Hello,
I'm asked to prepare a "snapshot" of one client's existing site that is based on Zenphoto. Those snapshots
have to be put onto CDROMs (or DVDs or usb keys, it's to be decided) so that web server and XXX
start directly off that cheap media. Webserver with Zenphoto and DB server have to start off CD(DVD)
automatically once CDROM is inserted into computer on Windows and MacOS X.
It seems that this special web server can be used for such task:
http://www.stunnix.com/prod/aws/overviews.shtml
Have anybody done something like that with Zenphoto and CDROMs?

There are several discreet problems here:

1. Getting Zenphoto, MySQL, and the webserver to be host agnostic. Most likely solvable by using localhost instead of actual hostnames.

I'd tackle this first.

Make a single zip file, bring it onto another machine, unzip, start database, start webserver, and see if everything resolves.

2. Figure out how to get MySQL etc. working from remote media. You may get lucky and it just works out of the box.

3. Figure out if you NEED to do both Windows and Mac, and how you'd organize those two different distributions on your CD.

If it were me, I'd push back on this project, and ask what your client is really trying to achieve. Is it to display a functioning website? Why can't the prospective viewer go to a live site, or perhaps a demo site?

Or, how about creating static html files, bundling that up, and having someone open those in a web browser? I'm not sure how that would work with ZP, but there must be tools out there that can convert dynamically generated pages into a static snapshot.

The problem you've been given is a rather complex engineering effort, so it's worthwhile having another conversation with your client.

There's a FAQ at the XAMPP site to put it on a USB stick. I can't find it right now. Portable Apps is dedicated to running stuff from a stick:
http://portableapps.com/apps/development/xampp

I guess it gets way harder to put it on a static media like cd-r.

Hi,

Quote:There's a FAQ at the XAMPP site to put it on a USB stick. I can't find it right now. Portable Apps is dedicated to running stuff from a stick:
http://portableapps.com/apps/development/xampp

I guess it gets way harder to put it on a static media like cd-r.
XAMPP seems to be Windows-only or doesn't support MacOS properly..

I've tried a trial of that web server running from cd and it worked, so I'll try to move with that product for now. It uses localhost for host name of course (more precisely, 127.0.0.1).

Running static html is not an option..MSIE doesn't allow JavaScript to be run from local sites (not served by HTTP) by default, but we need JavaScript to work in that snapshot. So running web server from cd is the only option for us..

There is a equivalent for Mac OS X called MAMP: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16197