LAMP stack setup best practices
Secrets (like db passwords) should not be kept in your apps codebase.
Keep these in a file that your app can read.
~/.parameters/database.yml
Production configuration will be different from staging, should be different from dev.
Allow overrides that are generated outside your codebase and allow the ability to choose env.
Can be combined with 'Secrets' above.
~/myapp --config=~/.paramaters/app1.production.yml
There are 3 types of static assets:
1. source in codebase - eg. /static/images/mylogo.png
2. generated from codebase - eg. /static/css/all.css
3. dynamic from application - eg. /data/report.pdf
Application data (3) should be kept outside the web-root for ease of backups/replication/deployment.
Generated files (2) should not be in codebase to keep massive diffs from cluttering your RCS.
Static files (1) should be able to be versioned and redirect friendly. eg. "myfile.txt?v123" or "/v123/myfile.txt"
Nginx, Varnish, Apache can be configured for high-performance static file serving.
This will be faster than your webapp so use a frontend cache/proxy server for this purpose.
When using Apache + mod_perl/mod_php child-processes can become bloated. Have a seperate Apache for static requests.