Installing a RoR app on a webhost Oct 27, 2009
Just figure I'd share a few steps which are useful in getting a RoR application up and running on a web hosting provider. Obviously the steps will vary depending on your specific provider, but most should be the same assuming your given access to a home directory on the web server under which public_html resides.
- Install your rails app in a location _not_ under ~/public_html. For example ~/rails/appname would be a good place
- Run through your application specific install instructions, configuring db if necessary
- Link the 'public' directory under the rails root, to the public_html directory, eg
ln -s ~/rails/appname/public ~/public_html/appname
- Edit .htaccess in the public directory, commenting out the following line and replacing it with:
(at least I had to do this w/ my provider, I'm not sure how many this applies to)
# AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
- Add your gem path to ~/rails/appname/config/environment.rb like so:
Obviously your local and system wide gem paths will vary depending on your system. Use the 'gem environment' command to determine what they are.
ENV['GEM_PATH']='/home/username/ruby/gems/gems:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/'
- Finally you may also need to add the following to your ~/rails/appname/config/environment.rb:
or if this doesn't work, add:
config.action_controller.related_url_root = '/appname'
This tells rails that our application is located under the '/appname' subdirectory of our webroot, eg in our case ~/public_html.ActionController::AbstractRequest.related_url_root = '/appname'