booting Mongrel (use 'script/server webrick' to force WEBrick) => Rails application starting on http://0.0.0.0:3000 => Call with -d to detach => Ctrl-C to shutdown server ** Starting Mongrel listening at 0.0.0.0:3000 ** Starting Rails with development environment... ** Rails loaded. ** Loading any Rails specific GemPlugins ** Signals ready. TERM => stop. USR2 => restart. INT => stop (no restart). ** Rails signals registered. HUP => reload (without restart). It might not work well. ** Mongrel available at 0.0.0.0:3000 ** Use CTRL-C to stop. ==Common Instructions== ===Build your database=== The development version of the WSO site uses SQLite, a file-based database to make it easy to deploy anywhere. To create your database and setup the structure we'll need, just run rake db:schema:load in the root directory of your copy of the code (e.g. wso-devel). ===Add yourself as a user=== Also in the root directory of your site, run rake data:dev:addusers ===Optional: update caches=== On the production server, these scripts are run every so often to keep the info on the front page up to date. You get some pregenerated caches with the code, but if you want something more realistic, run these. ruby script/cron/rss.rb ruby script/cron/weather.rb
===Try out the server===
Of course, if it doesn'''Off-campus''': On a Mac or Linux boxt work, add this line to the file /etc/hostsplease describe your problem on [[Talk:WSO web development]].
Nice work getting this far. So now you actually want to ''do'' something with the code. For now, come to a WSO meeting Tuesdays at 9:30pm in the vicinity of TCL 202, or email wso at wso.williams.edu with questions/interest. With the new Facebook finished, our next big prospect is rewriting old PageKit services (Factrak!) in Ruby on Rails.