Testing the Site Before Upload

Freeway
1

I’m building a site for a client who requested I use Freeway (Express), so she can maintain the site herself. I’m enjoying the program - really nice features. Here’s the rub: All of my previous clients had their own domains before the sites were built, so I was testing the sites live. This time my client is waiting to choose a host and domain name until the site is ready to launch. Am I correct in assuming I can not test the site’s forms, nor set up the e-commerce features, until the site is uploaded to the server?

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2

If the forms require some type of processing, then yes, you will need
a server to do that. Your Mac is already running the full Apache Web
server, though, so you might have a server quite a lot closer than
you think. The regular client version of Mac OS X up through Tiger
(10.4.x) comes with Apache 1.3 with PHP4, and Mac OS X Leopard
(10.5.x) has Apache 2.2 with PHP 5. Both also have Perl 5, Tiger has
Ruby 1.6 and Leopard has Ruby 1.8. There are even one-click
installers for MySQL at http://mysql.com for the database side of
things. So you can have quite an impressive staging server right
there on your Mac, if you take the time to enable and configure it.

Walter

On Nov 5, 2008, at 8:12 PM, ENauta wrote:

I’m building a site for a client who requested I use Freeway
(Express), so she can maintain the site herself. I’m enjoying the
program - really nice features. Here’s the rub: All of my previous
clients had their own domains before the sites were built, so I was
testing the sites live. This time my client is waiting to choose a
host and domain name until the site is ready to launch. Am I
correct in assuming I can not test the site’s forms, nor set up the
e-commerce features, until the site is uploaded to the server?

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3

Thanks SO much! I had no idea I had all that “under the hood.” It pays to ask! I’ll delve right into Apache.

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4

Sometime around 5/11/08 (at 23:03 -0500) ENauta said:

I’ll delve right into Apache.

Alternatively, you could simply upload to a different domain or a
folder on a domain you’re using for something else already. You’d
have a small amount of reconfiguring to do when switching to the
client’s final chosen domain, but no more than you’d have if you set
it up to work initially from your own Mac.

k

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5

I have set up my trusty Mac as a server and uploaded the site via “copy to file.” Thanks to you gentlemen, it’s running nicely.

I’m ready to enable the form page, but am stalled out at exactly what steps to take. Tutorials I’ve read tell me to get a URL or script from my ISP. But since I’m running my own server, I’d think that’s the wrong way to go.

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6

What sort of a form is it, and what do you want to do with the results of a submission? There are a very large number of possible answers to your question, but knowing what the form looks like will help us narrow down the answers.

Walter

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7

On the same subject, can I let a client see a site while I’m building it (before it’s uploaded) via Web Sharing? (I’m running 10.5.5.) If so, what file do I put into the Sites folder? The URL from ‘Preview in Browser’?

Thanks,
Tom

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8

If you’d like to see the form in it’s current state, enter http://192.168.0.104/~g4/contact.html into your browser. (The form includes a nonfunctional Browse button, but that’s an issue for another thread.) The expectation is that clicking the Submit button would collect the info and send it as an e-mail.

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9

That address (192.168.0.104) is what is known as a “non-routable” address. These are most commonly used inside of private networks, such as those created by Internet routers, because they provide a measure of security. If your computer is not on the same network as the server, you won’t be able to reach this address – any router on the Internet will simply ignore the request unless it came from that router’s own internal network.

So on your home network, any computer plugged in to the same router that you use to share your incoming Internet connection will be able to see this site, but nobody out there in the bad old net can see it at all.

If you have even the cheapest of “internet sharing appliance”, there will be a section of the manual devoted to setting up a DMZ or sharing portions of your private network with the public net. You should read this manual carefully, as it’s fairly tricky and will depend a lot on your particular router. In short, it can be done, but it will take more work on your part.

Walter

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10

Thanks - good thing I didn’t ask my client to look at the site! I’ll go back to the manuals, tutorials, etc.

By the way, what about Tom’s question about Web Sharing? (Not that it will help me, under the circumstances.)

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11

If you have Web Sharing enabled, and you put a site in /Library/WebServer/Documents/, then it will be accessible whenever someone navigates to your computer.

So if your computer was available at http://example.org/ (which means that you had configured your router to accept web connections on your public IP address, and route them to your computer on its non-routable private address, and that you had arranged for a domain name server somewhere to host your domain name and point it at your public address – whew!) then yes, they would see that site.

If you put your site in your personal folder: /Users/yourname/Sites/ then visitors would see it at the address http://example.org/~yourname/

But there’s one more kink in this whole topic that I didn’t mention earlier. IP addresses. Many ISPs do not offer static IP addresses, which means that each time your computer or router connects to the net, it might get a different IP address. This makes it impossible to have DNS set up, because there is no static address for the DNS to point a domain name to. You would have to check your current IP address, quick, tell your client to go to http://123.45.221 and hope that your ISP didn’t bounce you to another address at some point in the interval. There are solutions, which mainly consist of a process running in the background on your computer which keeps a “dynamic DNS” aware of your actual IP address du jour.

So let me wrap all this up in a bow for you. It’s hard, but if you’re a geek, it can be a fun hobby. I’ve been running Apache since 1998 or so, just to see if I could. I pay a relative fortune for my internet service, so I have 8 static IP addresses to play with. Then I also have a very flexible router, loads of networking equipment, two dedicated Mac OS X Server machines running 24/7 in my basement – basically a lot of investment in time and money. What this has gained me is an encyclopaedic understanding of What Can Go Wrong, and a lot of valuable experience in configuring Apache, PHP, and MySQL that I can leverage for paying gigs.

You may not want to go down this path.

If you don’t, then I recommend getting a $10/year hosting contract somewhere. Seriously, you can find them in cereal boxes these days. Use it as a staging server for your clients, use it to host your own crash-test-dummy site, whatever. It’s worth it. Even with my basement full of gear, I still maintain a number of other servers on “real” hosting providers. My power and internet go out from time to time, and theirs never does.

Walter

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12

Walt, can you recommend a reliable hosting service in the US?

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13

Bear in mind that it is not really relevant where your hosting provider is situated.

There are a couple of guys that frequent this space that provide reliable hosting at reasonable prices.

James at http://www.have-host.com/ and David at http://www.ineedwebhosting.co.uk/

David

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14

it is not really relevant where your hosting provider is situated

I don’t want to offend anyone, but there is a difference in terms of access to customer service and rates. Haven’t you seen the OT posts on this board trying to contact so and so… That wouldn’t happen with a reliable company.

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15

I have seen a lot of good reviews of inmotionhosting.com. Their claim to fame appears to be their 24/7 customer service. They are located in the US, so rates are in US dollars.

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16

That wouldn’t happen with a reliable company.

Unfortunately that happens with every Company - you are most likely not in the right place to hear about it!

It is so often the case that you only hear bad things about people/organisations - human nature means that we are far less likely to share our good experiences. We would rather moan!

David

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17

For good/fast/cheap in the US, I usually use http://ModWest.com. I
have heard great things about http://have-host.com (Canada) and in
the UK, http://ineedwebhosting.co.uk. Both of these latter
providers are incredibly Freeway-centric, being products of long-term
Freeway users.

At the next tier up, there are more geek-cred hosts like <http://
mediatemple.com> and http://dreamhost.com and if you want to move
way up the ladder, there are carrier-grade hosts like <http://
rackspace.com> and http://joyent.com for carrier-grade pricing.
(You really do get what you pay for. One of my clients is on a four-
virtual-machine cluster at Joyent for a total of slightly more than
$10,000 a year, and the difference between the size and complexity of
documents we can process with that iron versus the dedicated Linux
server it was on previously is simply staggering.)

Walter

On Nov 8, 2008, at 5:21 PM, JimS wrote:

Walt, can you recommend a reliable hosting service in the US?

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18

Sometime around 8/11/08 (at 16:42 -0500) waltd said:

You may not want to go down this path.

If you don’t, then I recommend getting a $10/year hosting contract somewhere.

I heartily, completely and totally recommend this route. By all means
use local web serving for your own testing work. But the moment you
think you might want someone outside your own personal network to see
your pages, use regular web hosting.

Personally, I virtually never use local serving. And when I do, I use
MAMP (http://www.mamp.info/) so I don’t need to tweak local Apache
settings if I don’t want to.

k

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19

I really appreciate the input. I’ll abandon the serve-it-yourself approach and see if I can’t get this project wrapped up.

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20

I was reviewing these web hosting sites and I saw that dreamhost.com
has a special that expires today. If you select the 2-year hosting and
enter code 229, you get it for a 70% discount. It’s about $65 for 2
years.

Robin Stark

On Nov 9, 2008, at 9:03 AM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

For good/fast/cheap in the US, I usually use http://ModWest.com. I
have heard great things about http://have-host.com (Canada) and in
the UK, http://ineedwebhosting.co.uk. Both of these latter
providers are incredibly Freeway-centric, being products of long-
term Freeway users.

At the next tier up, there are more geek-cred hosts like <http://mediatemple.com

and http://dreamhost.com and if you want to move way up the
ladder, there are carrier-grade hosts like http://rackspace.com
and http://joyent.com for carrier-grade pricing. (You really do
get what you pay for. One of my clients is on a four-virtual-machine
cluster at Joyent for a total of slightly more than $10,000 a year,
and the difference between the size and complexity of documents we
can process with that iron versus the dedicated Linux server it was
on previously is simply staggering.)

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