I have an admin page that I want to make some changes. The website has been built using php and mysql, by someone else and it is up running.
First thing came to my mind was:
Download source code and make a local copy of everything and work on that and once finished upload to hosting again.(using Xampp)
I also have been advised to make another copy of server and make changes on the server instead of running it locally.
My question is: Second option seems much easier , but does that mean in order to test every little detail I have to save file, upload back to server and run it?
Am i missing something?
Related
My WordPress files are downloading instead of executing on the server. I have tried changing the server but that does not solve the issue. I am sure it is happening from my WordPress files as the hosting runs other WordPress files smoothly.
I wish I could could provide the code but that isn't needed. Please guide me. Thanks.
I have only seen this happen when:
1) PHP is turned off or not installed on the server
2) The server needs to be reset
3) File names are not correct
4) The redirect script is not redirecting as it should
5) Links are not valid
The good news is most of these can be solved by you/your host. Call your host to ask them for help on verifying the PHP install/process. If everything is good (for instance, if you have another site on the same server that is working fine) then you need to verify file names. As this is WordPress and the file names are all pretty standard this isn't exactly likely but make sure there are no unwanted spaces and the file names are "something.php". With WordPress you may see a bunch of parameters passed through the URL so "something.php?blah=blah" Is fine too (no space between php and ?).
Check the link you are clicking. The file names might be good but the link may be bad. It might be as simple as fixing all the link URLs. From what I recall of WordPress, there is a built in method of linking to pages within the same WP site. I believe these are all based off the URL in the database so you may want to verify the URL in the database/config file to verify WP is sending them to the correct place. If they are not stored in the database and are instead, coded directly into the content, you may have to manually update every link to the correct URL.
Finally, if it is script or wordpress related you may want to consider a fresh WordPress install. The good thing about WordPress is all the good stuff is in the data base:
1) Make a backup of the data base
2) Trash your WP install completely
3) download and install new WP with desired plugins and themes
4) Restore database
If the last step breaks the server again, check URLs within the database: http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL
Your Host can usually help in backing up and restoring WP databases. Even godaddy (who does not support it) will often help you walk through the process (you really want to call the hosting team. As an ex-godaddy employee, those guys are the experts).
If this isn't enough information, please provide a link to the site. It will allow me to do some quick troubleshooting to determine the overall issue.
EDIT: Help for verifying php install
Create a php file with the following contents:
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
And upload it to your site
This will make information about your PHP install easily accessible
Note: DO NOT LEAVE THIS FILE UP PERMANENTLY AND DO NOT POST A LINK PUBLICLY, YOU DO NOT WANT RANDOM PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET ACCESSING THIS INFORMATION
If you can access the file and it loads up a bunch of information in a purple (I believe it is purple) table, your PHP install is up and running. If the file just downloads like the rest, contact your hosting provider.
So i just setup my Xampp Apache server to load all the documents i create on my Google Drive. For example if i type 127.0.0.1, it will show me all my web files on my Google Drive. I set this up so i can develop across my laptop which i use at school and my desktop which i use at home without having to copy files back and forth between computer to computer. This works the way i want it to but i forgot one thing. How am i supposed to sync my databases that i create. My question to you is how can i sync my databases to the cloud or somewhere else so i don't have to export and import every time i switch devices?
Also i would like to stay away from using hosting as i won't be online all the time.
The database server (the application itself) expects exclusive access to the data files. If you try to synchronize a data file between two systems, you're going to have issues and probably data loss.
What you could do is synchronize the data directory and make sure you're only running one server at a time. So when you're done working on the laptop, shut down the MySQL server process/service (mysqld), wait for it to finish synchronizing, and then start up the mysqld on the desktop. I suspect this will work, but it's a pretty non-standard usage so anything could happen.
To make it easier, I'd definitely consider writing a wrapper script/batch file that first tests for the presence of a lock file, then (if non exists) creates one, starts the mysqld, and when exiting make sure mysqld is stopped before deleting the lock file.
Anyway, to make this happen you would first stop mysqld everywhere, take the one mysql data directory that you wish to use, copy it to your Google Drive, then edit all of your MySQL configuration files to point to the new data directory instead of the old one. Whether XAMPP makes this more difficult than it should be, I'm not sure, but with stock MySQL it should be pretty trivial.
Remember that just because it's possible doesn't make it a good idea, and likewise that just because it's not a good idea doesn't make it won't work. So I'm saying it's not a good idea to do this, but if done with proper attention it will "probably" work.
Hope that helps.
hope someone can help me. I made a unity3d game for webplayer. Now i need to store some data e.g. the time how long someone has played the game in a csv file.
Does anyone know how i can test if my php and javascript for writing to this csv file
in my javascript i habe this line
var postDataURL = "myurl/data.php?";
but i don't have a url til now so i need to test this locally and i don't know what to add for the url i always get this error:
Could not resolve host: C; No data record of requested type
thanks
You will need to set up a web server to run locally. At that point you can target your form submission at http:// localhost/data.php and things will work perfectly. Apache is really easy to set up but you might want to look into something like WAMP (Windows Apache MySql PHP.)
http://www.wampserver.com/en/
First of all in order to access your PHP script to either send or retrieve information You need to use the WWW class with your url.
Next is there a reason that you want to write it to a csv file. If your just trying to store information that is pervasive across all session runs you can write data to player prefs.
PlayerPrefs.SetString("KeyName", Value);
Retrieve the data at any time using
PlayerPrefs.GetString("KeyName")
This is good for keeping high scores and such
Finally to directly answer your question my favorite is installing apache because it sets up in minutes with out havnt to know what your doing
http://httpd.apache.org/
after install find your web root and place the file in there. You can access the file using http://localhost/yourPHPfile.php
Make sure you install php on your machine as well.
I mantain a custom PHP application (build for me) that is hosted in a web server. Sometimes I add new features or repair bugs, and after test in local I upload the changes to the web server. It's not a critical application (is a game), but the most of the time there are some people connected.
The steps that I make to upgrade the application:
Access via FTP (Filezilla)
Upload a .htaccess file that redirects all the people (except my IP) to a mantain.html file
Check that access is denied for other IP except mine.
Backup old code
Upload new code
Go to PhPMyAdmin
Backup DB
Execute scripts for the DB
Test that all works fine (if not -> revert the backups)
remove .htaccess file
I usually spend an average of 30 minutes doing these steps, and I'm wondering if there is any way to optimize, automatize or doing something to spend less time. Also I know that if I can automatize some steps there are less prone to have errors.
Several other answers suggest PHP-specific deployment tools, but being as I'm not very familiar with PHP, I'll offer some general tips. These suggestions may be redundant by some of the other tools already suggested, though.
First off, don't upload a new .htaccess file every time--just have two of them on your server. Perhaps call them .htaccess-permanent, and .htaccess-maintenence. Then create a symlink to the one that ought to be active. Then once you've tested that access is properly denied once, you don't have to do this manual testing phase every single time you do an upgrade.
I'd also write a shell script to do most everything for me. My new work flow would look like this:
Upload new code to server in a directory called new/
Log in to the server via shell, and execute the upgrade script
Test the new site
Run upgrade-finalize
The end.
Now for the interesting part, the upgrade script will do this:
It will delete the .htaccess symlink, and re-create it, pointing to .htaccess-maintenence.
It will copy the current code in current/ to backup/
It will back up the DB, using the exact same commands that PHPMyAdmin uses
It will move the contents of new/ (which you just uploaded) to current/
It will execute the scripts for the DB
And the upgrade-finalize script will simply:
Delete the .htaccess symlink, and re-create it, pointing to .htaccess-permanent once again
The only possibly tricky part here will be getting the exact commands that PHPMyAdmin uses to back up your database, but it's probably a simple mysqldump command, and you can probably get that info from PHPMyAdmin or some logs, or something. Sorry, I don't know more about PHPMyAdmin to help in this specific area.
Look into a deployment tool like Capistrano that allows you to automate those steps.
I usually spend an average of 30 minutes doing these steps, and I'm wondering if there is any way to optimize, automatize or doing something to spend less time.
There are many ways. For starters, steps one through eight can be done in a single shell script. You could checkout Phing, an automated deployment system. Also, you might want to delve in continuous integration for even more control over how and when the software can be deployed.
Doing this manually is, like you say, asking for trouble.
For starters, you could upload your files into a new webroot and when done, switch over the DocumentRoot in apache, leaving it available during the copy process. For any shared files you could use a symlink to a common folder (eg, uploaded images etc)
You could probably take the backup during operation as well if you don't care about consistency in the database. For migrations that doesn't "break" the functionality, you could also migrate it and test it on your new webroot with another hostname if consistency isn't a problem.
The best option is always to use multiple webservers so that you can take one offline for testing while the other one is operational, but you will still have problem with consistency, however I assume that is not an option since you don't mention it.
I am trying to create a script that will display the contents of a folder, onto a newsticker, and I was wondering if anyone had a script that could run this. I was thinking probably php, but it has no been working for me.
Thanks for the help
The software I am using is dreamweaver cs4
I'm guessing that you have written some PHP, but are trying to run it locally without a server - for PHP to work you need a server. XAMPP is a good bet to do this locally, or you'll need to upload your file to some hosting that supports PHP.
I'm thinking why you're having trouble with it is because you just copy and pasted the code in a .html file and opening it on your local environment.
With that said, in order for it to run locally, you have to install php and a http server. The code is done on server side, not client side. So either get a hosting service that supports php or download and install your own server and php.
Also, if you already have the above, the code has to be surrounded by a < ?php and ? > tags(without spaces). If you're running it on cli, then you need to make sure you give it execution permission with the path to php, OR execute php < name of script >.
Last, the code you presented provides major security flaws. The first of which is where will the "$dir_path" variable be set? Will that be user given, or will you specify the variable?
Whenever you allow users to view your file system, always make sure you give limitations to it. For example, let's say you did this:
www.example.com/newsticker.php?path=/www/files/newsticker
looks innocent enough, but a clever hacker could say let me try....
www.example.com/newsticker.php?path=/
And so fort.
So be careful and don't allow users to specify directories or execute code.