YIWW with YII (“Yes It Will Work” with “Yes It Is” Framework)

Can you believe it?  There is a new framework to learn and use.  It is called YII Framework.  YII stands for Yes It Is (how quaint, I must say).   YII is a PHP based MVC framework created specifically for highly active web applications, such as portals, forums, CMS, and e-commerce systems.  It is designed to be light-weight, with a sophisticated caching mechanism.

You’ll want to look at the official YII home page to understand more about this framework.

The good news is it works on our shared hosting platform.  According to YII’s documentation, the only requirement it needs is to have PHP version 5.1 or higher installed on the server; which we do have (PHP ver 5.3.13).  Now, setting up a YII web application on our shared hosting environment does require some specialized steps you’ll need to take.

First you’ll need to download the YII Framework folder.  Inside this folder are the YII files and extensions.  You can download it here.

The second step you’ll need to incorporate is to modify the path your application will be looking for the YII framework.  By default it’s set to look outside the root. A lot of the documentation was for an Apache web server therefore they had one standardized YII Framework folder that everyone accessed.  That will be impossible on our shared hosting environment since each application only has permission within its’ own root.  You will upload the YII Framework folder on your root and modify your application to search the framework from within.

As an example set the code from:

$yii=dirname(__FILE__).'/../framework/yii.php';

to:

$yii=dirname(__FILE__).'./framework/yii.php';

Next, you may need to modify the default time zone setting.  By default it is set to UTC, which may not be the same as the server.  The application will throw this error if left unchanged.

PHP Warning: phpinfo(): It is not safe to rely on the system’s timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function.

In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone ‘UTC’ for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in E:\ \YII_Framework\testdrive\test.php on line 3

To fix this problem, you’ll need to create a user.ini file.  The file name should be user.ini and place it in your root folder. The default time zone should be delegated to the user level.  Add this code in your user.ini file:

[DATE]
date.timezone = “GMT”

Save the user.ini file and that should solve it.

Note: I tested this several times and it may not throw this specific time zone error, but regardless, setting up a user.ini file shouldn’t hurt your application.  The user.ini file acts like the PHP.INI file which is the basic PHP configuration for all PHP applications. The user.ini file allows for PHP.INI control at the account level.  This is very useful in a Windows platform where we can only have one PHP.INI for the entire server.  Keep in mind that some PHP elements/settings cannot be delegated to the account level due to security reasons.

One last step you will want to take before you are done is to protect your YII framework files/extensions from being downloaded.  Because the framework itself uses PHP files, it can potentially be downloaded by a browser, modify certain configuration settings on the framework and potentially get re-uploaded back to the server.  That can open security holes or exploits to your YII Framework application.

What you will want to do is setup the Framework folder with the same security restrictions as an ASP.Net Bin folder, where your application can access it, but no browser can directly navigate to it and download the files.  You will use the RequestFiltering Module to protect the folder Framework.  Create a web.config file if you don’t already have one, and place it on the root.  Add this XML element within the system.webServer section of the web.config file.

<security>
  <requestFiltering>
    <hiddenSegments>
    <add segment="Framework" />
    </hiddenSegments>
  </requestFiltering>
</security>

That’s it, you’re all done.  As you can see YII Framework is compatible with our Windows shared hosting platform.

How to back up/restore your site and SQL databases with the help of IIS Manager

The following instructions apply to both our Windows 2008 IIS 7 servers & our Windows 2012 IIS 8 Servers.

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to back up your SQL database and web site files. Then we’ll use the IIS Manager to back up your site and SQL Databases all in one shot. These instructions will place a .zip file locally on your computer for safe keeping. The .zip file will contain the .bak file of your SQL database.

Step 1: Use our SQL backup tool in Control Panel to back up your SQL Database. When using this tool the .bak file will be stored in your App_data directory. Please read our knowledge base article on how to use the backup SQL Tool in our control panel.

Step 2: Once you’ve created the .bak file in your App_data directory on your site account using the SQL backup tool in our control panel, you’re ready to connect to your site using IIS Manager. Please read our knowledge base article about Using the Microsoft IIS Manager.

Step 3: In IIS Manager Right click on your site. Selected Deploy and click on Export Application…

Step 4: In the Export Application Package window click the Next button (do not change any settings).

Step 5: Click the Next button in the Select Parameters window (again, do not changing any settings).

Step 6: Click the Browse… button and select a directory on your local computer (this is where the backup .zip file containing your site’s web files will be placed on your local computer). Select a file name with today’s date for your reference. Now click the Save button.

Step 7: Click the Next button in the Save Package box and wait for your site to be saved locally on your computer. Now click the Finish button when you receive the notice “The package was created successfully.”

The .zip file that you saved locally will also contain the SQL database backup (.bak) file that you created when you used the SQL Backup tool in the control panel. It’s important to back up your SQL database at the same time as your web site files to maintain consistency for your site.

Restoring your site from backup

If you ever need to fall back and restore your web site to a previous state from a certain date, you can use the same tool in IIS Manager, but this time you will need to select Import Application in the Deploy option in IIS Manager.

Instructions for restoring your site:

Step 1: Right click on your site in IIS Manager. Select Deploy and click Import Application.

Step 2: Click the Browse… button and select the .zip file located on your computer of the web site backup you created in IIS Manager. Then click Next.

Step 3: Do not change any settings in the Select The Contents of the Package box and click the Next button.

Step 4: On the next page Enter Application Package Information you will need to remove the text from the box so the backup is restored to the root of your hosting account. So you should only see:

HostingAccountDomain.com/ [Empty Text Box]

Now click the Next button.

Step 5: You will receive the following warning from IIS Manager: “This application will be installed into “HostingAccountDomain.com”. Most applications are usually installed into a folder beneath the root, such as “HostingAccountDomain.com/Blog” Are you sure?” Go ahead and click the OK button.

Step 6: In the next box, Overwrite Existing Files, choose the option, “Yes, delete all extra files and folders on the destination that are not in the application package.” This will delete any extra files or folders that don’t exist in the backup .zip folder (we’re choosing this option because you want to restore the entire site as it existed on the date that you created the .zip files).

If you don’t wish to delete the extra files then select the option: “No, just append the files in the application package to the destination.” Now click the Next button.

IIS Manager will now restore your site files to the state they were in when you created the .zip file. It will also contain your .bak file too, if you created the SQL backup first using the SQL Backup tool in the control panel on the day you created the .zip file in IIS Manager. To restore the database, read our knowledge base article on how to restore your .bak file to the SQL database.

If you need instructions on backing up your MySQL database please read our blog post article: Using mysqldump to backup and restore your MySQL database/tables.

One really cool thing about this tool in IIS Manager is that you can also use it to transfer your site to our Winhost web servers. Granted, that is only if your current host provides you with the ability to Export your site using IIS Manager. If they don’t, you should be at Winhost!