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I'm a beginner with Pylons and I've mostly developed on my localhost using the built-in web server. I think it's time to start deployment for my personal blog, I have a Debian Lenny server with apache2-mpm-prefork module and mod_wsgi - I've never really used mod_wsgi or fastcgi and I hear either of these are the way to go.

My questions:

  1. Should I go with mod_wsgi or fastcgi and why?
  2. Where should I be creating my web application? Should I create an entirely new user for it? Should I store it in /home/meder/web-app ? I currently have some php websites being hosted on my server and they live in /www/ which is a directory I created. Is there any sorta gotcha with static binary files such as images, as there is with django?
meder omuraliev
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    Since you are using mpm-prefork, make sure you read 'http://blog.dscpl.com.au/2009/03/load-spikes-and-excessive-memory-usage.html' and consequently ensure that if using mod_wsgi to use daemon mode. – Graham Dumpleton Nov 11 '09 at 05:16

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  1. mod_wsgi. It's more efficient. FastCGI can be troublesome to setup, whereas I've never known anyone to have a problem using mod_wsgi with a supported version of Python (2.5, 2.6, 3.1 included). WSGI exists for Python (by Python, &c.) and so it makes for a more "Pythonic" experience. Prior to WSGI I used to serve small Pylons apps via paste behind mod_proxy (due to massive issues with fastcgi).

  2. Anywhere is fine, any user is fine. If you're worried about security, you may wish to add another user. You could create a home folder in /www/ if you were so inclined :) Static binary files, images, etc., should be served separately if you can, but Pylons had (actually, I believe still does have) a method of serving these (this should be the 'public' folder). I would still use a separate mount as Apache is more efficient at serving these than passing them through Pylons.

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    Ok, +1 more for `mod_wsgi` so it looks like I won't be using FastCGI. Have you ever used `nginx`? Seems some people are using that and `reverse-proxy`, though I'm not sure what the benefit of the combo is. – meder omuraliev Nov 11 '09 at 04:14
  • For some reasons why nginx in front of Apache/mod_wsgi can help, see comments in 'http://serverfault.com/questions/81663/nginx-varnish-nginx-django/81680#81680'. – Graham Dumpleton Nov 11 '09 at 05:19
  • Graham's link explains a few reasons. nginx and I got off on the wrong foot in its early days, so I've never really returned to it. I believe the short answer (as I hear it, and as Graham's post affirms) is that you can cache/compress for multiple requests. There are, of course, other ways to do it, but this one is fairly well tried and tested. Basically you save yourself some otherwise 'wasted' power. –  Nov 11 '09 at 13:16