Create a Rails 2.3.8 app in your WebFaction control panel:

Create your WebFaction account and a new Rails 2.3.8 app. If you require a MySQL or Postgres database, you can add it through the control panel, then update your app’s config/database.yml file with the production database details.

Get Git Going

• Go to the Git site and copy a link to the latest release, then log in to your WebFaction account using SSH and get it (adjust your actions according to the release): wget http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.7.1.1.tar.bz2
• Untar Git: tar -xvjf git-1.7.1.1.tar.bz2
• Change into the Git directory: cd git-1.7.1.1
• Configure it: ./configure --prefix=$HOME
• Make it and install it: make && make install
• Now test to make sure everything worked by getting the Git version: git version

• Now go to your home folder, and create a place for your repository on the server:

  cd mkdir git

• Everything going well so far? Great… next step

Copy Up Your App

• Start by creating a zip archive of your app on your local machine.
• Copy your app up to WebFaction: scp /path/to/myapp.zip username@domain:~/git/

• Go back to your WebFaction account and unzip the app

  cd git unzip myapp.zip cd myapp

Create The Git Repo

• Create a .gitignore file in your app root to make sure you don’t have any unwanted junk in there, mine looks like this:

  log/.log tmp// .DS_Store doc/api doc/app coverage db/.sqlite3 public/system// public/javascripts/cache//* public/stylesheets/cache//*

• Now initialize a new Git repository:

  git init git add . git commit -a -m “Initial commit.”

• I usually go into the Git repo and modify the .git/config file to avoid hassles:

  [core] repositoryformatversion = 0 filemode = true bare = true logallrefupdates = true

Bash Profile

Edit your .bashrc and .bash_profile located at /home/me/.bashrc and .bash_profile:

• .bashrc:

  .bashrc

  Source global definitions

  if [-f /etc/bashrc]; then . /etc/bashrc fi ME=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{myapp}/bin/ RAKE=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{myapp}/bin/rake GIT=/home/#{me}/git-1.7.1.1/ PATH=$ME:$RAKE:$PATH:$HOME/bin:$GIT export PATH export GEMPATH=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{myapp}/gems/bin export GEMHOME=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{myapp}/gems

• .bash_profile

  .bash_profile

  Get the aliases and functions

  if [-f ~/.bashrc]; then . ~/.bashrc fi

  User specific environment and startup programs

  ME=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{myapp}/bin/ GIT=/home/#{me}/git-1.7.1.1/ RAKE=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{myapp}/bin/rake PATH=$ME:$RAKE:$PATH:$HOME/bin:$GIT export PATH

  export GEMPATH=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{myapp}/gems/bin export GEMHOME=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{myapp}/gems

Update your nginx conf file, located at /home/me/webapps/myapp/nginx/conf/nginx.conf:

• First Update the app root:

  root /home/#{me}/webapps/#{my_app}/#{myapp}/current/public;

• Then you may want to add some Passenger settings to help keep your app alive and avoid long startup times: rails_appspawner_idletime 0; rails_frameworkspawner_idletime 0; passenger_poolidle_time 1000;

Clone and Deploy The Application

• Back on your local machine’s command line, clone your WebFaction Git repo, and Capify it:

  git clone me@domain:/home/me/git/myapp myapp cd /path/to/myapp capify .

• Create a Capistrano deploy recipe:

• Commit your Capistrano recipe:

  git add . git commit -a -m “Capified.” git push

• Deploy the app:

  cap deploy:setup cap deploy:update

Everything should be working, but don’t forget to install any required gems.

After you’ve deployed once, in future you can run cap deploy, and/or cap deploy:migrations when you’ve added migration files.

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