Run (& Develop) Geograph locally!

I’ve prepared a VMware virtual machine, that contains a ready to run instance of Geograph (British Isles). This was primarlly for my own purposes as my current working copy runs on windoz, so didn’t replicate fully the real enviroment. Now I can still run my IDE on windows, but have the code running in a almost totally faithful copy. 

The compressed image is available from:

Geograph Torrents Downloads (346.62 MB)

Requirements to run the image:

  • WMware workstation or WMare player
  • a 7z uncompression tool (apparently the best compression method for VM images)
  • At least 3GB diskspace (the image’s disk uncompressed needs 2GB – but could expand to 10GB)
  • web-browser (to actully view something) 
  • A smattering of linux know-how (to actully login and view the files – also to try changing things) 
  • To do anything useful, experience with PHP, mySQL and website development in general, is a big bonus

The image’s application database is empty – it contains no photos or other data from Geograph British Isles, other than the bare minimum to get running (but contains the non-copyrighted BI geodata for map plotting etc). If you want a developers dump to try loading some real data please get in touch with the team. 

Hopefully this should be a real quickstart way to get a local working copy running – ready setup with required software, cronjobs etc – ideal for:

  • Just finding out more about how the site works :)
  • Doing real development work – with the aim to contribute back (its ready setup for easy SVN commits) 
  • To customise the code for a new country! (we have plans to make this even easier)

(NB. only torrent download currently available – others probably available on request)

Enjoy!

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One Response to “Run (& Develop) Geograph locally!”

  1. Barry says:

    Forgot to mention – more detail available on the Geograph Forum.

    And a direct link to the README included in the file.