1. Rails 2.0.2
2. tzinfo (I have 0.3.9)
3. At least rake 0.8.1

Installing Rails 2.0.2

This should also install rake for you. Just in case I have the command below.

sudo gem install rails -v=2.0.2

Installing tzinfo

sudo gem install tzinfo

Installing Rake

sudo gem install rake

From here change directory to the home of your rail applications.
Now run the command:

sudo wget http://github.com/technoweenie/mephisto/tarball/master.tar.gz
sudo tar -xvf technoweenie-mephisto-90e2cc253d94e2e544bc8b21f361c7360c1e9baa.tar.gz
sudo mv technoweenie-mephisto-90e2cc253d94e2e544bc8b21f361c7360c1e9baa blog

The last command simply renames the directory to something more readable. Here I renamed it to “blog”. This will be the mephisto root directory. OK! You now have all the things to need to start the installation. From here on is where I ran into all the trouble. Not to worry, I ironed out all the kinks so you should be OK!

Installation in 8 easy steps

1. Create a database named mephisto (or one of your choosing).If you are running mysql, you can do this at the command prompt. This assumes your localhost root does not have a password.

mysql -u root
mysql> create database mephisto;

2. Copy config/database.example.yml to config/database.yml
   Just copy and past the following command from the config directory.

sudo mv database.example.yml database.yml

3. Edit database.yml and set your database credentials.
4. This step is important. Edit config/environment.rb
   and append the following line. This step will save you trouble when running the rake db:bootstrap command two steps down.

RAILS_GEM_VERSION = '2.0.2' unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION

5. Time to update your boot.rb file. From your mephisto root directory, run the following command.

rake rails:update

6. OK! Time for the big moment! Are you ready? It’s time to bootstrap your database. Run the following command from your mephisto root directory.

rake db:bootstrap RAILS_ENV=production

7. If you got to this step without troubles, then consider this a big win! The next step is to deploy mephisto, I recommend mod_rails.
8. Last step! Login to your administration at http://domain.com/admin with the username: admin and password: test

That is all there is to it. I hope everything went OK for you. Any questions or comments are welcomed.

The setup was no more then 5 minutes. Mephisto on the other hand required quite a bit and was not an easy install. I used to blog with Mephisto on my personal server from home, but having an awesome, flexiable blogging engine like wordpress I see no need to make things complicated. Granted, Mephisto, being a Rails application is wonderfull. In my humble opion, if you are someone that just wants to start blogging and don’t really have a computer science background, I say stick to WordPress. They have many plugins and lots of wonderfull themes. If you want a little challenge and want a Rails blogging system and have lots of free time, maybe on a weekend, then installing Mephisto is a good experience to have under your belt.