Dear Fellow Web2py Developers, Sorry for the extended email, I wanted to introduce myself and give some background.
I am enjoying web2py tremendously. Two years ago, I came to web2py from php where I had hacked together multiple web applications, despite a non-programming background. I am a second year medical student in Chicago, and I've always had some ideas as to how to make people's lives better through technology. Now, I'm taking some time off from school to try to do exactly that. It has been a wonderful learning experience for programming and web application development. I even managed to help three people who had never written a single line of code begin writing web applications that they had always dreamed about and never believed they could. (btw Massimo, if you happen to see this, one is a bio major from Depaul) Now, I am trying to give back to my community. Specifically, as I am preparing to deploy an application for a production environment, I have been learning about hosting, the most frustrating part of my learning curve. Getting a local copy of web2py up and going is one thing. Having a fully functional, web deployed app is another. (I know this may sound irresponsible - to put potentially insecure applications on the web, and I believe empowerment, open information, and experience are the keys) I chose webfaction as my hosting environment because I had heard about them on this board. Now, I am trying to write a web2py slice to document my process of going from local development to production with multiple developers in a professional hosting environment. It is both a learning experience for me and an opportunity to give other non-programmers a better understanding of the process, which I would have appreciated in the process. I am soliciting your help to try to offer this help better than I can. The areas I want to cover for webfaction are: 1.) 1 click web2py instance deployment script -- DONE(already on their wiki) 2.) Version control using hg -- WORKING (using hgweb as a separate application) 3.) Apache Optimization/mod_wsgi / Memory management -- WORKING (following the book and Graham Dumpleton's suggestions on the server) 4.) exposed /admin with ssh - WORKING 5.) Version control from admin interface - WORKING 6.) deployment under subdomain / sub url The area where I'd like the most help is the Apache/memory management stuff. Apache/mod_wsgi are confusing as a newbie non programmer. I don't think it has to be. I want to make production web application development UNDERSTANDABLE for non programmers, to attract more people like myself to the field and to the framework. If you are willing to lend your expertise please let me know, so we can make this community better for everyone. Sincerely, Mark Graves GravesMedical Founder --
