How to Install Apache Roller Weblogger

Apache Roller is a very popular group-blog server suitable for blogs both large and small.Just like with any other Java application, it is very easy to deploy Roller to the platform.

Create Environment

1. Log into the platform dashboard.

2. Click Create environment to set up a new environment.

3. In the Environment topology dialog pick GlassFish as your application server, MySQL as the database you want to use and type your environment name, for example, webroller. Then click Create.

Wait just a minute for your environment to be created.

Upload Java Package

1. Go to Apache Roller website and download roller-weblogger-5.0.0-for-javaee.zip file.

2. Extract the files from the package you have just downloaded.

3. Switch back to the platform dashboard and upload roller-5.0.0-javaee.war package (roller-weblogger-5.0.0-for-javaee/webapp/roller-5.0.0-javaee.war) to the Deployment manager.

Configure Database

1. Click Open in Browser button for MySQL.

2. While you were creating the environment, the platform sent you the email with credentials to the database. Create an account and the database with the application using these credentials.

Configure Apache Roller

1. Click the Config button for GlassFish and upload MySQL connector to the lib folder.

2. Create a file named roller-custom.properties with the following content:

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installation.type=auto   
mediafiles.storage.dir=/home/rollerdata/mediafiles   
search.index.dir=/home/rollerdata/searchindex   
log4j.appender.roller.File=/home/rollerdata/roller.log

3. Upload the roller-custom.properties file to the classes directory (lib/classes).

4. Create rollerdata directory in the home folder. Then select the rollerdata directory and create mediafiles and searchindex directories in there.

5. While you were creating the environment, the platform sent you the email with credentials to your GlassFish DAS node. Go to GlassFish admin panel and log in using these credentials.

6. Create connection pool with the name WebRollerPool. Choose java.sql.Driver as the resource type and MySQL as the database driver vendor. Click Next.

Navigate to additional properties and enter your database URL, username and password.

7. Create JDBC resource named jdbc/rollerdb and select the created WebRollerPool as the pool to be used by this resource.

8. Create a mail session with the name mail/Sessions (we use Gmail as an example).

9. Go back to the platform dashboard and deploy your Java package to the environment you have created earlier.

Now open you can open Apache Roller in a web browser, complete the installation process and start using it!

What’s next?

• Tutorials by Category
• Java Tutorials
• Setting Up Environment