VATSIM related websites howto

[Luca Benelli]

Welcome,

 

if you are reading this you probably want or need to build a VATSIM related website.

 

I'd like this post to have the moist useful links for this kind of task... it does not want to be a step by step guide but something to [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ist you in getting things done in a quick and easy way.

 

WHAT YOU NEED:

Most of the VATSIM related webpages are built around Mysql and PHP, so you should need to know how to get along with these.

A server, if you don't have a server already you can use anything from free to your own server as long as it runs mysql and php (it will probably be a LAMP solution which stands for Linux - Apache - Mysql - PHP ). If you are looking for a server of your own the latest i've seen you can have a small private server at digital ocean for 5$ a month (6 if you also want backups), i have had one there for the last couple months and it looks quite good but it's YOUR choice, don't blame me if it fails on you

 

DATA FEED:

The data feed can be accessed through the URLs listed at http://status.vatsim.net

 

The address listed as URL0 are data feeds, in there you find info about all users conencted to the network, there are libraries available which manage the donwload correctly, if you want to do it by yourself you should keep in mind the following, use a random server of those listed and do not download mroe than once every 2 minutes (the files are updated once evey two minutes so it's useless anyway and it could get you blacklisted).

 

USER STATS: Your region/division should be able to [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ist you in gathering info about which users are [Mod - Happy Thoughts]inged to your vACC, if you are a VA you should have another way of knowing who your pilots are

 

When you know the CIDs you can use the page idstatus.php (see this topic: viewtopic.php?f=68&t=63014 )

 

 

 

[to be continued, if you have ideas links or comments please post them as answers]

 

Luca

[Michael Dugan 1240047]

To add on to the servers bit...

 

If you go the DO (Digital Ocean) route, you will need to learn some basic system administration. Some topics you might want to look up on google:

 

• Package management on your operating system (usually Debian, CentOS, or Ubuntu)
  
• Installing and configuring PHP
  
• Installing and configuring MySQL
  
• Creating users and databases in MySQL via the command line
  
• Configuring extensions for Apache and PHP
  
• Creating vhost (virtual host) files for Apache

 

If you are just getting started or don't really have any knowledge about setting up web servers, I would suggest finding a friend who can help you out, or using a shared host with a control panel such as cPanel that provides a GUI to managing your website. That said, there is a wealth of resources on the internet (and DO has some great tutorials of their own), and it would be a well spent Saturday afternoon learning how to set up and manage a basic web server.