Wesley's Tool-Box

So far, we've got a whole website running phpBB and s9y, and... great... you can connect, login, make a post, etc. But you and you only right now. The website needs to get out of the basement and see the light.

6. Do We Have an Address?

The trusty "System Preferences - Sharing - Services - Personal Web Sharing and see bottom" gig gets you an IP address that your website is accessible from. If you're connecting to the internet directly via dedicated line or a modem (DSL, cable, etc.), you'll see an actual IP address that your website can be accessed from elsewhere on the internet. If that's the case, great. Move to section 7. However, if your Mac is hooked up to a router that relays the internet connection, you'll see an internal (private) IP address such as 192.168.1.32 showing up. The most common one starts with 192.168 but other examples include 172.16 and 10.0. Read this Wikipedia entry for details.

Wow, I must really be in the groove tonight. I think I'll do the last section after sleeping, but a glass of Pepsi should keep me awake just enough to write this section.

5. s9y (Serendipity)
In search for a good blog (weblog) solution to install on my web server, I came across Serendipity Weblog System, or 's9y' for short. There are other PHP-based blog systems out there such as Tatter Tools which seems to be gaining popularity in Korea, but I'm quite comfortable with how s9y works and I think it's good for you, too. I mean, just look at this place! **cough**

Let's run something useful that uses the APM setup. Since I have phpBB and s9y running on this website, I'll look at those. Sounds pretty obvious, considering the reasons why I'm writing this.

4. phpBB

phpBB is a popular internet message board system usually found in many websites and communities around the globe. In Korea, Zeroboard is often used more, however. Both systems use PHP and MySQL to operate. Actually, phpBB is more flexible in that it can use other database engines such as MS-SQL and Access. In the past I would have installed Zeroboard, but I decided to go against the local norm now. I'll do a bit of comparison between the two in a later article if I'm willing.

You know, installing MySQL stumped me a lot in the past. I'm a little better at it now, hopefully. Let's dive in!

3. MySQL

Now we need another pillar to put up - a database engine. MySQL is a popular open-source choice for this and works with most of the solutions needing database functionality. Installation of MySQL completes are triple-module setup commonly referred to as "APM" (Apache-PHP-MySQL) or "AMP". Since it's installed on OS X, the whole server setup is called "MOXAMP" (Mac OS X-Apache-PHP-MySQL). Install on Linux and you have "LAMP". You get the idea. The APM setup is prequisite for a lot of dynamic website configuration: you have a web server (Apache) that accesses various database entries (MySQL) through scripting language (PHP), like a blog post.

Oh, yeah, the installation.

This article serves two purposes: to show what steps are needed to have a functioning website running on a Macintosh computer, and to remind myself not to forget how to do this later. Yes, I must be dumb.

Okay, you need:

- A Macintosh computer (mine is a Mac mini)
- Mac OS X 'Panther' 10.3.9 or higher (mine is running 'Tiger' 10.4.1)
- Internet connection (direct, or through a router that you can configure)