The easiest possible development server for Joomla

How do you develop websites? Do you have a server at home running on an old PC? Do you use a LAMP stack on you PC/Mac? Or do you use a site hosted on a webhotel somewhere?

I have been using a little bit of everything during the last few years. And the way that work best for me during the first phases of the work is to have a separate server in the house. Especially since the internet lines here are sloooow.

A server could of course be anything - Windows, Mac or Linux. But I would like it to be efficient on semi-old hardware and to be as close as possible to a real webhotel. So I have landed on Ubuntu Server.

For a while I ran it with no kind of graphical interface. Only commandline. And sure, I learned a lot. And forgot a lot as well (I am not THAT young anymore - hehe). And as I do not have any desire to spend my whole day looking up codes to type on a commandline, I started to look for solutions.

There are several interfaces and solutions that could be used. But almost none of them work the way they should. There is always something that needs to be fixed or will not work at all. What I ended up with is eBox - http://www.ebox-platform.com/ .

While not perfect, it still is made specifically for Ubuntu Server. It is open source, and they have a bunch of very helpful developers that actually spend time in the forum trying to help people! So I installed it and started to get to know it.

They position themselves as a small business server. Not a development server for web, or anything else that run on LAMP. But here is what could be done:

eBox is totally open for development from others.
It has a system for modules. Anyone can make a module (if you know programming).
Some parts of the LAMP stack is in there.
It misses suphp as standard.

Here is what could be done:

If you know a bit of programming and would like to take a look at what is required, here are a couple of links:

http://trac.ebox-platform.com/wiki/Contribute
http://trac.ebox-platform.com/wiki/Document/Development

The programming language as far as I know is Perl.

What would be ideal:

- Get modules made for the rest of the LAMP stack.
- get suphp in as standard or have a separate module to install it and completely configure the server
- Add a couple of options to the ftp module so it is possible for a user/group to upload files to the /var/www directory
- Add a one-click install module for Joomla (just specify the new subdir under /var/www to work on a new site)

This should make a server that can be downloaded and installed from a CD on an old P3 or P4 with a minimum of 512 MB RAM (or even less) and you will have a good server to develop on.

Yes - it will have a GUI, but it will also allow you to "get under the hood" to explore a bit more the environment your website will most likely be running in when uploaded to the final destination. And it should make even people that do not run servers for a living capable of getting a nice development server up. That can also serve as a normal fileserver, printserver and a few more things :-)

I do not know how long time it would take for a talented Perl programmer to make this. But I think it would be a great effort for the whole community.

There is another aspect of it as well - I think one of the ways of bringing Joomla forward is to go for schools and training. This will be an EXCELLENT tool in a training situation where you just need to get a clean server up and running fast with a few Joomla sites installed for people to play around with. Then just wipe it and do it over again next week if you have to (just to be safe ;-) )

BTW - I do not work for eBox, but I do help out in their forum by shuffling posts around to the right area etc. My little way of contributing there.