Running multiple PHP versions on a server by yourself can be a real pain in the ass. Being a developer, I just want to get things out on the web.  Test a new product here, play with a new technology there. So recently I started with Ploi as a way to help more easily manage my PHP versions on the server set up with the currently acceptable best practice for speed and security.

Ploi does an excellent job with all this PHP. They provide extra tools for Laravel projects, WordPress installs, CakePHP, etc.  And recently they've added node support. This blog is made using Ghost, a node project. After moving all my other projects over to Ploi, I was a bit annoyed that I would have to keep my old server running just to host a few Ghost blogs. Then an email came touting a new feature on Ploi - Node.js.

I followed the suggestions, installed Node, tried to get Ghost installed, and was thwarted! Using the Ghost command line requires some special sudo privileges so that it can set up permissions correctly after the install. But I have my sites set up under separate users on the server in hopes that it will be less attractive to those crazy hackers (at least that's what I tell myself), and don't want to put each of those users in as sudoers.  Luckily, there are other ways to install ghost!  If you have the same issue, check out this article from nehalist.io.  It's outdated now, since it's talking about installing version 1.0, but you can definitely get the idea and make any necessary changes to get that thing installed!

Now Ghost's installed, it's running, and I configured the NodeJS settings before spawning a new instance.  I loaded up the URL and... 502 Bad Gateway. Check out the logs and everything looks good; the site's up, but it's not accepting connections through the reverse proxy for some odd reason. Not wanting to waste a ton of time with this, I looked for ways to make sure that Ghost was always running the background with Supervisor, manually, instead of going through Ploi's admin section. After getting that set up, we had a site working perfectly!

I run ubuntu, so supervisor config is under /etc/supervices/conf.d, and I quickly whipped up a conf file with the help of Ahmed Amayem.

[program:woodnbooze_ghost]
command = node /home/woodn...com/index.js
directory = /home/woodn...com
user = woodn...
autostart = true
autorestart = true
stdout_logfile = /var/log/supervisor/woodnbooze_ghost.log
stderr_logfile = /var/log/supervisor/woodnbooze_ghost_err.log
environment = NODE_ENV="production"

Restart supervisor and it'll pick up this config file. Since Ploi was already set with nginx to reverse proxy requests off to the ghost node server on the correct port, so as soon as ghost starts up, your web address starts working!  Finally.

Of course, the easy way out of all of this is to pay for ghost hosting at ghost.org and just let them deal with all the node things if you don't want to bother with any of it yourself.    

I'm a backer of the Veronica Mars kickstarter campaign. As one of my first backings, I was a bit overwhelmed by the options, but settled on th $35 level so that I'd be guaranteed a digital copy a few days after the theatrical release. You've probably heard how much of a clusterfuck the whole release has been.

First, I backed this campaign to get a movie. Second, I backed this campaign to get a movie earlier than the Bluray/DVD release as movie theatres kind of creep me out with their super-sticky floors (that can't just be spilled pop) and their smell of popcorn and body odor. Perhaps back in the day, before all the over-comercialization and food, movie theaters would have had their appeal to me.

When I heard that the digital copies would be released to those who did and didn't back the campaign on the same day, I immediately wondered if the servers housing this digitial copy would be able to handle the demand the 91,000 backers alone would put on it, not to mention the rest of the world that wants to (and would now be able to) watch the movie right away. I was prepared to start the download of the movie in the morning before I left for work in hopes it would be downloaded by this evening so my wife and I could watch it.

The next big blow: the movie is only being released to backers through ultraviolet and Flixster. Questionably the worst streaming service out there. It's for your computer, or your mobile device. What's the point of getting to watch a movie on the day its released if you have to watch it on your tiny computer instead of a nice home theatre with digital surround?

With the plethora of digital equipment in my house, I figured I would be able to somehow get it on to my TV. My bluray player connects to BestBuy's CinemaNow, and Vudu. My AppleTV would be able to AirPlay anything on my iMac (although not my MacBook Pro cause it's too old.) My smartTV also has some streaming options.

Flixster connected to Ultraviolet which connected to BestBuy's CinemaNow which I was able to open on my Bluray player. Awesome. I had a way to watch the stupid ultraviolet/flixster movie. Boy was I wrong. Every copy of every movie I had on Ultraviolet would not play. All I got was, "there's some issue; contact best buy help." Awesome. Plus, while logged in on my computer, I saw that none of my devices connectable to TVs would be able to play the HD version on the movie. I'd be stuck with SD. That's one hell of an expensive Stardard Definition movie that I can't even watch.

I went to Vudu now. Connected my ultravoilet account (this is now the 4th account I've had to use to maybe watch the movie. 4th!) and connected on my Bluray player. No movies. None at all. I reset the Bluray player (turned it on and back off again) and the movies finally showed up. We're in business, right? WRONG! My original fears were brought to life. The streaming servers couldn't keep up. I barely got 2 mins of the movie at a time before it buffered. And vudu's buffering is terrible. It stops the video, puts up the movie cover with a loading graphic, buffers, starts the audio, then lets the video catch up. Not a way to watch a movie.

So there's a buffering problem; how about I download it and then watch it? Sounds reasonable, right? Turns out that this flixster app, the one that the mars people said was the only way to get the movie out to everyone at the same time (bullshit, by the way), won't install on OS X Mavericks. The default archiver won't unzip the file. I tried Archiver, which unzipped it, but it won't run. So there goes the idea of getting the movie to everyone on opening night. Those of us with Macs are completely screwed. Can't stream it without buffering, can't download it because we can't install the downloader.

Had I not pledged, I could have bought the movie in HD from iTunes and been watching it right now. But I chose to back something and got screwed by the big movie companies again.

I still have not seen it.

So what have I learned from this experience is to not back anything that has big movie potential. Only back those indie movies, people!

After backing Ghost on Kickstarter and getting my copy of it (Yes, I know it's been released to the public already), I thought I'd share how I got it all set up and running on my MediaTemple DV4.0. Actually wasn't that difficult.

Step 1: Install Node.js

I followed these instructions by David Seah as I've never worked with Node.js before. I only went through the CodeSchool Node.js course that was included in my Kickstarter Backing package.

Only one thing I'd note here: Make sure you download the latest version of Node by heading over to the Node.js download page. Then use the link you grab from there during Mr. Seah's wget line.

I stopped following the tutorial after I successfully dumped out Node's version to the command line. I figured it was working well enough at that point.

Step 2: Create a Site

Jump into your plesk install and create a new site. Either use a Top Level Domain (TLD) you've just had sitting around, or create a subdomain. I opted for the subdomain route. Way cheaper. Take note of where you're putting the document root. I'll be using ghost.jeffreymeagher.com as my subdomain throughout these steps. I entered ghost.jeffreymeagher.com into the little document root box while setting this up.

Step 3: Install Ghost

Download the latest Ghost and get the zip file on your server (use sftp, ftp, or wget.) Keeping it as a zip file will greatly lower the time it takes to upload to your server.

Extract the archive to a new directory you made. For me, that consisted of these command-line steps. NOTE: this is not in the same location as the webroot that was created in step 2.

1. cd /var/www/vhosts/jeffreymeagher.com
2. mkdir ghost
3. cd ghost
4. unzip /root/ghost-0.3.3.zip

Step 4: Configure Ghost

Now that it's all extracted, we need to set it up. Make sure you run (as directed in ghost's documentation) the install command to get all the extra node.js bits that ghost relies on. npm install --production

I had a few erros when node tried to install sqlite drivers. I was fine with that, since I wanted to hook this up to MySQL anyway. In the ghost forums they tell you exactly what you put in your config.js file. Here it is for easy viewing. Just replace the current database lines with these:

database: {
	client: 'mysql',
    connection: {
    	host: 'localhost',
    	user: 'root',
    	password: 'p@s$word',
    	database: 'ghost-dev',
    	charset: 'utf8'
	}
}

I also took the time to configure my email settings as outlined in the ghost install documentation.

Step 5: Configure Apache

Since the requests on port 80 (normal http port) are handled by Apache, we need a way to pass that request from apache to Node.js. Apache's ProxyPass is the answer.

Find your newly created (sub)domain's conf directory. Typically it's inside the (sub)domain's folder at /var/www/vhosts/. NOTE: this does not have to be in the same place as the document root you created in step 2. For me, it was at, /var/www/vhosts/ghost.jeffreymeagher.com/conf/ Now you can start with these steps.

1. Create vhost.conf if it does not exist

    touch vhost.conf
   

2. Edit vhost.conf to change the DocumentRoot and add ProxyPass directives:

    vim vhost.conf
   

Then paste the following in, as derived from this post

	DocumentRoot /dir/path-to-extracted-ghost-root
	ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:2368/
	ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:2368/
	ProxyPreserveHost On

3. Rebuild the site configuration:

    /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/httpdmng --reconfigure-domain ghost.jeffreymeagher.com
   

Step 6: Start Ghost

For a quick ghost start, just to test that your settings are correct, you can go to the ghost root /var/www/vhosts/ghost.jeffreymeagher.com/ghost/ and type

npm start --production

This basically temporarily fires up ghost so you can check your work. Hit up the (sub)domain with your favorite broswer and see if it works. If it does, you'll see Ghost. If it doesn't, you'll either see a 500 error (meaning some configuration is wrong), or you'll see the Apache default page. Go back and check your work.

Step 7: Start Ghost Forever

I followed this simple guide to get ghost to start forever using forever. Unfortunately I couldn't get the thing to work with an init script, so if I ever shut the server down, I'll have to remember to bring Ghost back up with forever!

NODE_ENV=production forever start index.js

Upgrading to ghost 0.4 from 0.3.3

ghost 0.4 needs python 2.7+. Unfortunately media temple's DV4 only has 2.4.x on it. So you'll need to remember to tell node to use python 2.7 that you installed in the steps outlined by David Seah. For a shortcut, simply paste this in the terminal and run it.

export PYTHON=python2.7

As a refinishing project, I picked up this piano from a free ad on craig’s list. It’s a B. Shoninger upright grand piano. Looking at it’s finish, it’s all crackly. The patents inside on the sound board say things such as “Mar. 12. 78″, and “Feb. 5. 84″. The finish was in much to terrible of shape for this to be created after 1989 and the wood looked very dry. The B. Shoninger decal by the keys was also worn badly and from more usage than scraping I guessed.

After some internet searching, I was able to find out that once I had the serial number of the piano I would be able to date it. So I went off to the storage unit to take a look for a serial number. I found two numbers, both pictured below. Then I set off to the public library to see if I couldn’t come across some sort of encyclopedia that would help determine the date. There’s a website that should help you date, but I was unable to find the B. Shoninger company on it. You may have some luck though at Bluebook of Pianos.

The reference librarian was a fantastic help, waddling through the aisle of the library I’d never been in before pulling books here and there. We sat down and started paging through them only to find that I did, indeed, have the correct serial number and the book that I needed to property date this musical instrument is Pierce Piano Atlas. As it turns out, the library didn’t have it, but a nearby one did. We opted for the inter library loan option instead of trying to beat the clock and make it to the neighboring city before the library closed.

Just a few days later, we had the book. And in 5 minutes after that, we had the piano dated. Our serial number falls between 1890 and 1895. Pretty darn neat to have a turn of the 20th century piano.

This piano needs work. One of the hammers was broken. The finish is terrible and the wood is drying out. I don’t have a clue about piano repair, but with the right tools and books, I should be able to make this playable again. If I can’t, then at least it will look amazing after a refinish in period finishes. I’m sure there’ll be more about the process later.

For my latest project, ParentApprovedSchools.com, I was lucky enough to do a fresh install of cakePHP 2.3. And with that, I found the handy-dandy plugin called DebugKit right there in the cakePHP install directions. So I gave it a try. It's pretty much amazing.  Clients that see the site in development no longer ask me, "what's all this stuff below the footer?" when I have debugging turned on and I can still see a whole var dump. Pretty amazing, I know.

But once I got that all set up, I though, "hey, why not get this installed on your other projects like pawlister?" With a quick git submodule add, I had DebugKit installed.

git submodule add \
	https://github.com/cakephp/debug_kit.git Plugin/DebugKit

However, that's where the problems started.  Cake's plugin system now works by kind of duplicating the cake directory structure, but in the plugins folder for each plugin. The javascript and css and images were returning 404's on the server for DebugKit which obviously makes it not work.  First thought: they've changed something in the app directory that I don't have since I only updated the cake library.  Makes sense to check out the ~/webroot/.htaccess file, right? Well there was a tiny difference in there, but it didn't help. Still had the 404's. I checked the routes.php file next; found nothing new. So instead of looking through each file, I ran a diff. Found an interesting piece of code that's supposed to be in ~/Config/bootstrap.php about writing configuration for the Dispatcher filer. So I copy that over and BAM! no more 404's and DebugKit is working perfectly.  Here's the code that needs to be added:

Configure::write('Dispatcher.filters', array(
	'AssetDispatcher',
	'CacheDispatcher'
));

A few weeks ago we were checking out the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore in town since I'd never been there before. We waded through the typical old tile, vanities, sinks, and even a few microwaves. Then we found a table -- probably the coolest tables I've ever seen.  It looks like a buffet, but pulls out to be a dinner table to a length of just under 7 feet long! At first look, the price tag seemed a little pricy, but after some research, it turns out that it was well worth it.

I had to go back the next day they were open to purchase it, figuring it would fit into the back seat of my ION. Unfortunately, I was mistaken by only about two inches! So the helpful ReStore clerk helped me lift it onto the truck, where we tied it in with my jumper cables.  I have since put the bungees and ties back into my trunk. I've never driven the roads of Fond du Lac so slowly in my life nor do I plan to ever again.