One of the very common requests that I see on phpBB.com is ideas on how to work offline. If you have limited server resources (perhaps you only get one database, or your hosting package does not allow for sub-domains) then it’s really better to have an offline version of your board to use for testing out MODs.

I’ve seen several folks suggest getting a windows package that includes all of the software that you need to run phpBB. Specifically, a web server, php interpreter, and database. The most common is EasyPHP or something like that. I’m too lazy to dig up a link but you can probably google it yourself.

Until recently I have done my development work on a home server (a Pentium II 400MHz) that was recently retired. Yes, you can run linux – effectively – on that hardware. I selected a lesser-known distribution from Mandriva (formerly Mandrake). SUSE and Red Hat are both more popular, but I found that Mandriva blows away Red Hat from a performance standpoint because of the way it is compiled. I realize that you can recompile your own kernel, but why bother when I can simply download and run something that’s already optimized.

Last year I finally retired the old computer, and replaced it with an inexpensive Dell server. You can order Dell hardware without an operating system, which is nice. I ordered it without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor, no sound card, no frills. Just a nice fast CPU, nice fast disk, and plenty of RAM. I’ve installed Mandriva Linux along with php, MySQL, and Apache. One easy offline development environment.

With a bit of apache httpd.conf tweaking I can run multiple web sites off of the server, allowing me to run alpha versions of all of the various web sites that I work on. It’s a really nice way to work, in my opinion. I get the added benefit in that this server is also responsible for connecting to my main server on a nightly basis and downloading my backup files.

As I type this I am downloading a virtual machine image for SUSE. I intend to run it via virtual machine software provided by VMWare. All of this is free software, you just need the resources to run it. Why? Because as nice as it is to have a server at the house for working on, it’s not portable. With a virtual machine I can boot up my laptop anywhere and be ready to go.

I’ll report how that is working out in a later post.