|
INSTALLATION & REQUIREMENTSAfter reading this page fully (you should understand the web-server-is-you recommendation before installing), please see the Installation Instructions for information on installing Review Site. Choosing A Good Web Hosting CompanyIn short, I recommend BlueHost as a hosting solution if you are looking for a great platform on which to host Review Site. But if you already have a favorite web hosting company that you intend to use to host Review Foundry, you will probably do well to keep using it. Using a great web hosting company, of course, can really help in the eventual success of your site. It also takes away the headaches that can occur if you find yourself on a web hosting platform run by people who really aren't up to the job of supporting you. The better the web hosting platform, these less likely it is that you'll need any support. The main requirement of any web hosting platform on which you intend to run Review Foundry is that the web server runs with the same identity as the identity of the user that you become when you FTP into your site. Why is this important? For the full details on this, see the next section. My recommendation is that you go with a web hosting company that offers you lots of disk space and bandwidth, and which gives you a way to login to your site via SSH (secure telnet). Presently Review Site can be operated entirely from the browser, but having SSH access to your account is always a benefit. I certainly wouldn't host on a site that didn't offer it. If you have SSH, Perl, PHP and MySQL on your current hosting solution, you're probably set to go. For people who are unsure about their hosting needs, and would like to be pointed in the right direction, I whole-heartily recommend taking a look at BlueHost. The guys at BlueHost have done a great job setting up their system. BlueHost offers everything you need for as little as $7/month, including Perl, PHP, MySQL, and SSH access. They also offer unlimited domain hosting, 1,500 GB of disk space, and 15,000 GB of monthly data transfer, which is excellent. But my recommendation is that you go with the $10/month package. The Importance Of Web-Server-Is-You Hosting PlatformsWhether you realize it or not, each time you log into your web site you are assigned a user identity. Every file you upload is then owned by that user identity. On some hosting platforms the web server runs with this same user identity. On those platforms the web server will have no trouble modifying any files you upload, simply because it owns those files (the web server runs as you, remember?). But not all web hosting platforms are like this. On those platforms where the web server runs with a different user identity it is very easy to run into file permissions problems. If you upload a file you then own it. The web server does not, so unless you assign permissions of 777 to the file (meaning that anyone can read, write, and execute the file as a script), the web server cannot modify it. Likewise, if the web server creates a file in the normal execution of one application or another (like Review Site), it then owns the file and you will have no permission to edit it. Unless, of course, the web server assigns permissions of 777 when it creates the file. So the moral of the story here is that you must either install Review Site on a web-server-is-you platform, which I strongly recommend, or you must allow the program to set permissions of 777 on all files and directories it creates so that you can edit them if needed. How important is this? Well, invariably, when clients install Review Site on non web-server-is-you platforms, they end up getting confused about file permissions and they run into problems at some stage. Often, immediately. So if you persist in using one of these platforms, expect to ultimately fail in your attempt to get a manageable review site off the ground. That's the reality. If you want to succeed, do the smart thing and use a web-server-is-you platform. BlueHost is a good choice, but there are lots of others out there. It's not like web-server-is-you platforms are hard to find. They are in fact as common as dirt. Before you even upload the Review Site files to your server, you should run the good_server.cgi script (which you can find in directory /cgi-bin/rs/reviewsite/do) on your site and find out whether you are on a good web server that runs with your identity or not. If not, don't install. It's that simple. Life is short, and after seeing people do this year after year I have realized that I no longer have the time nor patience to help you muddle through installation on a customer unfriendly server. Having Review Site Installed For YouIf the idea of installing Review Site seems like a drag you can always pay to have it installed. I offer installation services at a reasonable price. You will have to provide all the relevant installation information before you can submit an installation request, so look over the form on that page first, and figure out what it is that I need to know in order to get the job done. As I have mentioned above on this page, I really don't like installing my applications onto web servers that don't run with your own user identity, because of the problems listed above. So if you are serious about your affiliate business I recommend that, at least for Review Site installations, you use a web-server-is-you platform for this stuff. One of the reasons I like BlueHost is because the web-server-is-you condition is guaranteed, and you can run as many domains as you like all on the one account. You can have "add-on" domains that get their own subdirectory in your document root, so that the directory structure looks like this:
/public_html
/domain-1
/domain-2
/domain-3
...
For mini-sites like the ones that Review Site is designed to produce, having a bunch of common web sites all in the same place is very convenient in my opinion. Next Section: INSTALLING Review Site « Table of Contents | Obtain Review Site » Copyright © 2008 Random Mouse Software. All Rights Reserved. |