[mapserver-users] RE: mapserver-users Digest, Vol 29, Issue 39

[Paul Sorey]

Mark,

I signed up for a VPS at slicehost -- the smallest slice has been fine 
so far.

I set up Debian Lenny Linux with Apache webserver with the aid of 
slicehost articles found here:

http://wiki.slicehost.com/doku.php
http://articles.slicehost.com/sitemap

Ubuntu would also be a good choice for OS, I think.

I used the debian distro of mapserver described here:
http://packages.debian.org/source/lenny/mapserver.  It's not the latest 
version (5.0.3) but works for me.  One day I'll get around to compiling 
the latest distro for Debian.

I'm using QuantumGIS on my PC to piece together the maps from GIS files, 
and exporting them via the mapfile exporter in QGIS.  I wrote a ruby 
script to tweak the exported mapfile from QGIS to something usable for 
my mapserver implementation.

The steepest learning curves were understanding the mapfile, template 
files, and mapscript. You will have to read through a lot of the 
documentation at:  http://mapserver.org/documentation.html.  You may not 
need to use mapscript, but I have found it useful.   I'm using the Ruby 
implementation of mapscript SWIG.  There's adequate documentation at the 
mapserver.org website and on the web in general for all but the Ruby 
implementation details, for which I had to dig into the source code.  
There's more documentation on the PHP implementation, but I'm using Ruby 
on Rails to manage everything on my site, so therefore chose the Ruby 
implementation.

I also don't have much experience with CGI so I had to spend some time 
on that too.

I'm using OpenLayers javascript as the user interface for mapserver.  It 
took me a few days to get it working right.  You have to set up your 
mapfiles to enable WMS, and set up the OpenLayers code just right to 
display them.

The whole process took me several weeks of trial-and-error and study; 
now, of course, it seems easy!


Paul Sorey
Web Applications Consultant
Landscape Architect
Public Artist
http://paulsorey.com
206 948 7285










On 6/24/2010 12:22 PM, Mark Volz wrote:
> Paul,
>
> We had discussed using a Virtual Host for hosting mapserver for a client.
> What are the resources that you are referring to in your message?
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Mark Volz
> GIS Specialist
> Lyon County, MN
> 507-532-8218
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:55:18 -0700
> From: Paul Sorey<psorey at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: [mapserver-users] Adding an online map to wordpress
> To: mapserver-users at lists.osgeo.org
> Message-ID:<4C224A86.1080104 at comcast.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Andrew,
>
> I did something similar and had to set up a VPS, virtual private server,
> on Slicehost.com.  Shared hosting like GoDaddy will not allow you to put
> mapserver software on their server.
>
> I can point you to the resources I used if that will help.
>
> Paul Sorey
>
>