Newbie - web app deployment issues

[Paul Boddie]

Scrumpy <reply at in_newsgroup.tks> wrote in message news:<a8skcd$mr5$1 at hfc.pacific.net.hk>...
> Hi all,
> 
> Thanks for your feedback to my earlier post "Newbie's 1st Web App 
> decisions!"

It probably looks like I'm tracking down all your posts to this
newsgroup, but then it's a solid topic you're bringing up and I can't
resist responding. ;-)

> As a Python newbie who wants to try developing web apps, I want to avoid as 
> much as possible, the need to deploy to specialized hosting environments. 
> For example, out of the many hosting companys in the world, only a very 
> small percentage provide Zope hosting. I haven't confirmed this but there's 
> probably a premium to pay for Zope hosting (which may be warranted but it's 
> not something I want to pay for at this point in time).

I've seen http://www.freezope.org, but that seems really to be for
experimentation only. However, you could always choose a very-low-cost
Web host which only provides static Web pages and then link to dynamic
content on FreeZope or other such sites.

> Some web hosting companys are more accomodating than others i.e. after 
> evaluation, some may add customer requested/coded python modules, others 
> will refuse and others will not install Python at all.

Some hosting companies will let you install whatever programs you
like, provided that they don't run as long-running processes. The
positive aspect of this is that provided you know the architecture of
the server, you can attempt to obtain binaries for Python and other
programs from various sources [1]. The downside is that any
restrictions on long-running processes rules out a number of the Web
frameworks available for Python.

> At least in the near future, hosting my own internet site or having a whole 
> server rented/co-located at an ISP/hosting company is not an option so I 
> have to rely on what is provided by, or will be accepted by hosting 
> companys on their existing web servers.

Yes, for experimentation or for having a low cost personal site, many
hosting options are too expensive or seem unjustifiable to people like
me. ;-)

> How did you get your Python based web app hosted i.e. what 
> modules/components/frameworks did you use to run your app, which were 
> allowed by a 'non-specialized' web host i.e. a host that probably runs 
> Apache and has Python and a few modules preinstalled?

I've recently installed Python on a FreeBSD host, along with the
MySQLdb module, and it is my intention to install one of the "more
embedded" Web frameworks as well. I think I may use the jonpy package
(http://jonpy.sf.net), although Albatross also seems worth looking at.

> I would be 'most' interested to hear from people using the project(s) 
> listed below but I would also appreciate feedback if you have a good 
> solution which doesn't include them.
> 
> The web app servers/frameworks that I am looking into in more detail are:
> 
> Slither http://slither.toolsofcomputing.com/
> Webware for Python http://webware.sourceforge.net/
> Skunkweb http://skunkweb.sourceforge.net/about.html

Webware and SkunkWeb use long-running processes, although there is an
option with Webware to start and stop the application server for each
request; naturally, this is hardly recommendable. I still haven't
looked into Slither yet.

Paul

[1] mxCGIPython is a good start for those wanting a binary, but I then
discovered the FreeBSD "ports" system (see http://www.freebsd.org) and
it's possible to find lots of binaries for download in .tar.gz format,
including various Python extension modules (MySQLdb, for example) -
it's very convenient indeed!