Deploying Rails Application for the First Time

I always forget these steps when deploying a Rails app for the first time. So I'm finally writing this in as a guide for the future.

This assumes that you already have a running Ubuntu server with Apache and Passenger installed (see Basic Security Installs for Ubuntu and How to Install Passenger + Apache in Ubuntu).

1. Clone the git repo.

   git clone git@bitbucket.org:kabalweg/app_name.git
   cd app_name
   bundle install
   

   If you get a "bundle not yet installed" error, run the following comment:

   gem install bundle
   

2. Go to /var/www/ type and this command to create a symbolic link.

   sudo ln -s /home/kabalweg/app_name/ ./app_name
   

3. Go to /etc/apache2/sites-available and create a virtualhost file, app_name.conf, or copy and existing one and edit the appropriate values in that file and save.

   <VirtualHost *:80>
       ServerName app_name.net
       Redirect permanent / http://www.app_name.net/
   </VirtualHost>
   
   <VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerName www.app_name.net
     ServerAdmin kabalweg@gmail.com
   
     # Set the environment to production
     RailsEnv production
   
     <IfModule mod_passenger.c>
         # Set to on when debugging errors
         PassengerFriendlyErrorPages off
   
         #PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/phusion_passenger/locations.ini
         #PassengerDefaultRuby /home/kabalweg/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.1@rails4.2/wrappers/ruby
         PassengerMaxPoolSize 2
         PassengerPoolIdleTime 0
         PassengerMaxRequests 1000
       </IfModule>
   
       DocumentRoot /var/www/app_name/public
       <Directory /var/www/app_name/public>
         AllowOverride all
         Options -MultiViews
         #Require all granted
         Order deny,allow
         Allow from all
       </Directory>
   
       ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
   
       CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
   </VirtualHost>
   

4. Disable the default virtualhost and enable the new virtualhost file and activate it.

   sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
   
   sudo a2ensite app_name.conf
   sudo apachectl -k graceful
   

5. Generate secret key and put the resulting key in the secret.yml file.

   rake secret RAILS_ENV=production
   

   Note: It's not a good and safe practice to put production config values in the repo. A good way is to ignore config files (*.yml) using git so it don't get save in the repo, then just manually create this files, with the correct values, in the production server.
6. Pre-compile assets.

   rake assets:precompile RAILS_ENV=production
   

7. Restart application by typing below in your application's root directory.

   touch tmp/restart.txt
   

   Create this folder (tmp) if you don't have this.