Cakephp installation and root directory - cakephp

Question

I am working through the cakephp installation for production use and I have a problem. I use hostmonster, so this is a shared server using a LAMP stack. The documentation asks you to change the Root Directory as shown:
DocumentRoot /cake_install/app/webroot
To do this, I added the following statements to my .htaccess file:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/public/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /cake_install/app/webroot/$1 [L,R=301]
This resulted in the error below:
Error: The view for AppController::webroot() was not found.
When I navigate to www.example.com I am taken to the proper address, but there are errors. These errors disappear if I add an index.php to either the address or obviously to the rewrite rule.
So, what am I doing wrong here? Is the documentation incorrect in that the rewrite rule should have the additional index.php, should be address work without it, or is there something wrong somewhere else?
Update: The second part of the errors says:
Error: Confirm you have created the file: /home2/cadwolfc/public_html/cake_install/app/View/App/webroot.ctp
The version of cake that I downloaded did not have anything the /app/View folder. When I created the /App/webroot.ctp file it got rid of the errors, but it overrides all other view calls.

Answer 1

If your hosting provider has not enabled mod_rewrite. Then you would need to delete the .htaccess files
/.htaccess
/app/.htaccess
/app/webroot/.htaccess
If I am wrong and there is nothing wrong with mod_rewrite then you should edit your htaccess file and do something like
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ webroot/ [L]
RewriteRule (.*) webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

Answer 2

My guess is this is what you're looking for: HostMonster - How to host the Primary Domain from a subfolder (.htaccess)

Answer 3

On most shared hosts, you can't change the document root. Since hostmonster has mod_rewrite there are no special steps for installing cake on hostmonster. There are several ways to install cake - all of them are valid on hostmonster.
Use a development install
The simplest way to set up an application is to use a development install i.e. so the following folder structure exists:
/home2/cadwolfc/public_html/app
/home2/cadwolfc/public_html/lib
/home2/cadwolfc/public_html/plugins
/home2/cadwolfc/public_html/vendors
/home2/cadwolfc/public_html/.htaccess
/home2/cadwolfc/public_html/index.php
Don't edit any of the .htaccess files unless a specific problem is encountered, or a specific requirement needs to be met. This can be achieved very easily with the following commands or equivalent:
cd /home2/cadwolfc
mv public_html old_public
git clone https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp.git public_html
Or symlink the document root
Alternatively put your files anywhere on the server, and just symlink the webroot:
/home2/cadwolfc/anywhere/app
/home2/cadwolfc/anywhere/lib
/home2/cadwolfc/anywhere/plugins
/home2/cadwolfc/anywhere/vendors
/home2/cadwolfc/anywhere/.htaccess
/home2/cadwolfc/anywhere/index.php
/home2/cadwolfc/public_html -> ../anywhere/app/webroot
In this way only the webroot is public and only the webroot .htaccess file is relevant.
Or copy/move the webroot
Alternatively put your files anywhere but move the webroot to the document root. Then update the root constant to point at where the source files are:
// app/webroot/index.php
/**
* The full path to the directory which holds "app", WITHOUT a trailing DS.
*
*/
if (!defined('ROOT')) {
define('ROOT', '/home2/cadwolfc/overhere';
}
What does cake_install mean?
In Cake's documentation, cake_install is explained as follows:
For the purposes of this example, we assume you chose to install CakePHP into /cake_install.
It's just an example. However, it's an example used in the "production install" section, a production install doesn't have all or the application files inside the document root. Setting up a "production install" with the source files inside the document root is not a production install, it's a custom development install (bringing with it custom problems).
Therefore the logical choice is (both of which are usable/secure with mod_rewrite):
Use a standard development install
use an actual production install
But not a hybrid of the two =)