working zen cart

Last night after creating a zencart mysql database, the zen-cart site seemed to be working ok. I loaded up the demo and was able to play with it a little.

on the trail of php continued

Took care of my last php warning with:

aptitude install php5-gd

on the trail of php continued

I got the following warning:

MySQL Support = OFF Click here for more info


Not surprisingly, the following command took care of it:

aptitude install php5-mysql

on the trail of php continued

Next I got a message saying php was not compiled with curl. Resolved this by installing php5-curl

I have no idea (yet) what curl is.

on the trail of php

Early on in the configuration process I see this:

ERROR: date.timezone not set in php.ini. Please contact your hosting company to set the timezone in the server PHP configuration before continuing.

Modified php.ini as follows to fix:

root@zen:/etc# git diff /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
diff --git a/php5/apache2/php.ini b/php5/apache2/php.ini
index c105148..4962415 100644
--- a/php5/apache2/php.ini
+++ b/php5/apache2/php.ini
@@ -945,8 +945,8 @@ default_socket_timeout = 60

[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
-; http://php.net/date.timezone
-;date.timezone =
+http://php.net/date.timezone
+date.timezone = America/Los_Angeles

; http://php.net/date.default-latitude
;date.default_latitude = 31.7667
root@zen:/etc#

installed php5

I needed to install php to take care of the php execution problems that I encountered the other day. No big surprise. Installed as follows:

aptitude install php5

I also had to clear the cache on my browser.

zen configuration not happening

Per instructions, I access
http://192.168.31.132/catalog but nothing happens.

Could be a permission problem or not auto-detecting PHP filename extensions?

https working

After following various obsolete/false leads, I found the following comment that tells how to set up apache2 ssl access:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/debian/+source/apache2/+bug/77675/comments/60

This seems to do the trick.

The comment correctly mentions that the key information needed is in:

/usr/share/doc/apache2.2-common/README.Debian.gz

ssl apache

I'm currently trying to gloss over ssl as quickly as possible. In fact, I may soon decide to skip it altogether.

Based on this web page it looks like ssl involves server certificates ( I kind of knew this already ) and client certificates - both of which are optional. I'm hoping I can get away for the time being without any certificates.

It also looks like apache may need mod-ssl to get ssl working. I don't know if I have this already but if not, I may try just installing it and seeing if it https: starts working.

continuing with zen cart

I probably should have mentioned that I'm using this site:

http://tutorials.zen-cart.com/index.php?article=107

as a guide.

On this page, I see the following instructions:

You will need the following information for the installation:

* The physical path to your new Zen Cart™ directory
Example: /home2/zencart/public_html/catalog

* The Virtual HTTP Path (the URL to your domain and directory for your shop)
Example: http://www.mydomain.com/catalog

* The Virtual HTTPS Server (the secure URL to your domain)
Example: https://www.mydomain.com
Note: if you have a shared certificate on a virtual server this may look like:
https://mydomain.secureservername.net/
- or - https://secure.sharedservername.net/~username

* The Virtual HTTPS Path (the secure URL to your domain and directory for your shop)
Example: https://www.mydomain.com/catalog
- or - https://secure.sharedservername.net/~username/catalog

I can access:
http://192.168.31.132/

but not

https://192.168.31.132/

What's going on here?

Getting started with zen cart

Before working on a remotely hosted site, I'm using a virtual machine to try out zen-cart. My virtual machine is an vmware ubuntu 10.4 "box".

Before installing zen-cart I'm getting mysql and apache2 via aptitude:

aptitude install mysql-server
aptitude install apache2

apache2 seems to be working: I can access http://192.168.31.132/index.html to get to /var/www/index.html . That location is set in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default .

setting up a trial e-commerce site

As a learning experience I'm setting up an e-commerce site. It may not go anywhere. I just signed up for a year of bluehost providing. My intention is to use zen-cart for the shopping site management - at least at first.

How to specify a remote branch in git

Thanks to "Toolman Tim" - Setting Up a New Remote Git Repository

Plagiarized from Tim for quick reference:

$ ssh myserver.com
Welcome to myserver.com!
$ mkdir /var/git/myapp.git && cd /var/git/myapp.git
$ git --bare init
Initialized empty Git repository in /var/git/myapp.git
$ exit
Bye!

$ cd ~/Sites/myapp
$ git remote add origin ssh://myserver.com/var/git/myapp.git
$ git push origin master