Setting up Apache on a Rackspace Cloud account using Ubuntu

After creating the cloud account, I log in to the account via SSH using the following information:
root@[your IP address]
(you’ll be prompted for a username/password)

To install apache2, you can simply type:
# apt-get install apache2

To also install PHP5 , just run this additional command: 
# apt-get install php5


The apache module for PHP is automatically installed when you do this. You can also confirm you have a web site running at this poing by navigating to your site at:
http://[your IP address]/


the apache config files can be found here:
# ls -al /etc/apache2/


You should now have a default page in the following directory:
# ls -al /var/www/index.html


You can see where this is set as the default DocumentRoot directory for your account in the following file:
# vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/default


Now that you have a functioning web site, you can begin to build your content.  Feel free to comment to let me know where I need to expand this simple tutorial.

The Itch to Migrate

After working for so long moving hosted services, I think it must have entered the bloodstream.  I catch myself thinking about it regularly, and I need an outlet.  Hopefully this will be a helpful blog for others as I post about migrating hosted web sites, email, databases, DNS, and etc.

A little about me: I worked for Verio as a member of the migration team for almost ten years as a technician, then as a developer, then as the lead developer, and then as the manager.  While I was on the team, I helped architect and build a next-generation migration system capable of moving thousands of hosted customer accounts per day (including web sites, email, DNS, scripts, and databases); and we moved over 1.2 million unique domain names through that migration system over these past years.  These are good times.  Hosting accounts get better and better, and hopefully this site will help build the roads folks need to travel from their old-and-busted hosting accounts to sleek new ones.  Happy migrating!