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We call production server, the server on which you will install your finished application, therefore accessible to the end-users. By opposition, the server on which you develop your application is called the development server.

There are certain different things to take in account for a production server, in order to optimize the execution of your application based on Jelix, and to protect your server.

Choosing the good edition of Jelix

To develop, you use of course the "developer" edition of Jelix. This edition includes tools and scripts for the command line and other things for the development.

However, for the installation on a production server, it is preferable to install the "optimized" edition of Jelix. As its name indicates it, it is optimized, and the useless things in production are removed. Note however that your application will function exactly the same way as with one of the other editions of Jelix, except for one detail: there will be some light performance improvements with the "Optimized" edition!

If you choose to remain with the "developer" edition on your production server, there is no problem with that. However it is recommended to remove jelix command lines scripts (the whole lib/jelix-scripts directory).

A "Gold" edition is also available, it is intended for the developers who can modify the php configuration, and especially install PHP extensions. Indeed, this edition uses some PHP extensions which are not available among all hosts, and this edition uses also a PHP extension especially dedicated to Jelix, which deals with certain treatments of the framework. The use of "gold" edition thus significantly improves the performances of your application. You have to compile the jelix extension yourself. Therefore, the source code of this extension is provided in the package of the Gold edition.

Configuration

Installation process is identical to your development environment, including for the application.

To have better performance and more safety, here are however some additional advices.

About the server configuration

  • all directories, except the www directory of your app, should be outside the document root of the web site. So you should set the root of your web site on this www directory or move the content of www to the root of your web site. See the chapter on the application configuration for examples of such configuration.
  • To specify the rights well on the temp/your_app/ directory. For example, the user which runs Apache should have write rights an this directory. It is not recommended on linux, to chmod 0777 on the temp directory ;-)

About the application

Here some advices for the configuration of the application, in the var/config/defaultconfig.ini.php file.

error_handling section

In the section error_handling, the following configuration is highly advised:


[error_handling]
messageLogFormat = "%date%\t[%code%]\t%msg%\t%file%\t%line%\n"
logFile = error.log
email = root@localhost
emailHeaders = "From: webmaster@yoursite.com\nX-Mailer: Jelix\nX-Priority: 1 (Highest)\n"
quietMessage="A technical error has occured. Sorry for this trouble."

showInFirebug = off

; keywords you can use : ECHO, ECHOQUIET, EXIT, LOGFILE, SYSLOG, MAIL, TRACE
default      = ECHOQUIET EXIT LOGFILE
error        = ECHOQUIET EXIT LOGFILE
warning      = ECHOQUIET LOGFILE
notice       =  
strict       = 
; for the exceptions, there is implicitly EXIT
exception    = ECHOQUIET LOGFILE

It is not advised to use the keyword ECHO, which posts all the details of the errors on the website (information which could be useful for pirates), but rather ECHOQUIET, which posts simply the message indicated in the parameter quietMessage.

However, it is useful to be informed of the errors and their details. Also, parallel to ECHOQUIET, it is recommended to add one of these key words

  • LOGFILE: the errors are inserted in the file indicated in logFile.
  • SYSLOG: the errors are recorded on the level of the system.
  • EMAIL: the errors are sent by email to email.

Be careful with the use of EMAIL: use it only once you know that your application functions well on the production server. Else you may be flooded with emails (and your hosting provider may not be very happy with that, and could think you're a spammer).

Be careful also with the use of SYSLOG: put this option only if it is your own server (i.e. you are an administrator of the machine). Else the owner of the machine is likely not to appreciate.

In conclusion: LOGFILE is recommended instead of EMAIL or SYSLOG.

compilation section

In the section [compilation], you can deactivate the option checkCacheFiletime, and even more recommended, the option forces, if you activated it for the development.


[compilation]
checkCacheFiletime  = off
force = off

The option checkCacheFiletime prevents Jelix from checking all the time that the cache (files generated by Jelix for the files of configurations, the DAO, templates, etc.) is up to date compared to the files in the application directory. This checking is generally useless in production, since the application is rarely modified, and each modification is usually meant to be activated as fast as possible. Of course, if you deactivate it, you should imperatively empty the directory of cache (temp/myapp/) at each update of your application, so that your modifications are well taken into account.

mailer section

Do not forget to update the parameters of the [mailer] section. Usually, the mailer parameters are different between your development server and your production server unless you use third party solutions.