zena@alwaysdata

This is a little tutorial on how to deploy zena on alwaysdata servers.
Since their free accounts are limited to 10Mo you’ll have to create a paid account. You don’t have to pay right away which means that you’ll have one month to decide wether it’s worth the 9€/month or not.

account

First off you’ll have to create your own account. Your site will be available at [user].alwaysdata.net. Replace [user] anywhere in this tuto with you own login.

Note that every server at alwaysdata (ftp,mysql,...) end with a .com – only your site is available with a .net.

Take a little time to visit your admin back-end. You’ll wonder why you ever used cpanel. You’ll be able to use the same login/password for everything unless you provide one per app (ssh,sql,etc.).

install

Ready? Let’s go:

1. Activate SSH in admin back-end.
2. Connect with ssh
3. Linux: (win: I suggest free bitvise tunnelier for that.)

# ssh [user]@ssh.alwaysdata.com

Create a local gems dir:

# mkdir gems

Add this dir to gem env: (once per session since the server doesn’t store your bash profile but only you bash commands)

# export GEM_PATH=/home/[user]/gems

You will be able to modify ~/.gemrc later on to add you path to you local gems.

Install rmagick:

# gem install --install-dir ~/gems/ --no-ri --no-rdoc rmagick

Install rails version 2.3.4:

gem install --install-dir ~/gems/  --no-ri --no-rdoc -v=2.3.4 rails

Install zena gem:

# gem install --install-dir ~/gems/ --no-ri --no-rdoc zena

Add gem/bin to your path: (once per session)

# PATH=$PATH:/home/[user]/gems/bin

Deploy your zena app:

zena new myapp --with-dispatchers

configure

Create a .htaccess file in /myapp/public containing this :

AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+?)/?$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

You can use emacs,vim,nano or admin back-end->footer->file browser/they use full featured net2ftp – prefer server-side editors since dos formated uploaded files will behave badly.

Edit /myapp/config/environment.rb and add these lines at the beginning:

ENV['GEM_PATH'] = ':/home/[user]/gems'
RAILS_ENV = 'production'

In the admin interface, create a MySQL database named “zena” and a user named “db” and then change config/database.yml settings:

production:
  adapter: mysql
  database: [user]_zena
  host: mysql.alwaysdata.com
  port: 3306
  username: [user]_db
  password: secretpassword

initialization

Cd to your app:

# cd myapp

Create your database:

rake db:create RAILS_ENV=production

Migrate:

rake zena:migrate RAILS_ENV=production

Tricky part: delete /myapp/db/production.sqlite3 and copy development.sqlite3 file to production.sqlite3

Create your site:

rake zena:mksite LANG=en RAILS_ENV=production PASSWORD=admin HOST=[user].alwaysdata.net

Edit /myapp/public/dispatch.fcgi. The first line must be this:

#!/usr/bin/ruby -w

In your admin back-end create a subdomain that points to /myapp/public.

In order to enable full page caching, you need to symlink the site’s “public” folder to the one apache is seeing:

cd /myapp/sites/[user].alwaysdata.net
rm -rf public
ln -sf ../../public

Fire up your browser:

http://[subdomain].alwaysdata.net