Question

I have setup the basic LAMP server on Ubuntu 11.10 and had a few questions about directory structure with web hosting. My “requirements” are that I would like to host two websites (ie: http://www.site1.com and http://www.site2.com) and also that I would like to use the Zend framework.

Currently, the public folder is /var/www/. Is it common to have a “Projects” folder somewhere containing all of the web application code which generally will consist of the Zend project folders (public, tests, library, etc)?

Where do you “normally” store the Zend framework folder? I was thinking of just storing in in my ~/ directory and creating a symlink from each project’s library folder to the Zend library folder. Is this recommended/frowned upon?

I’m new to this and just getting setup, but here is what I had in mind so far:

Create a projects folder in your home directory (~/). Under there, have your different web apps (~/Projects/site1 and ~/Projects/site2). Create a symlink from /var/www/site1 that points to ~/Projects/site1/Public and the same for site2. Setup the virtual hosts file with DocumentRoot set to /var/www/site1 and the same for site2.

Can anyone shed any light on the possible pitfalls of this? Would this be alright to do? Any recommendations? I know there are many versions of how you should setup directories here on SO, but couldn’t find any answers that addressed these things specifically, so I apologize if this is a repeat.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Yes, there are lots of ways to do it, just keep in mind a few things:

• The user that owns the HTML/PHP files should not be the same as the user that runs the web server process.
• The ZF project files should be outside the web server’s document root.
• If you make a setup now that’s conducive to having multiple developers, you won’t have to make big changes later.

I usually do something like make a “site” user with a regular /home/site directory. This keeps the site files separate from your personal files and makes it easier to support multiple admins/devs that might need to login. You can also put this in /opt/site or /usr/local/site or wherever. I like /home because the shell skeleton files are already there and I can easily add SSH keys of the people I want to have access. I’ll have something like:

/home/site/
    library/
        fuel/
        geshi/
        sencha-touch-2.0.0-gpl/
        ZendFramework/
            ZendFramework-1.11.10/
            ZendFramework-1.11.11/
            latest -> ZendFramework-1.11.11
    site/
        domain1.com/
            application/
            library/
                MyApp/
                Zend -> /home/site/library/ZendFramework/latest/library/Zend
            public/
            scripts/
        domain2.com/
            application/
            library/
                MyApp/
                Zend -> /home/site/library/ZendFramework/latest/library/Zend
            public/
            scripts/

Then, your vhost document root settings would point to /home/site/site/domain1.com/public and /home/site/site/domain2.com/public