In this episode we take our server that we started in Episode 1, and we install everything necessary to deploy our site. That includes Apache, nginx, Django, some reusable apps, and PostgreSQL.

One thing to note is that you don't technically need to have a DNS pointed to your server. You can fake it by adding these directives to /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1    media.startthedark.com
127.0.0.1    startthedark.com
127.0.0.1    www.startthedark.com

Of course, if your server is not running locally, you'll have to replace the IP address with your server's IP address. Make sure to undo these changes when you're finished following along.

Here's a rundown of the commands that I used in the episode, for those who prefer to copy and paste:

Installing the base components:

sudo apt-get install apache2-mpm-prefork libapache2-mod-wsgi nginx memcached postgresql-8.3 subversion python-setuptools python-psycopg2 python-memcached

Adding our new user:

sudo adduser --home=/var/www/startthedark.com
sudo su startthedark

Setting up our source code repositories:

sudo mkdir /git
sudo chown startthedark:startthedark -R /git
mv /home/ericflo/startthedark /git/startthedark
sudo mkdir /python
sudo chown startthedark:startthedark -R /python
cd /python
svn checkout http://django-pagination.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ django-pagination
cd django-pagination
sudo pylink pagination
cd ..
svn checkout http://django-registration.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ django-registration
cd django-registration
sudo pylink registration
cd ..
svn checkout http://django-gravatar.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ django-gravatar
cd django-gravatar
sudo pylink gravatar
svn checkout http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk/ django-trunk
cd django-trunk
sudo pylink django
sudo easy_install dateutil

Chcking out our own source code:

cd /var/www/startthedark.com
git clone /git/starthedark

Setting up Apache:

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
nano startthedark.com

<VirtualHost * >
        #Basic setup
        ServerAdmin floguy@gmail.com
        ServerName www.startthedark.com
        ServerAlias media.startthedark.com
        ServerAlias startthedark.com
        DocumentRoot /var/www/startthedark.com/startthedark/media

        WSGIScriptAlias / /var/www/startthedark.com/startthedark/startthedark.wsgi
</VirtualHost>

sudo a2ensite startthedark.com
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Creating our PostgreSQL database:

sudo su postgres
createuser startthedark
createdb -O startthedark startthedark
exit

Setting up nginx:

cd /etc/nginx
nano proxy.conf

proxy_redirect              off;
proxy_set_header            Host $host;
proxy_set_header            X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header            X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
client_max_body_size        10m;
client_body_buffer_size     128k;
proxy_connect_timeout       90;
proxy_send_timeout          90;
proxy_read_timeout          90;
proxy_buffer_size           4k;
proxy_buffers               4 32k;
proxy_busy_buffers_size     64k;
proxy_temp_file_write_size  64k;

nano nginx.conf

upstream webcluster {
    server 127.0.0.1:8080;
}

cd sites-available
nano startthedark.com

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name  media.startthedark.com;
    access_log   /var/log/nginx/startthedark.media.access.log;
    location     / {
        autoindex on;
        index     index.html;
        root      /var/www/startthedark.com/startthedark/media;
    }
}
server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  startthedark.com www.startthedark.com;
    access_log   /var/log/nginx/startthedark.django.access.log;
    if ($host !~* "^startthedark\.com") {
        rewrite  ^(.*)$ http://startthedark.com$1 permanent;
        break;
    }
    location     / {
        proxy_pass  http://webcluster;
        include     /etc/nginx/proxy.conf;
    }
}

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/startthedark.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/startthedark.com
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart

• Running Time: 20:32