Update Instructions

For new installations, please follow the “Install and Upgrade Steps” section on the Installing DesktopServer page.

Change Log

This version (3.5.6) includes the following updates:

• New Support for BackUp WordPress .zip file format.
• New Support for BackWP Up .zip file format.
• Fixes delay with keyboard shortcuts (select-all, copy, cut, paste) on OS X.
• Fixes mis-interpreted domain name when export/copying WordPress Multisite.
• Fixes “UnsupportedFormatException – path…invalid” error on startup.
• Fixes DirectDeploy caching issue when doing back to back deploys.
• Fixes omitting .git and .svn folders on export and deployment.
• Fixes UTF8 issue on Duplicator file imports.
• Faster DirectDeploy omits redundant compression on compressed files.
• Increased DirectDeploy compatibility with memory meager hosts.

Update Instructions

Please follow the “Install and Upgrade Steps” section on the Installing DesktopServer page.

Change Log

This version (3.5.3) includes the following updates:

• Fixes “XAMPP domain error 1″ on some Macintosh systems with permissions issues.
• Fixes crashing on Duplicator imports with German character set in filenames.
• Fixes database failure importing BackupBuddy files when cart66 is present.
• Fixes memory leak on Windows resulting in crash during direct deploy.
• Optimizes file transfer compression when using direct deploy.
• Optimizes file transfer speed on both Mac and Windows.
• Scrubbing now includes wp-config.php and .htaccess (in addition to wp-content).

A new version of DesktopServer (version 3.5.2) is now available in our downloads section. This version includes a new features and an important critical update for Windows users to both our free DesktopServer Limited and DesktopServer Premium version.

Update Instructions

Due to installer object caching issues, please ensure that you do not have any older unzipped installer packages (zipped are fine) present on your system before running the installer application.

1. Download the ZIP archive for your specific platform (Windows or Macintosh) from our download page.
2. Unpack the ZIP archive (right-click, Extract All… on Windows) and run (right-click, Open) the Install DesktopServer icon (blue box with green arrow).
3. Select the default ‘Upgrade DesktopServer’ followed by the Continue button; DO NOT select “uninstall” (uninstall will delete your existing data).

After upgrade, you must start DesktopServer to turn on Apache and MySQL services.

Change Log

This version (3.5.2) includes the following updates:

• New direct deployment feature for hosts that support File System Direct.
• Critical fix for Windows for all scrubbing (copy, move, import/export).
• Fixes scrubbing anomaly when export baseDir is a descendant.
• Fixes export to an external drive on Windows systems.
• Scrubbing optimizations for increased accuracy.

1. Install WordPress on your destination server. 
2. Activate the DesktopServer for WordPress plugin.
3. Use DesktopServer’s “Direct deploy to an existing server” option.

Requirements

First, your host should naturally support WordPress. Also, your host must support File System Direct. File System Direct is a (PHP) feature that allows WordPress to write files to the local file system on the server. This is used primarily to update WordPress, install plugins, or install themes without having to provide FTP or SSH credentials. Files are written to the file system under the user account of the running web server. Some shared hosts do not support this because a misconfigured or web server running as “root” (which would allow writing files anywhere) could put a server at risk. Thankfully, most shared hosts today have properly configured servers that have separate isolated accounts for providing web services. Most cPanel enabled hosts such as Hostgator or Bluehost support File System Direct and work well with DesktopServer’s direct deploy feature.

Step 1 – Install WordPress

Some designers may wish to provide a preview of their website to a client before deploying to their main domain name.  If you don’t want a subdomain, just skip to the next paragraph to install WordPress. You can make a preview site by creating a subdomain which is the preferred method of doing a preview website. This is because WordPress uses “fully qualified URLs” instead of what traditional HTML websites may use: “relative URLs”. The former being more secure but more difficult to change. It is far easier to have your development website mirror your live website and switching domain names is a lot easier.  For this example, I’ll show you how to create a preview website on a hosting provider that supports subdomains so that we can make a http://testing.example.com without affecting the main http://www.example.com website. We’ll be using a cPanel powered hosting provider such as Hostgator or Bluehost which supports subdomains on all their hosting plans. Just go to your cPanel and look for the “Subdomains” icon. You can add a subdomain and give it a unique name, such as “testing” to end up with something like http://testing.my-domain.com. The subdomain will live in a separate folder that will house all of our website files.

Next, you will need to install WordPress on your hosting provider. Thankfully, most hosts provide an automated wizard to install WordPress or at the very least, provide free support to get WordPress up and running. This will provide a ‘blank canvas’ and will also validate your host as capable of running WordPress. You can think of it as formatting a disk before use. It’s okay if you already have a WordPress site with content at your destination, but please note that this process is destructive. You will overwrite any existing data at your destination site. Be sure to make a backup if you want to preserve any existing data on your live site. If you look at your hosting provider’s control panel, they may feature an icon for Fantastico or QuickInstall. The later is preferred as QuickInstall provides the latest version of WordPress. Simply select WordPress on the left hand side followed by the domain or subdomain where you want to install WordPress. Be sure to write down your admin username and password (we will need this for step 3).

Step 2 – Activate DesktopServer for WordPress

Login to the WordPress administration screen after installing WordPress on your live hosting provider’s server. We will need to install the DesktopServer for WordPress plugin that is freely available from the WordPress directory. From the administration menu, visit Plugins -> Add New, and type “DesktopServer” in the search form. Be sure to activate the DesktopServer for WordPress plugin after installation. The plugin will allow you to deploy your development website to the live server without having to go though an FTP or SSH client. This plugin will test to see if your hosting provider supports File System Direct and will automatically be removed after deployment. Click the screenshot to the left for a detailed view. If the WordPress installation on your live host is older than version 3.5 , you will need to turn on the XML-RPC via WordPress’ Settings -> Writing options page (see the section for “Remote Publishing”). XML-RPC is now a standard feature for all WordPress installations. See lower right side of WordPress’ dashboard to determine the WordPress version number.

Step 3 – Use Direct Deploy

You can use DesktopServer’s export feature to deploy your development site to your live host. Start DesktopServer and select the option to “Import, export or share a website”, followed by “Export or deploy a WordPress website”. Click next and you will be presented with a drop down combo box to select the development website you want to deploy. Be sure to type in the domain name (or preview subdomain name) you wish to deploy to (i.e. testing.postmy.info) in the “Export As” text box. Select the ”Direct deploy to an existing server” option and you will be prompted for your WordPress admin credentials. These will be the credentials of your destination server’s WordPress installation (see screenshot).

The next screen will provide you with three options: 1) Encourage search engine visibility (which you will want to turn OFF if you are creating a preview site to prevent contaminating your SEO results or leave checked ON for your real site), 2) Purge post and page revisions (the default is on to make deployments faster), and 3) Customize scrubbing options. Click next and DesktopServer will prepare your development website for deployment by performing a number of important tasks, such as:

• Replacing your development site .dev domain name with the real top level domain name in both your files and database.
• Copy only your site data to a temporary folder, purging unnecessary files that might pose a security risk (Netbeans and Dreamweaver notes and project files).
• Remove any bulky hidden folders such as .git/.svn source code repositories (this is done on the copy, not your actual development folder).
• Compress files and split large files (such as video) for faster upload and processing on your hosting provider.

The Complicated Issue

You can already access your DesktopServer websites (on your computer) via the fictitious ”.dev” domain names you create for each of your website projects (i.e. http://www.example.dev). However, how do you access the site from a mobile device on your LAN (local area network)? The .dev domain names won’t work as they are not real and no one knows about them except the computer running DesktopServer.  But what about your mobile device that is not running DesktopServer? It turns out that every device on your LAN (or WiFi network) uses an IP address, an enumerated number that can be used to access the device. You can use this number to access DesktopServer from your mobile device (if you knew the numerical address). Unfortunately this address may vary depending on the number of network devices you have, your router manufacturer or ISP provided hardware. It gets even more complicated as unlike traditional HTML based websites that may use relative URLs, WordPress uses fully qualified URLs to reference the various components that make up a given site. While fully qualified URLs have security benefits, it inhibits the ability to easily change them (which we will need to do to access your website from a mobile device using the numerical address i.e. http://192.168.0.88).

The Solution

DesktopServer provides an easy way to resolve this issue by finding out the IP address of your computer for you. DesktopServer also adjusts WordPress’ fully qualified URL requirements so that you can properly access your site from your mobile device. DesktopServer will handle address translation in realtime to allow for office workgroups. For instance, you can have a co-worker access your development website’s WordPress admin pages from another computer to upload and update media, posts, and pages to accelerate your website development needs. DesktopServer will automatically handle remapping of the IP address back to the project domain name in the database to make sure everything stays tidy. An important provision is that just one development website can be accessed or “shared” via the IP address at a time (which also excludes sub-domains in WordPress Multisite mode). Because DesktopServer only takes a few seconds to switch between sites to share, you can test all your projects conveniently and in a timely manner. Follow the stapes below to get started using DesktopServer’s sharing feature and to see what your development website looks like on your mobile device (such as an iPhone, iPad or Android device).

First, from DesktopServer’s main menu of options, select the last item titled “Import, export or share a website”, followed by the option “Share a development website”.

You will then be presented with a list of your development websites.

1. Highlight the development website that you want to share and access from another computer or mobile device.
2. Click the option ‘Local Area Network’, followed by clicking next. DesktopServer will then initialize sharing.

Lastly, you will be shown a hyper link with the share URL using the local area network IP Address. Type this URL on your mobile device’s browser or from another computer to access the shared site. Be sure to turn off or update your firewall’s rules (on the computer running DesktopServer) to allow you to serve your web pages outside of your computer. Likewise, be sure that your mobile device or other computers are on the same LAN and/or WiFi network. You should now be able to view your site on your mobile device for testing. This feature is only available to DesktopServer Premium users. Please post questions for support in the Premium forum at http://serverpress.com/forum/premium-support/desktopserver-support/.

A new version of DesktopServer (version 3.5.1) is now available in our downloads section. This version includes important updates and critical fixes to both our free DesktopServer Limited and DesktopServer Premium version.

Update Instructions

Due to installer object caching issues, please ensure that you do not have any older unzipped installer packages (zipped are fine) present on your system before running the installer application.

1. Download the ZIP archive for your specific platform (Windows or Macintosh) from our download page.
2. Unpack the ZIP archive (right-click, Extract All… on Windows) and run (right-click, Open) the Install DesktopServer icon (blue box with green arrow).
3. Select the default ‘Upgrade DesktopServer’ followed by the Continue button; DO NOT select “uninstall” (uninstall will delete your existing data).

After upgrade, you must start DesktopServer to turn on Apache and MySQL services.

Change Log

This version (3.5.1) includes the following updates:

• New QuickDeploy script updated for MySQL import format.
• New installer version 1.4.0 fixes missing htdocs issue.
• New updated phpMyAdmin version 3.5.7.
• Fixes error where webOwner attempts to start as root.
• Fixes non-WordPress blueprint Nil Object exception.
• Fixes ownership issues on external drives (OS X).
• Fixes owner/group issues on wp-config.php file.
• Fixes missing QuickDeploy script.

Known Issues

Exporting to an external or secondary drive on Windows based system fails. This will be addressed in the next release.

1. Ensure your target compatible host server has a working WordPress installation (to be overwritten).
2. Install the “DesktopServer for WordPress” plugin on your target live host’s WordPress instance.
3. Export your localhost development website to a compatible .zip archive for deployment.

Step 1 – WordPress on Your Target Server

To get started deploying to your live hosting provider, you should first ensure that you have a working version of WordPress installed on your target server. Any version greater or equal to WordPress version 2.8 will do. This will validate your host as being WordPress compatible and make it easier to gather the required information for a successful deployment package that is compatible with your host server. The WordPress installation can be from a prior loaded website (to be overwritten with your new deployment) or an empty default installation. Most WordPress compatible hosting providers have an automated “WordPress install” feature on their control panels (should you not have WordPress already installed). For instance, QuickInstall, Fantastico, SimpleScripts, or Site Software just to name a few. Alternatively, many hosts provide free installation of WordPress (contact your hosting provider for details). Please ensure that you have WordPress pre-installed at the destination you wish when users type the domain name to visit your site.

Step 2 – Install the “DesktopServer for WordPress” Plugin

Gathering your target server’s details is automated by installing the “DesktopServer for WordPress” plugin. At the time of this writing, the “DesktopServer for WordPress” plugin is being evaluated for availability in the official WordPress Plugin Directory. However, you can install this plugin manually via our downloads page at http://serverpress.com/downloads/ (scroll towards the bottom). Simply download the zip archive to your computer. Mountain Lion users may need to re-zip the folder as OS X is known to automatically unzip on download by default. Next, login to your live server’s WordPress installation and visit the admin section menu; click Plugins -> Add New -> Upload to select the “DesktopServer for WordPress” zip file you downloaded from our site. Be sure to activate the plugin after installation.

Step 3 – Export Your Development Website for Deployment

Lastly, use DesktopServer’s export feature to prepare your development website archive for use on your live host’s server. Start by selecting the “Export, import or share a website” option and click next, followed by the “Export a WordPress website archive” option. On the next screen, select your development website from the drop down combo box and then type the domain name of the live server where you want to deploy to in the “Export As” text box. The “Export As” text box value should be equal to the domain name your visitors can type to visit your site in step one (and where your pre-existing WordPress installation resides). The next screen will present you with a number of fields for filling in information that is specific to your hosting provider. It is important that you fill out this information correctly. To make things easier, the prior steps one and two (above) will allow you to use the “Fetch live hosting server details” checkbox. Click the checkbox and this feature will attempt to contact the live host where you have WordPress pre-installed with the “DesktopServer for WordPress plugin” activated. You will be prompted for the administrator password of your WordPress website (see screenshot). The credentials are your administrator username and password you use to login to WordPress on the target live host server. DesktopServer will retrieve your hosting provider details and automatically fill in the fields for you. Click next and you can select an output folder for your zip file and/or click next one last time to have DesktopServer produce the zip file. You can use this zip file to deploy to your live host using one of the compatible methods below:

• Use Quick Deploy on Live Server – You may skip the instructions in step 1 as the process above replaces this.
• Deploying You Website Using cPanel – You may skip step 2 as the process above replaces this.
• Requesting Assisted Deployment – We can help you deploy on your hosting provider server.

A new version of DesktopServer (version 3.5.0) is now available in our downloads section. This version includes important updates and new functionality to both our free DesktopServer Limited and DesktopServer Premium version. Updates to documentation to follow.

Update Instructions

1. Download the ZIP archive for your specific platform (Windows or Macintosh) from our download page.
2. Unpack the ZIP archive (right-click, Extract All… on Windows) and run (right-click, Open) the Install DesktopServer icon.
3. Select the default ‘Upgrade DesktopServer’ followed by the Continue button; DO NOT select “uninstall” (uninstall will delete your existing data).

After upgrade, you must start DesktopServer to turn on Apache and MySQL services.

Change Log

This version (3.5.0) includes the following updates:

• New native import/export engine is many times faster than previous & competing scripted (PHP) solutions.
• New “Customize scrubbing options” screen provides simplified and more powerful data translations.
• New import support for .zip files containing full backups made with InfiniteWP and ManageWP.
• New private localhost page for version info, phpMyAdmin and development websites links.
• New sharing support for external Internet IP address (with IP address auto-discovery).
• New support for .zip files in Blueprints folder for easier WordPress core updates.
• New support for pre-configured database content in Blueprints folder.
• New move feature with support for secondary and external hard disks.
• New longer, enhanced, authentication keys and salts generation.
• Now includes WordPress 3.5.1 core files in blueprints folder.
• Fixes for updated Coda 2 + Diet Coda AirPreview; restores broken previewing functionality.
• Fixes “MySQL Server has gone away” error on Windows systems with limited memory.
• Fixes import and export “no primary key” error with third party plugins and themes.
• Fixes “Not Responding” CPU hogging on Windows systems with limited resources.
• Fixes acquiring wrong LAN IP address when sharing on certain Windows systems.
• Fix, media/content editing on shares updates guid, correcting domain name.
• Fix, auto-heals corrupted serialized and “double serialized” PHP objects.
• Fix, now remembers file browsing path when using a native open dialog.
• Fix, now supports server root path migration in proprietary locations.
• Fix, increased MySQL max data packet size for more stable imports.
• Fix, native file I/O threads now optimized for Mac and Windows.
• Fix, missing apache/logs folder on certain Windows systems.
• Fix, localhost security error on Macintosh systems.
• Fix, main window on Mac can now be minimized.

Known Issues

Here is the list of current known issues (which will be fixed in the next released):

• The original quick-deploy.php script is missing from the installation. You can download it here: http://serverpress.com/solutions/quick-deploy.zip
• Selecting a blank non-WordPress website causes a Nil Object exception. You can work around this by creating a regular WordPress site and deleting the files prior to installation.

Getting Started

If you haven’t already installed PhpStorm, you can find a free, fully functional 30 day trial for either Macintosh or Windows from their website at http://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/. The installer is typical and straight forward. Simply install using the defaults. To work with DesktopServer, make sure you have checked the ‘Enable debug services’ check box in DesktopServer. You can find this setting in DesktopServer’s first main menu option ‘Stop or restart…’. Be sure to select the ‘Restart’ option followed by clicking the ‘Next’ button.

Create New Project from Existing Files

If you haven’t already created a DesktopServer website, take a moment to try the simple www.example.dev website as outlined in “Getting Started with DesktopServer”, steps 1 to 10. Adding your existing website to PhpStorm requires a few extra steps. From PhpStorm’s main dialog, select the option to “Create New Project from Existing Files”.

DesktopServer will personalize your website project with its own isolated, unique domain name in addition to its own document root. Therefore, when PhpStorm prompts you to “Choose Your Scenario”, simply select the first option titled, “Web server is installed locally, source files are located under its document root”.

PhpStorm will then prompt you to “Choose Project Directory”. This will be your website’s site root folder. By default, DesktopServer creates your site root as a folder with the same name as your website’s domain name and as a sub-folder at ./Documents/Websites. Select the folder and click the “Next” button to continue. For our www.example.dev website, we’ve selected the ./Documents/Websites/www.example.dev folder.

Next, PhpStorm will ask you to “Add Local Server”. You will want to fill out the name field (we use the website’s domain), i.e. www.example.dev. Then fill out the personalized “Web server root URL” field as it was created in DesktopServer, i.e. http://www.example.dev. Note that DesktopServer distinguishes between a www and no-www websites. Make sure that the URL matches that domain name you created in DesktopServer. Click the “Next” button to continue.

Important! PhpStorm will prompt you to “Specify a Web Path”. Leave this field blank, but be sure to click the checkbox option to “Review PHP Settings”. This is important as we’ll need to modify include paths to allow DesktopServer to work with PhpStorm correctly. Currently, DesktopServer does not support PHPUnit. We will update PEAR and provide PHPUnit support in a subsequent version. For now, simply click the “Next” button to review and modify the PHP configuration to work with DesktopServer and your WordPress development website.

Very Important!  At this point, PhpStorm should display PHP configuration information. Be sure to modify the include path(s) to match your platform. See the screenshot to the right for your system.

If you are on Windows, remove the ‘PEAR’ part and make sure that the include path c:\xampplite\php is present. If you are on Macintosh, remove the /lib/php/pear and ensure that the path to /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/etc is present.

DesktopServer is designed with specifications that matches most modern hosting providers to make deploying your WordPress website less complicated. WordPress requires a minimum of PHP 5.2.4, but most hosts use PHP 5.3.  Be sure to set PhpStorm’s language level to 5.3 as its default is 5.4. Use Ctrl+Alt+S on Windows or Command+, on Macintosh to bring up the PhpStorm Settings panel and select “PHP” in the settings list. Use the drop down combo box for “PHP language level” to set the value to 5.3.

Debugging WordPress in PhpStorm

PhpStorm’s web debugging is a bit awkward [for the first time]… Despite this clumsy process, the user interface for debugging is significantly faster than Netbeans and well worth the initial burden.

Starting PhpStorm’s web debugging is a bit awkward and somewhat cumbersome when you use it for the first time in a given project. It departs from traditional IDEs that feature start and stop buttons that automatically open your web browser to kick off a debug process. While PhpStorm has a start (green ‘play’ icon) button for console and linear web applications, it is awkward when using XDebug and WordPress; especially when dealing with permalink structures. Instead, you can ignore those buttons and click the “Start Listen PHP Debug Connections” button on the toolbar (that looks like an old telephone handset) followed by opening your web browser and entering a special URL argument (which you can later bookmark). But before you can use debugging for the first time, you will need to let the file indexing process complete. Like Netbeans and other modern IDEs, PhpStorm pre-indexes your project files for faster editing and search functionality. You will also have to answer a security dialog with an ‘Accept’ button to authorize the XDebug connection. Thankfully, initial indexing is a one time process required before the debug button is enabled on the toolbar. The ‘Accept’ debug authorization dialog is also remembered for your convenience. When you first create your project from existing source files, PhpStorm will automatically start indexing all of your files.  If indexing doesn’t start automatically (and it failed for me on both Mac and Windows on more then one occasion), you’ll simply need to close PhpStorm and re-open your project. Despite this clumsy process, the user interface for debugging is significantly faster than Netbeans and well worth the minor, initial burden.

The “Start Listen PHP Debug Connections” button will have a little telephone headset icon that should turn from red to green when clicked and enabled. You can then open one of your source code files that you would like to begin debugging or editing. In our example below, I have opened the index.php file from WordPress’ default twentyeleven theme and placed a breakpoint on the source code line “get_header();”. To kick off the debug process, simply open your favorite web browser and enter the URL of your development website followed by the debug parameter “XDEBUG_SESSION_START”. For instance, to start debugging our example website’s home page, type http://www.example.dev/?XDEBUG_SESSION_START on the URL address bar and press enter.

Last Notes

Regardless of the initial less than intuitive web debugging process, PhpStorm appears to match NetBeans in several key debug features and goes beyond with a more responsive and snappy feel. Performance is definitely kicked up a notch and key features like floating variable hints “just work”. This useful and touted NetBeans feature has never worked right in Netbeans and is currently broken in version 7. But it works really well in PhpStorm. In addition, the variable watch window and inspectors appear to be more consistent while stepping through code and refreshes are considerably faster than Netbeans. PhpStorm appears to also match Netbeans on a feature by feature basis with almost identical popup context menus for code navigation abilities like “Find Declaration”,  ”Find Usages”, and included built-in difference tools. In fact, checking out the overview of features in the my “Using Netbeans for WordPress…” post easily matches PhpStorm in almost every aspect, but with the polish you’d expect from a paid commercial product. Give it try; it might just be the productivity boost you’ve been looking for in a dedicated PHP editor.

Watch the video below to follow along and learn how to get started with WordPress, Coda 2, and Diet Coda using DesktopServer.