Let’s say you have 3 different computers that you use (this is usually the case for people in IT or development). I will use me as an example, mostly because I can’t speak for anyone else and because I know the subject REALLY well. I have a work desktop (OS X Leopard), a personal laptop(OS X Leopard) and a home desktop(Windows Vista), not to mention, a couple virtual machines running windows on the 2 Macs. I’m also starting to teach myself PHP and continually developing my javascript and jQuery skills. The reason I mention PHP is because there is no way to serve up ASP.net pages yet on the Mac (yes, I know about mono. It isn’t quite there yet). Now, let’s say you want to seamlessly work on the same code on all 3 computers and virtual machines. Enter Dropbox.
Brief: Dropbox is an application that runs in the background on your computer (mac, linux, windows) and automatically syncs files when connected to the internet. If you’re doing web dev stuff, chances are you are connected online. Dropbox also creates a local folder on each computer to store the files that you are working on, etc.
Enter brain power:
- Set up Apache on all computers since it’s a very powerful web server that runs on the previously mentioned operating systems. Here’s a guide on installing Apache on Windows.
- Set up the root directory in Apache to be the ~/user/Sites folder and create a sym-link (Windows Vista) to your dropbox directory. This way you can run multiple websites (some that sync and some that don’t).
To take this a step further, you could put all of this config info in a separate .config file (I called mine, “dropbox.config”) and drop it in the Dropbox directory for automatic synchronization throughout your systems. This works best if the operating systems are the same or the root structure is the same. - So now, when you browse http://localhost, you should see this:
- Verify that you see the same directory structure on all computers. If this is the case, then you’re done. Just start by creating PHP site within the Dropbox folder (I created a subfolder called WWW and in Apache I create a call to the virtual directory /dropbox which takes me to the WWW folder) <= This is important if you want to use Dropbox for other things! This way, when you click on the Dropbox link listed under (~/Sites) it will redirect you to the dropbox/WWW folder.
Now, when you are writing code, editing images, or anything else, the code will automatically synchronize to each workstastion, allowing you to continue right where you left off, anywhere.
An example of how this helps: I was recently working on writing some Ubiquity commands so I set up a Ubiquity folder within Dropbox, subscribed to the [ubiquitycommand].js file in that folder on every computer I work on, and that was it! Now, whenever I make a change to those commands, the changes get synched to each computer and because Ubiquity is subscribed to the command on localhost, that change affects all computers.
This method also works extremely well when you have different operating system specific browsers that you would like to test with. It may seem a little daunting at first, but let me tell you, once it is set up, you’re done. No need to reconfigure anything. Best of all, Dropbox is FREE!
That looks really awesome! I’ll have to check it out!
Nice lookin blog. Thanks for the info, I look forward to more.
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