If you’re already running IIS or SBS (Small Business Server) then port 80 is probably not available. Your IT Dept will say NO!
We installed Apache and set it up to listen to Port 8011 - so we access our internal wordpress site via http://servename:8011 - and we can still use the SBS stuff the requires port 80. (Outlook Web Access, Sharepoint etc all work fine.)
Apache can run side-by-side with SBS and IIS if you set it up this way.
I just installed Apache, PHP and MySQL individually, but you can probably use a package and then adjust Apache’s httpd.conf file later to change the port it listens to.
the risks, well loss of data, a security breach and insensitive data getting out (sure, htaccess is a good measure against this, but still), and there’s probably a lot more that I just can’t think of right now. While this could all very well happen with their own servers, it becomes your risks then rather than the IT guy’s.
Because of this, the company might not even allow to host this outside of their own intranet.
Do i tell them to install Apache, MySQL, PHP and phpMyAdmin?
pretty much this - you’d probably also have to tell them why you need it. Whether they install Wamp (do you even know it’s a Windows server they’d be using?), Xampp or another premade package should be their decision as they’d be responsible for securing this.
Personally, I’d go there and talk to a person face-to-face. I’ve had dealings with IT departments and they always went better when talking to them face-to-face.
Your text is missing a little bit of information, e.g. newest portal (do they already have an intranet and portals?) doesn’t imply you’re talking about an intranet.
You mention Wordpress, pretty much every knowledgeable person in IT knows about Wordpress, so your text is a bit - “I know you’re so far behind what’s going on in the web, I’ve got to tell you what I need”. better, "… will run on Wordpress. Thus, would it be possible to get access to an Apache server (comment from me to you: are you sure Wordpress needs Apache? Can’t Wordpress also run on IIS when php and MySQL are available there?) with php and MySQL (and phpMyAdmin)?
The thing is when i went to the person (IT dept guy) and informed that i need to deploy a portal on Wordpress (We do have a dead ugly one already running (Sharepoint)).
This guy (IT Dept guy) looked at me and asked me “what is wordpress?”
I’m not a server expert (would like to reiterate that).
I only develop sites.
When he asked “What is wordpress?” I was like “ooookayyyy…”
There goes my day
I think i will have to sit down with him and talk…
I ran into one of those before. From my experience its very difficult to get them to comply with you and they find all sorts of excuses, as in “security issues, can’t do that would compromise the whole network”, “increased maintenance, I’ve already got my hands full”.
So, my advice is, if you want to keep this job, be patient and learn about server stuff. However, I would suggest you think hard about whether it’s worth going through this trouble, you might end up investing far more time than budgeted.
The awesome guys at media temple gave me a superb idea.
They told me to host it outside, they told me to put in a .htaccess file into the domain/subdomain/sub-directory that i want to limit and they told me to put in a rewrite rule that only allows access to that folder from an IP address or a range of IP addresses that i want to allow access to.
