Category: WordPress Development

Basic setup for web development

Following up my previous post, A Modern Web Development Workflow in Windows, I’ve created this small step-by-step configuration guide for a VM with ubuntu server using VM Ware.

This is mostly for myself, as future reference, but you can also use this 10 steps to install and configure your own local environment.

1. Download the latest Ubuntu server distribution compatible with your machine

You can find here, all the latest releases : http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server

2. Download the latest VMware Player

VMware player is a FREE tool for personal use, and you can download it from:

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/free#desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_player/6_0

3. Create a new Virtual Machine in VMware

I used the following specs for my setup:

• 2 Gb RAM
• 2 Core processor
• 5 Gb Disk Space

4. Install Ubuntu Server

As easy as clicking next in every screen

5. Start your new Virtual Machine

Selecting the correspondent item in the menu, and click “Play Virtual Machine”

6. Change Keyboard layout

After installing and as a Portuguese, I need to change my keyboard layout.
(Skip this step if you don’t need a special keyboard layout).
You can achieve it running the following command, and then selecting the desired keyboard layout

sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

7. Next, we’ll install Open-SSH

As simple as running the command:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

8.Install PuTTY

As I hate to lose mouse focus when I need to access my virtual machine, the next step is installing PuTTY on my PC.
You can download it from here: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

9. Login via Putty

In order to login using PuTTY on your virtual machine you need to know your IP address, this is a very simple command and very similar to the one we use in windows

ifconfig

10. Installing LAMP

The final step of the initial configuration is installing LAMP, on your Ubuntu Server.
You can download and follow the installation instructions from:
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html#374

These are the basic configuration steps for installing LAMP on a virtual machine, in order to use it efficiently in web and WordPress development I’ve found a couple of other tweaks that makes it faster, easier and even more awesome. I’ll share those in a next post.

I’ve been on a mission in the last weeks, modernizing my workflow in WordPress development in order to automate as many tasks as possible and start using SASS, Grunt, Git and Capristano.

 

First, you need to know that I’m a windows user, I like everything about Linux philosophy, but I really hate Photoshop running on Wine and I love playing some games whenever I’ve the time for it. 

 

I’ve started installing git on windows (Awesome),

continued to install Ruby and SASS, one more Console…

Testing wordmove (https://github.com/welaika/wordmove), more modules to install, one more console Cygwin…

 

Come on! If I continue this way I’ll work with 3 different consoles and multiple configurations and installs of each module I needed for each new “hot” thing available.

 

So I needed to find a way of reduce this huge setup and mess.

I’ve poked around a little and decided to install a Virtual Machine running Ubuntu server, with everthing I needed.

– Git
– Ruby
– Sass
– Node.js
– Grunt
– Lampp

This way I would be able to install everything I needed today and have an expansible environment capable of fulfilling my future needs.

What do you think of my choice?

Do you have any alternative suggestions or use a similar setup?