Take More Risks

The impossible has happened. I’ve finally moved permanently to developing websites on Ubuntu. For years I’ve been sceptical over using Linux as a development platform but now thanks to SSHFS,  GEDIT’s ability to double up as a capable Development IDE and Linux’s native SSH support, I’ve changed my mind.

SSHFS

SSHFS is a fantastic tool. It allows you to mount your remote server as part of your own local filesystem. In the screenshot below I have opened up the public_html folder for Take More Risks in a normal Explorer like window. This means that I can drag files over from my desktop into this folder and it’ll upload to that specific directory on my file system.

It doesn’t end here. I can open any file on my web server and it’ll open locally within the program associated with that file type. Need to edit the Wordpress wp-config.php file in a hurry?  Then simply double-click on the file and it’ll open automatically in your preferred application. You can now work on the file and any changes you make to it locally will be reflected remotely as well.

In the screenshot below wp-config.php is opened up with gedit which is one of Ubuntu’s default text editors which can double-up as an excellent code editor too. I’ve explained this in more depth below.

For easy access I’ve added in a shortcut on my Ubuntu taskbar that links to a script that mounts the root directory of my web server to the /server/ folder in my filesystem and then opens that folder up.

The script itself is quite simple. It checks to see if the server has been mounted to the local filesystem and if it hasn’t, it gets mounted, if not it does not. Then the folder is opened within nautilus file explorer.

#!/bin/bash
START=/server/
if [ $(ls -l $START | wc -l) = 1 ]; then
sshfs root@64.131.71.145:/ $START
fi
nautilus $START

GEdit

One of the main reasons why I never migrated to Linux for Web Development was that I could never find something that naturally replaced Dreamweaver.  Whilst many suggested that I should run Dreamweaver using the Windows Emulator (Wine), I couldn’t see the logic of this. Why not just stick with Windows and save myself a lot of hassle?

This all changed when I read this amazing article by Micah Carrick on how to customise gedit as a Web Development IDE.  It takes you step-by-step through everything you need to do to enable the functionality within gedit to make it a great IDE. Other developers like Adam Heckler and &PHP have managed to start using gedit with a deal of success too.

I’ll admit, it’s not perfect.  I miss the function name and parameters flashing up onscreen in Dreamweaver when I’ve started typing out the function reference. However this is my only real complaint, particularly since I no longer use Design View in WYSIWYG editors.  If you’re a web designer interested in moving to Ubuntu with a preference for WYSIWYG editors you should check out the related articles here,  here and here.

But yeah I think GEdit is a great IDE and I love the Oblivion skin!

Will It Last?

I’ve been developing in Ubuntu more and more over the last few months and since the discovery of SSHFS and GEdit a move back to Windows is almost inconceivable now. The final nail in the coffin was my discovery of Linux’s native support for SSH. In the past I’ve used PUTTY as my main SSH client on the Windows platform, so naturally when I first migrated to Linux I checked to see if there was a version for it.

After locating and installing PUTTY for Linux it took me another 2 months to realise that I could SSH into my server by typing ssh takemorerisks.com -l username.  Head meet hand.

It seems stupid now but it’s easy to miss these things when you’re relatively new to the platform.

Anyway at the minute I’m enjoying developing with Ubuntu. It’d be great to hear about your own experiences with development on the platform.