Fast Running Blog

Fast Running Blog is now offering free PHP/MySQL web development classes. Advance your career while paying zero in tuition! Instructor credentials: the original replication developer at MySQL, author of two books: MySQL Enterprise Solutions and Understanding of MySQL Internals, and the author of 98% of the code behind the Fast Running Blog. Those who complete the course may use the instructor as a reference when applying for jobs. In some places this may do you more good than a college diploma.

When an offer sounds too good to be true, it usually is. And this one is not an exception. Two catches. A lot of learning would have to be self-guided. You will receive an e-mail with basic instructions and documents to study, and then you do some leg work. E-mail support is available. When in a bind, you can always ask for a tip. The other catch is that you will learn while coding up Fast Running Blog projects. The ROI for me is in the free labor source to reduce our lengthy TODO list.

If you are interested, the first assignment is to get Linux installed on a partition or a dedicated computer. Make sure to install Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Any flavor of Linux will do - Ubuntu, Knoppix, CentOS, Fedora, RedHat, SuSE, etc. Use Google when you have a question, if it is not answered in 15 minutes of searching, post it here.

OK I am in.  I have ubunto installed already.

Sasha  tell me what you want me to work on and I'll start right away.  Send your books or information whatever.  I've coded in PHP.  You've already have it setup on my Linux Red Hat 5 Server.

Do you still want people for this? I am interested, I have so far managed to get apache and php working on my MacBook, just need to sort MySQL next.

Yes, the offer still stands. Connect your system to the net, make sure SSH daemon is running, and send me an e-mail when ready. I can help you set up MySQL.

I am planning to use my MacBook (is this ok as it won't be connected to the net all the time?)
Apache and PHP are included by default in Mac I just had to enable them, I managed to get my Mac connected to the net to display the homepage which comes up with the Apache logo to say it works, also I put up a .php with the phpinfo line in, so that when you go to the page you can check that PHP works too.

Just downloading MySQL now - it's 60MB so I'll post after I get it working (or after I have a good try).

Right, got MySQL downloaded and the MySQL server status says it is running! :)

Do I need to get the shared libraries too? http://switch.richard5.net/isp-in-a-box-v2/installing-mysql-on-mac-os-x/

See if you can connect to it from PHP.

I'll try this weekend if I can - been a bit busy recently

Would be more than happy to help.  Let me know what you need.  I have my own hosting servers and have dabbled in PHP.  Fairly fluent in JSP, JEE, MySQL, Linux, etc.  Trying to get more fluent in PHP, so this would be a great opportunity to do so.

Hey Sasha does the server absolutely have be Linux (i.e. LAMP) or is Windows (WAMP) acceptable? Yeah, yeah I know MS/Windows is evil and all that but already have a Windows server up and running with Apache/MySQL/PHP that I've been tinkering with and I might have some time I could help you out on the side. I can also setup a LAMP server but since the WAMP is already functional I just thought I'd check with you to see if that would work as well.

Tom:

Thanks for volunteering.

With Windows we have several problems. First, I have never attempted to get the code to work on Windows. So you will likely have surprises that would likely take you longer to resolve than to set up a Linux server. Second, if you run into a problem on a Linux system I can SSH in and debug it quickly. A Windows server would require a special setup. And finally, since the production environment is Linux, you can easily introduce a bug that will not be seen until we try it on Linux.

Yeah I figured that was probably the case. I'll see what I can do about setting up Linux. Any particular versions of Apache/MySQL/PHP recommended or are the latest stable releases ok?

I am running Ubuntu 8 on the server. However, anything recent should work just fine. In addition to MySQL, PHP, and Apache you will need the curl PHP module and ImageMagik.

Ok, I'm ready to get started on this.  I'm also looking at possibility of an Android app to help with posting and commenting since at least on my Evo 4G, its not always easy to navigate.

Let me know how I can help.  Thanks!

Although I can't help with it, I will second that an Andriod app would be sweet! The fastrunningblog works okay in the browser, but posting is kind of a pain.

I'd comment on this thread if I recognized the language you guys are speaking.

...and yet you're here reading it!  ;)

OK, I finally got to this. Android app is on the TO DO list. Baldandspicy - here is what you need:

* Linux (Ubuntu makes it the easiest)
* Apache
* MySQL
* PHP
* ImageMagic
* Git

Then set up an account for me with sudo rights so I can log in and  install and configure everything. You can download my public key from http://asksasha.com/public_key.txt . Put in in /home/sasha/.ssh/authorized_keys. Make sure to

chmod 700 /home/sasha/.ssh
chmod 600 /home/sasha/.ssh/authorized_keys
chown -R sasha /home/sasha/.ssh

Then I'll be able to ssh with no password. If you hit a roadblock during setup, just get the SSH working for me, I can install all the packages and get them to work.