jbd

I agree that user blogs would be useful, but the word DGrover used (curated) has a lot of hidden technical details - who would do and how would curating be done? Especially in a community. I think we would need applications (as users apply to curate something) that would need veting (who does that) and/or voting and inviting users to curate. Maybe a moderated forum would be better? There's also the question of evolution of a curated blog... If blogs are originally "owned" by one (or more) people, then how should they morph from being a single person blog, to a group/community blog? Note that I think much of the problem is "how do we handle as a group" rather than "what technology do we use".

Note the requirements!

Spent Monday evening with RJ trying to create a sandbox FarmHack.net site. Got it working!

Assumptions are:

• You're using Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS (Note: This is NOT MS-Windows or Apple MacIntosh) with a LAMP stack. (LAMP = Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP).
• You're using the Apache 2 web server (this comes with Ubuntu)
• You have sudo access (permissions to execute privileged commands)
• You understand git ('git' is a program name, and not a typo).
• You understand ssh and PKI (and how keys work)
• You have 'drush' on your system.
• You have copied the Live site (all the Drupal files), the database, and the non-Drupal files to a location on your local computer.

If you don't understand any of the above assumptions, then you should get a mentor to help. RJ Steinert, Mike Stenta, or Bruce Dawson have experience as of this writing.

The procedure (for Ubuntu) is as follows:

1. Create a directory to put the site in. I'm using ~/Desktop/FarmHack/devweb. Note that the Apache2 log files will go in ~/Desktop/FarmHack.
2. cd to ~/Desktop/FarmHack/devweb. Then "mkdir .git" (make a directory for git).
3. Create a Git configuration file (~/Desktop/FarmHack/devweb/.git/config) with the following content:

     [core]
       repositoryformatversion = 0
       filemode = true
       bare = false
       logallrefupdates = true
     [remote "getpantheon"]
       url = ssh://codeserver.dev.adabf944-5abf-457b-a44c-bc74efaabcf3@codeserver.dev.adabf944-5abf-457b-a44c-bc74efaabcf3.drush.in:2222/~/repository.git
       fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/getpantheon/*
   

4. cd to ~/Desktop/FarmHack/devweb and use the command "git pull getpantheon"
5. You will then need to execute 'git reset --hard' to eliminate the metadata created by the 'git pull'.
6. Next, from the same directory, you'll have to perform a 'git merge getpantheon/master'.
7. The next steps involve getting the Apache2 webserver and the MySQL database configured.
8. cd to /etc/apache2/sites-available
9. Create a file named 'farmhack.sandbox' with the following content:

   <VirtualHost *:80>   
     ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost   
     ServerName FarmHack.sandbox   
     RewriteEngine On  
     RewriteOptions inherit   
     DocumentRoot /home/jbd/Desktop/FarmHack/devweb   
     # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,   
     # alert, emerg.   
     LogLevel warn   
     CustomLog /home/jbd/Desktop/FarmHack/access_log combined   
     ErrorLog /home/jbd/Desktop/FarmHack/error.log   
     <Directory /home/jbd/Desktop/FarmHack/devweb>     
       Options FollowSymLinks     
       AllowOverride All   
     </Directory>
   </VirtualHost>

10. Enable the site by going to the Apache sites-enabled directory and creating a symlink to the farmhack.sandbox file created previously:
    cd ../sites-enabled/
sudo ln -s ../sites-available/farmhack.sandbox .
11. Next, tell Apache to reload its configuration files:
    sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

12. Make farmhack.sandbox a host by adding it to your /etc/hosts file:
    sudo vi /etc/hosts
    At then end of the file, add the line:
    127.0.0.1 farmhack.sandbox
    and exit the editor.

13. Create the database by loading what you copied from the getpantheon live backup site, specificially the database file. First you'll have to unzip it:
    gunzip farmhack_live_2014-12-23T00-07-18_UTC_database.sql.gz
    This will create a farmhack_live_2014-12-23T00-07-18_UTC_database.sql file - and remove the ...gz file. You'll note the .sql file is larger than the .gz file - the gunzip command simply uncompresses the file. The next step will be to create the database.
    mysqladmin -u debian-sys-maint -p create rjstatic_farmhack_beta1
    The above mysqladmin command will create the database (but not populate it). However, you have to give the command a privileged user and password (-u debian-sys-maint, and -p). The user and password is found in /etc/mysql/debian.cnf (you'll need to use sudo to view the file). The next thing you have to do is permit the user and password in the settings.php file to have access to the database. This is done by using the mysql command to grant permissions to that user:
    mysql -u debian-sys-maint -p mysql
create user 'rjstatic_beta1'@'localhost' identified by 'XXX';
grant all on rjstatic_farmhack_beta1.* to 'rjstatic_beta1'@'localhost';
flush privileges;

    In the above, replace 'XXX' with the password that you got from the settings.php file

14. Now, load the data into the database with the following command:
mysql -u rjstatic_beta1 -p rjstatic_farmhack_beta1 <farmhack_live_2014-12-23T00-07-18_UTC_database.sql

15. Next, change the $base_url variable in the settings.php file to:
    $base_url = 'http://farmhack.sandbox';  // NO trailing slash! 

16. The settings.php file is in the sites/default directory of the website. In my instance, this was ~/Desktop/FarmHack/devweb/sites/default/setings.php

17. The next step is to reset the caches:
    sudo drush vset preprocess_js 0 --yes
sudo drush vset preprocess_css 0 --yes
sudo drush vset cache 0 --yes

18. Now, you have to create a temporary directory:
    cd ~/Desktop/FarmHack/devweb
mkdir tmp
chmod 777 tmp

19. The last step is to login to the web site as the first user - also known as the admin user.
    drush uli

20. Finally, you should go to http://farmhack.sandbox, and you should be logged in as user1.

You can now work on the site without disturbing the production site at http://farmhack.org

Severine: I'm looking for additional information (date, location, ...) on Ag Kawamura at American Farmland Trust, and a website (if there is one). Thanks.

I was there too (Bruce Dawson), just having technical problems with my headset. Some comments on the above notes: 1. Have several "Like" buttons - "I Like The Tool", "I Use The Tool", "Would use, but...", "Have used, but..." 2. For tracking, are you looking for something more than content revisions? If so, can you describe what you are looking for? 3. "Forking" tools is a good idea, and could provide "breadcrumbs" back to the originator. 4. Scoring/rating tools and documentation is a good idea. Provide anonymous traceability would be nice too (so a developer could request an explanation from a rater). 5. Another goal could be to provide fodder for a periodic FarmHack event where selected tools are displayed and presented.

Do you have any hunters in the area? They can probably brief you on how to quickly kill a squirrel (I've just stepped on the head and pulled - but the definitions of "humane" differ depending on the jurisdiction). They may also be able to rid you of a few squirrels - they really just need pellet guns.