Molten Networks

Quinn has gotten me interested in web development with Symfony. For those who don’t know, Symfony is a PHP framework which implements the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. This system allows breaking development down into a model (data), view (web stuff), and controller (how to get and what to do with data once we get it).

For my first app, I’m going to develop an app that keeps track of DVDs. We have a decent collection, and have gotten to the point where we frequently ask the question “do we have this one?” when shopping. Since we both have PDA Phones, I think this will be a big help to us. (Truthfully, it’ll be a small, quick app for me to learn on, too)

I’ve gotten hosting through (mt) MediaTemple. Specifically, their (gs) Grid Service (hey, I’m not running anything as big as Tech-Recipes!)

For starters, in this service, PEAR needs to be set up. (mt)’s knowledge base tells you how to do this for their service, others may need different procedures. PEAR’s own instructions are here.

With PEAR up and running, it’s time to see what we can do with symfony. (mt)’s KB takes you through installing symfony into a directory, then linking (mt)’s default ~/domains/yourdomain.com/html to the symfony/web directory.

Once all of this is done, you should be able to point your web browser to http://yourdomain.com and get the wonderful “Symfony project created” welcome page. In my case, I got the page, but didn’t get the graphics. I needed to link the ~/domains/yourdomain.com/symfony/sf to the sf directory on the main installation point of symfony. In (mt) (gs), this is /home/users/.home/pear/data/symfony/web/sf

Enough for day 1! Stay tuned for day 2…..