Setting Up a Local Web Development Environment

LDSTech Contribute Self Support Forum Wiki Jira Projects

Written by Tom Johnson

Thursday, 21 June 2012

If you're working as a developer on a community project, such as the LDSTech community project, you will most likely need to set up a local web development environment on your computer. Setting up a local web development environment allows you to create and modify web applications on your own computer rather than uploading the application files to a server to run the files.

To set up a local web development environment, you will need to download and set up a web server, such as Uniform Server, on your local machine. Uniform Server (similar to WampServer or XAMPP) simulates a web server on your machine with the LAMP Stack resources (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), which are essential for working with LDSTech Swarm, Joomla, Mediawiki and other applications.

In addition to a web server, there are a few other programs you'll need to work with application files. One is Notepad++, a text editor that lets you write and edit various types of code, including PHP. You will also need to install TortoiseSVN, a subversion client that helps you manage versions of source code.

For step-by-step details on setting up these resources, see this new article on the wiki: Setting up a local web development environment.

Comments

# Curtis Gibby 2012-06-29 08:24

I used to use Notepad++, and I still think that it's way better than the stock Notepad program, but now I use and recommend Sublime Text 2. It has better auto-complete features and an active plugin community.

www.sublimetext.com/2

Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

# Markh 2012-07-03 22:56

SciTE is my text editor of choice for programming. It's small and light-weight (and has a small learning curve to customize), but still integrates a command prompt for compiling, running and such and has lots of features. It is highly customizable. Really, it's not ideal, but it's functional in a lot of cool ways. You're not going to like it right off if you prefer Eclipse to text editors, though, and it may not be the best tool for HTML.

Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

# Jeff Harmon 2012-06-29 09:21

Why not recommend Eclipse, because it is so much bigger than Notepad++? Maybe not as much java development being done with this stuff, and a bit of a learning curve I guess. I'll continue to use it.

Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

# James Carbine 2012-07-03 12:15

I use Sublime Text 2 as well. Amazing text editor. I used to use Textmate but switched to Sublime and love it. Both can open up a project directory so you can easily open up other files with the click of a button.

I've never cared for Eclipse...

Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

# Tom Johnson 2012-07-03 12:20

James, Curtis, and Jeff, thanks for sharing the text editors that you like. There are a lot of options out there -- it's helpful to have feedback about what works best.

Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

# Steve Gallafent 2012-07-09 09:52

There are several different options for text editors. We used Notepad++ in this example because it's fairly straightforward to use and the price is right. I'm a firm believer in using an IDE that helps you write better code. I know several people that use Sublime Text and Eclipse. I personally use PHPStorm.

This tutorial was targeted to a developer who is new to web development but perhaps transitioning from desktop development and needs to get a development environment set up. A developer like that often isn't going to have the experience to make use of the advanced features of an IDE and will want to select an IDE as his/her skills grow.

Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

# Diego Bastidas 2012-07-03 12:48

I am web developer in html css, javascript , php ( dreamweaver )and nextly .net , i know feww tipes of java. I am married, i have a daughter,I am from of ecuador and i dont know , if the Church service missionary oportunities with lds tech is for single persons or not?
My name is Diego Bastidas, I am 28 years old. I am a Systems Engineering
Thank you for your attention.
I speak english and write 80 %, code in english no problem
e mail . bastidas_diego@ ymail.com

Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

# David Michael Sierakowski 2012-07-09 12:15

Brother Bastidas,

There is a growing effort to create technical church-service missions within the Church. One location is the LDSTech Mission wiki page located here tech.lds.org/.../...
Please also feel free to call or email the LDSTech mission at ldstech-mission@ldschur ch.org. You can also email me at sierakowski@lds church.org.

Kind Blessings,

Elder Sierakowski

Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

# Vernon Cole 2012-07-03 18:02

My grandson has Aspergers Syndrome, and will probably not be able to serve a proselyting mission. A church service mission in technology is a real possibility, though. He is 15 now, and in four years could be a good technician. But I can predict a problem... I was planning to teach him Python, Django, and Bazaar. Using those for four years and then switching to PHP and SVN would be a frustrating experience -- like riding a 10-speed bike at home and one speed in the mission field. Any chance that within four years the church will adopt technology from the present millenium? In particular, for a distributed programming project, why are you NOT using a distributed version control system? The limitations and problems of SVN are well known, and there are three excellent DVCS products to choose from. Open source projects all over the world are switching their old source trees to hg, bzr, and git. SVN?? Really???
Why not start out using the good stuff?

Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

# Tom Johnson 2012-07-09 10:09

Vernon, thanks for your feedback on this. There are several different technologies in use at the Church (Java, .NET, and others) and this article was geared to a specific development environment. However, I forwarded your feedback to the development team for consideration. I know Git is on the horizon to implement at some point. PHP is a fairly common programming language, so it would be good to know it. In reality, technology changes constantly. It's a good idea to learn multiple systems.

Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

# James Carbine 2012-07-05 10:38

Vernon, I thought the same thing when I read that they use SVN. SVN is okay for small projects I suppose, but GIT is soooo much better. I originally learned SVN and when I learned GIT I wondered why it took me so long to try it out. haha. If I can help it, I won't go back to SVN. :]

However, at least they have a version control system. Some places don't and I just think that is plain stupid. An accidental rm -rf could wreak havoc upon your project and possibly shut it down.

Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

# Tom Johnson 2012-07-09 09:42

James, we're working on implementing Git but haven't finished that integration yet. We've found that community help is most valuable in testing rather than development, so we've focused our efforts in creating crowdsource testing tools rather than facilitating dev integration. However, we plan to accommodate both. The iPhone teams are using Git and Gerrit.

Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

# James Carbine 2012-07-10 06:00

Tom, that is good to hear about implementing git. :] It is also good to hear you are focusing on testing tools. Testing is so valuable yet a lot of project managers don't seem to want to spend the time and money on writing test cases. Good on ya!

I am a Ruby on Rails developer. So I am biased towards Rails over PHP or even Python with Djando.

One thing is for sure, learn HTML5. Awesome stuff.

Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

Refresh comments list
RSS feed for comments to this post