The problems you face when it comes to implementing a project like this are wide and varied. This is a proper computing project when the issues are many and rely on a cool head and a logical approach. That’s easier said than done! As when you come across the challenges your state of mind, fatigue etc vary and I wish I could have stopped myself battering on when the logical side of the brain wasn’t always as sharp as it could have been.
Setting up the blog server with Ubuntu, that was easy. If you’ve ever Installed an operating system then ubuntu is much the same. follow the prompts and there are many webcast demos on YouTube to help you out. Just see my last post for some details.
Then there is the lack of an HCI – if you want a lean mean blog serving machine then you need to try and reduce overheads, accordingly I did without the GUI and went for the command line only server installation of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. Well… second time around!!! My first incarnation of the box was based on 8.04 LTS and predates the later release.
However, the learning curve of learning and controlling everything by command line using a SSL client like putty or terminal is too big a task for most. Therefore I plummeted for Webmin, a web based interface which allowed me some control via a web interface. I would happily recommend Webmin although during the last installation which I carried out I have discovered that one of the dependent packages has been relegated to the back dated old software repositories which ae not in vogue. I ever of course to the dependent package for libmd5. however there are blog articles about how to install this.
Next we have the main event! Setting up the blog server to do something. In my case I leafed how to set up virtual hosts for my multiuser version of wordpress. During the first incarnations of my server I installed the multiuser version of wordpress called “wpmu”. However this version has now been integrated into the main edition of WordPress and been rebranded WordPress Multisite. I have now installed this on my latest server.
in my earlier editions of the server I had to run DNS and Apache on the same server but on my school network the two have to be separated with DNS being handled on one of our two main servers. This meant that I actually rebuilt the server from the ground up and relied on apache only on my web server.
This actually meant that when I edited the /etc/network/interfaces file and the resolve.conf files that I had very little configuration to do. However, it has to a be said that apache did want a specific ip address to be entered against the server and did not allow it to work leaving the setting on the wildcard * entry for all addresses.
having had my server set up and working at home i took the machine to work and adjusted the appropriate networking settings. this presents more issues. Firstly getting the correct network settings, making sure that you can ping other machines within the network and getting a nslookup from the dns server for my internal domain name. Next, e-mail, I couldn’t send and receive emails until I reconfigured the postfix mail server nor the wordpress plugin configure email, I have just managed this and both are now working. I’m going to take a few days and make sure I’m happy which one works best.
My next challenge is to try and set up the correct proxy settings for the web server. As, I need my webservr to be able to intereact with the outside world. Traffic from outside will need to supply updates, plugins, themes etc via FTP, rss feeds, slidesshare and YouTube embeds will need to pass throughout the web server to be displayed on the blogs that people wish to serve up. I’ve read the apache advice on this concerning mod_proxy and the related modules and I’m working on getting the correct settings next. All in all, I’m pleased with the wordpress install and will be happier when I get it working fully and feel that I can move onto the next part of my blog server – the video and media server YouTube clone. i’ve tried both phpmotion and clip-bucket. My next post will tell you about these and my experiences so far trying to incorporate them into my blog server.