Production server

This is how to create a production server for your website or webservice (service).

The production server is a server where you do the following.

• Checkout the git-repo of your service, for example git/service.
• Copy the essential files, needed only for production, to for example htdocs/service.
• Configure Apache with a virtual host to serve from the base dirhtdocs/service.

Pre conditions

You need the following.

• A server with Apache and PHP, according to the basic requirements.

Setup

These are the steps to setup the structure for a website or webservice named anax.se.

Prepare your Makefile

Ensure your Makefile is updated with the details on setup of the produktion server. Here is a sample of that section in the Makefile for a site called anax.se.

# --------------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# Specifics for website projects
#
WWW_SITE		:= anax.se
SERVER_ADMIN 	:= mos@$(WWW_SITE)
BASE_URL    	:= https://$(WWW_SITE)/

GIT_BASE 		:= git/$(WWW_SITE)
HTDOCS_BASE 	:= $(HOME)/htdocs
LOCAL_HTDOCS 	:= $(HTDOCS_BASE)/$(WWW_SITE)

Clone your source

Clone your source repo and save it as git/anax.se and move into that directory.

Create and copy to the production structure

Copy your local source and install a copy with the essentials into htdocs/anax.se.

make local-install   # Install and setup the directory structure
make local-publish   # Copy parts of git source to production structure

Setup Apache virtual host for HTTP

Continue to setup the apache virtual host for http://anax.se.

Start by reviewing the configuration files that will be generated.

make virtual-hosts-echo

Then create an entry for a hostname local.anax.se to allow for local access. This makes it easier to test your configuration and allows for the DNS to be updated at a later stage.

make etc-hosts

Make updates to the Makefile is needed, based on your configuration. Then generate and install the configuration files and make Apache ready.

make virtual-hosts

If you need to do updates, just edit your Makefile and run make virtual-hosts again.

If it all worked out you can now access your website locally.

curl local.anax.se

Now you should update your DNS so that http://ananx.se will point to this production server. Remember that updates to the DNS might take some time before its active.

Setup Apache virtual host for HTTPS

You may continue to setup the apache virtual host for HTTPS with https://anax.se.

Generate SSL certificate for the site

We use the command certbot from LetsEncrypt to create a free SSL certificates.

Install the command if needed.

apt install certbot

Now we can generate and install the SSL certificate for our domain.

make ssl-cert-create

Update the Apache configuration to HTTPS

Start by reviewing the configuration files that will be generated.

make virtual-hosts-https-echo

Make updates to the Makefile is needed, based on your configuration. Then generate and install the configuration files and make Apache ready.

make virtual-hosts-https

If you want to rollback to HTTP you do this by replacing the configuration files with the HTTP setup.

make virtual-hosts

Update the production server

You can login to the production server and update like this.

git pull                  # Get the latest source
make local-publish        # Copy to production

If you need to clean up the cache you can do like this.

make local-publish-clean  # Copy to production and clean cache
make warm-cache           # Access the site and warm the cache

You can also publish direct from your development server like this.

make production-publish  # ssh to production and update it