Hello all,
I know how very challenging it can be to host a ROR application of
GoDaddy. The good news is that after 10 days of blood, sweat and
tears, I finally got it
to work!!!
First, let me start by saying that I’m somewhat of a newbie to Rails.
However, I’ve been programming in Java and/or C# for the last 10+
years so I’ve been
around the block a couple times when it comes to this stuff. Secondly,
this was undoubtedly one of the most challenging development tasks
I’ve undertaken
this year, so please don’t feel bad if you didn’t get it to work the
first 10 attempts because it took me waaaaay more than that!. Well,
with that said, I’m
sure you’re eager to get to the how-to so let’s do it.
Right now, I’d love to write a few paragraphs on how GoDaddy’s Ruby on
Rails support and documentation is abominal, but that would only be
preaching to the
choir… Instead, let’s make some lemonade 
One more thing, please forgive and typing/spelling errors, I’m writing
this in Notepad.
My Setup
- Linux Deluxe Plan
- Windows Vista
- Ruby 1.8.5-22 Final (http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=167)
- Gem 0.9.2
- Rails 1.1.6 (I know you’re looking for 2.0 bare w/me)
- FileZilla 3.0.11.1 (filezilla-project.org)
- Subversion 1.4.5 (http://subversion.tigris.org/)
Tip - On Vista and XP, if you uninstall a version of Ruby, restart
your computer before reinstalling another version of Ruby, otherwise
the Environment
Variables won’t get set properly.
Installing Rails
Ok, here is where I was REALLY confused early on, mostly because I
didn’t understand terminology (i.e. what is a RubyGem, what does
freeezing a Gem do). I
was also really confused by GoDaddy’s documentation. In some places,
they claim to support Rails 1.1.2, in others it’s 1.1.6. Anyway, to
correctly install
Rails for version 1.1.6:
- Run the Ruby185-22.exe installer.
- Open a command prompt and type: gem install rails --version 1.1.6
That’s it. [DO NOT download RubyGems 1.2.0 (or any other version) and
then run “ruby setup.rb”!!! Same goes for any other version of Rails,
don’t do it.]
To ensure you’ve setup everything correctly, let’s check the ROR
component’s versions:
C:\Development\Projects\Ruby>ruby -v
ruby 1.8.5 (2006-12-25 patchlevel 12) [i386-mswin32]
C:\Development\Projects\Ruby>gem -v
0.9.2
C:\Development\Projects\Ruby>rails -v
Rails 1.1.6
Installing Subversion
Go ahead and install Subversion if you already haven’t. It’s a version
control system like CVS or Visual Source Safe.
Creating a test project
– Let’s keep it simple and create helloworld
C:\Development\Projects\Ruby>rails helloworld
create
create app/controllers
create app/helpers
…
…
– Change to the helloworld directory
C:\Development\Projects\Ruby>cd helloworld
– Create a controller and some basic actions
C:\Development\Projects\Ruby\helloworld>ruby script\generate
controller Say hello
./script/…/config/boot.rb:28:Warning: require_gem is obsolete. Use
gem instead
.
exists app/controllers/
exists app/helpers/
create app/views/say
exists test/functional/
create app/controllers/say_controller.rb
create test/functional/say_controller_test.rb
create app/helpers/say_helper.rb
create app/views/say/hello.rhtml
– Ok, let see if it works
C:\Development\Projects\Ruby\helloworld>ruby script/server
./script/…/config/boot.rb:28:Warning: require_gem is obsolete. Use
gem instead
.
=> Booting WEBrick…
=> Rails application started on http://0.0.0.0:3000
=> Ctrl-C to shutdown server; call with --help for options
[2008-07-18 22:54:52] INFO WEBrick 1.3.1
[2008-07-18 22:54:52] INFO ruby 1.8.5 (2006-12-25) [i386-mswin32]
[2008-07-18 22:54:52] INFO WEBrick::HTTPServer#start: pid=3680
port=3000
127.0.0.1 - - [18/Jul/2008:22:55:11 Eastern Daylight Time] “GET / HTTP/
1.1” 200
7552
– Open a browser to: http://localhost:3000/Say/hello
Say#hello
Find me in app/views/say/hello.rhtml
Preparing for launch to GoDaddy
Ok, just to quickly recap, all we’ve done so far is to install ROR,
Subversion and create a very simple Rails app - nothing special.
Everything is working
locally, so now it’s time to prepare for FTPing to GoDaddy. This is
another area where I was REALLY confused initially. So before we go
any further I’m going
to outline and explain what we’re going to do and why.
- Freeze the application. When you “freeze” a Rails app, your
application will always use that version of Rails and the associated
Ruby Gems, regardless of
what version is installed on the GoDaddy server. In essence, even
though GoDaddy only supports version 1.1.6, by ‘freezing’ your
application, you literally
bundle your entire local environment into your application. So
theoretically, you can run version 2.x.x if you ‘freeze’ your
application before deploying.
Note, I have not tried this as of yet, but I do have a ‘frozen’
version of Rails 1.2.6 running on GoDaddy. So if 1.2.6 runs, then it’s
very likely 2.x.x will
run as well as long as it’s frozen.
- Make a copy of the helloworld application and rename it
hellworld_godaddy.
This is a best practice for me because it allows me to have a working
version of my app running on Vista and a ‘ready to promote’ version
for the Linux
server.
- Configure some files in the /public and /config directory for use
on GoDaddy.
EASY as 1-2-3…
Ok, go ahead and stop the WEBrick server by typing Ctrl C
First, let’s Freeze our application to version 1.1.6
C:\Development\Projects\Ruby\helloworld>rake rails:freeze:edge
TAG=rel_1-1-6
[**** Note: this may take 30+ seconds ****]
Second, copy of the helloworld application and rename it
hellworld_godaddy
Finally, we need to edit some files in our hellworld_godaddy
directory.
→ /config/environment.rb
Edit the top section of /config/environment.rb to look like this:
ENV[‘RAILS_ENV’] ||= ‘development’
Specifies gem version of Rails to use when vendor/rails is not
present
ENV[‘GEM_HOME’] = ‘/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems-dev/1.8’
RAILS_GEM_VERSION = ‘1.1.6’
→ /public/dispatch.rb, dispatch.cgi, and dispatch.fcgi
Edit the first line in all of the dispatch files to look like this:
#!/usr/local/bin/ruby
→ /public/.htaccess
Ok, a brief pause is needed here to explain some things. .htaccess
files are generally used for many reasons, but it’s common in shared
hosting for these
files to be used to redirect to a subdirectory preventing users from
knowing the real location of your application on a server. GoDaddy
uses a 'Symbolic Link
name’ which is really just an ‘alias’. So in our case we’re going to
create a subdirectory called ‘helloworld_godaddy’ and a Symbolic Link
name of
‘helloworld’.
So all this means is that when a user goes to
mywebsite.com is available for purchase - Sedo.com,
they’re actually referencing the data and files from the
helloworld_godaddy
subdirectory. The most important thing to know about this file is that
it should contain a ‘RewriteBase’ directive which explicitly sets the
base URL for
per-directory rewrites. So in our case we want the base URL to be
rewritten as ‘helloworld’. Another useful tip is to use the .fcgi
(FastCGI) protocol; this
is done by simply changing the .cgi extensions to .fcgi.
Edit the middle section of the .fcgi file to look like this:
RewriteBase /helloworld
RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]
Ok, now we’re almost there! The last part is the easiest
Lock and Load
Log into your GoDaddy account and open up the CGI Admin tool.
In the ‘Directory name:’ textbox, type my_rails_apps. GoDaddy will
automatically create an .htaccess file in the new directory. Open the
file and change
dispatch.cgi to dispatch.fcgi. [Note: This step is not necessary]
Open up FileZilla and connect to your GoDaddy root directory. Double
click the my_rails_apps directory.
In the Filezilla toolbar, select Edit → Settings → FileTypes and
change the Default transfer type to ASCII.
Select your helloworld_godaddy directory, right click and select
upload. *** IMPORTANT STEP ***
[Note: this process will take about 2-3 minutes]
(If you’re new to the GoDaddy admin tool, you’ll need to create an FTP
user by going to Hosting Control Center → Settings → Manage FTP
settings)
(To figure out your FTP URL, username and password, go to Hosting
Control Center → Content → FTP Client → Click Disconnect, then
Connect)
(Make sure you turn on your error logs, go to Hosting Control Center –
Settings → Error Logs → click the ‘Update’ button)
Ok, now go back to the CGI Admin tool and select the ‘Ruby’ tag or
refresh the page.
In the Create Rails Symbolic Link section, click the Show Rails
‘Applications link’.
If all went well, you should see ‘my_rails_apps/helloworld_godaddy’ in
the ‘Choose a rails app:’ drop down box.
Enter a link name of ‘hellworld’ (no quotes), then click the ‘Create’
button.
[Link created: helloworld is a symbolic link to my_rails_apps/
helloworld_godaddy]
LIFT OFF!!
The very last step is setting permissions.
Reconnect to your root directory via Filezilla and open up the /
my_rails_apps/helloworld_godaddy/public directory.
Select the dispatch.cgi and dispatch.fcgi file, right click and select
‘file attributes’. Change the numeric value 644 to 755 and click the
‘Ok’ button.
– Open a browser to: http://www.mysite.com/hellworld/say/hello [ALL
LOWERCASE]
Say#hello
Find me in app/views/say/hello.rhtml
CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve done it.
For reference, I’ve uploaded a copy of the helloworld_godaddy
directory to:
In case these instructions don’t work for you, here are some
instructions that helped me along my journey:
http://blog.mcmoyer.com/2007/9/14/running-rails-on-godaddy-a-k-a-how-do-you-keep-a-geek-entertained
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/104823
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/133394
http://www.rousette.org.uk/projects/forums/viewthread/13/#487
http://lists.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/2006-July/056959.html
Hope this helps.
Bill Screen