I’ve been working on a Sinatra app to serve as a web development portfolio. I decided it is time to put it online using my shared host, Webfaction. Here in this post, I’m not going to go over all the steps to set up a Sinatra app. You can find my tutorial on that here: Sinatra on Webfaction.
However, here I just wanted to discuss how I added a second Sinatra app on Webfaction. As a sys admin noob, it was not immediately obvious to me. After some thinking, I realized I could use my existing Nginx custom app. As I said… admittedly a noob.
And so the steps became:
- running Thin by creating a ‘custom app listening on’ an available port.
- modifying the http{ } section of my nginx.conf file to include another upstream{ } and server{ }
- Modifying the “Websites” in the Webfaction control panel. I already had a site being served by Nginx, so I just needed to add another domain to it.
- -This may be counter intuitive. Running multiple Sinatra apps on Webfaction only requires one entry in the “Sites” section of the control panel.
- -My ‘Website’ in the Control Panel is named “Dev”. Within that site I have two domains for two different Sinatra apps. The app is Nginx. The sites are two different Sinatra apps, running on different domains.
- -Details of which Sinatra app is served to which domain is worked out in the nginx.conf file.
Open a port for running Thin by creating a custom app in the webfaction control panel.
Make a custom app (“Custom app listening on port”) in the webfaction control panel. Name this app whatever your Sinatra app will be called. This app will show up in ~/webapps/APP_NAME.
Choose a domain/URL and add it to your existing Site being served by the Nginx App.
In the webfaction control panel, under Sites, if you are adding a second Sinatra app, then you already have a site being served by Nginx. You just need to add the domain/url for your app to the existing Site that is running your first Sinatra app.
Modify your ~/webapps/nginx/conf/nginx.conf
Add a new upstream app_name { } block and another server { } block.
Restart Nginx
[ ~/webapps/nginx]$ ps -u zhannes 20052 ? 00:00:00 nginx [ ~/webapps/nginx]$ kill 20052 [ ~/webapps/nginx]$ ./sbin/nginx
Make Sinatra app, rackup file, and create a yml file for Thin to read
Start Thin
Be done and happy.
