Mephisto - installing

In this article we will install the Ruby on Rails based Mephisto blogging system.

We'll install the svn version so we have facilities for plugins and further expansion of our new install.

We'll start by installing any dependencies that Mephisto may need and then, using our Virtual Host Layout as a guide (see this article), we'll download the svn version of Mephisto into the public_html folder.

If you have not created a public_html folder then, following the Layout described in the article above, create one with the command:

mkdir ~/public_html

Now the base directory for our Virtual Host Layout has been created we can install Mephsito:

cd ~
sudo gem install tzinfo --remote

Now we need some dependencies for the rmagick modules or uploading images and creating thumbnails will not work:

sudo apt-get install libmagick9-dev -y
sudo gem install rmagick --include-dependencies

That's the basics completed so move into the public_html folder and download Mephisto. Don't forget to replace railsdomain.com with whatever domain you will be using. For example, if this site was based on Mephisto (which is is!) I would probably use usefuljaja.com at the end of the command:

cd public_html
svn co http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/mephisto/trunk railsdomain.com

Now that we have Mephisto on our server, we'll adjust some configuration files and bootstrap the application to a production environment:

cd railsdomain.com

Create the database that this install will use. In this example I've used the name railsdomain. You can call it mephisto or whatever you like but I find it easier to keep the database name the same as the website name. It saves a lot of confusion when you have multiple Mephisto installs on one server and they are called mephisto1, mephisto2, etc:

mysql -u root -p
# enter your mysql root password
create database railsdomain;
quit

The 'quit' command places you back at your normal terminal output. Now we need to configure the database file:

nano config/database.yml

As this install is going to be in a production environment straight away, all we need in the database file is:

production:
  adapter: mysql
  database: railsdomain
  username: root
  password: mysqlrootpassword
  host: localhost

Now we need to customise the environment.rb:

nano config/environment.rb

Remove the # symbol (uncomment) from the fourth line so it reads:

ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'production'

Further down is the line 'UserMailer.mail_from = 'webmaster@localhost'. Change the email address to one your website will use:

UserMailer.mail_from = 'webmaster@railsdomain.com'

Now we can bootstrap the application:

rake db:bootstrap RAILS_ENV=production

This will output the creation of the tables in our railsdomain database and finish with a nice 'Thank you for trying out Mephisto 0.7.3: Noh-Varr Edition!' and some links for official help.

That's the Mephisto install completed.

Now it's installed, this article will concentrate on serving Mephisto (or any Ruby on Rails based application) with Litespeed.

PickledOnion.

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