This project has been tested on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Ubuntu 10.10. If you're not using Ubuntu >= 10.04 or a recent Debian then spare your sanity and set up a virtual machine.

Here's how you get started!

Put this to /etc/hosts:

127.0.2.1 dev.occupywallst.org
127.0.2.2 chat.dev.occupywallst.org

Install dependencies:

sudo ./install_depends.sh

Set up a PostgreSQL database with PostGIS:

sudo -u postgres -i createuser --superuser root   # make root a pg admin
sudo -u postgres -i createuser --superuser $USER  # make you a pg admin
createdb occupywallst
createlang plpgsql occupywallst
if [ -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/postgis-1.5/postgis.sql ]; then
    psql -d occupywallst -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/postgis-1.5/postgis.sql
    psql -d occupywallst -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/postgis-1.5/spatial_ref_sys.sql
else
    psql -d occupywallst -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/postgis.sql
    psql -d occupywallst -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/spatial_ref_sys.sql
fi

Now install the project and the database schema:

sudo python setup.py develop
occupywallst-dev syncdb --noinput
occupywallst-dev loaddata verbiage
occupywallst-dev loaddata example_data
occupywallst-dev runserver 127.0.0.1:9001

Set up nginx. This is optional (but strongly recommended for development) and mandatory for production:

sudo apt-get install nginx
sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
sudo cp conf/occupywallst.org.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart

Optional: Run the chat server in a second terminal:

cd chat
curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sudo sh
npm install -d
sudo NODE_ENV=development node app.js

Then open this url :) http://dev.occupywallst.org/

There's also a backend for modifying the database and writing articles. Go to http://dev.occupywallst.org/admin/ and log in as user "OccupyWallSt" with the password "anarchy".

If you need to customize Django settings for your local install, do it inside occupywallst/settings_local.py and chat/settings_local.json because git ignores them.

Deploying OccupyWallSt to a production environment takes a bit more effort. Please consider the following advice.

Create a user named ows:

sudo adduser ows
ssh ows@localhost

Use a virtualenv:

virtualenv env
cd env
source bin/activate
git clone git://github.com/jart/occupywallst.git
cd occupywallst
python setup.py develop
occupywallst help  <-- this actually runs ../bin/occupywallst

Rather than using Django's "runserver" as the backend HTTP server, I recommend using gunicorn:

easy_install gunicorn
gunicorn_django -b 127.0.0.1:9001 --workers=9 --max-requests=1000 --pid=/tmp/gunicorn-occupywallst.pid occupywallst/settings.py

Use AppArmor to harden security:

sudo aa-genprof /home/ows/env/bin/gunicorn_django
sudo aa-complain /home/ows/env/bin/gunicorn_django
# run gunicorn/occupywallst and do a bunch of stuff on the site
sudo aa-logprof
# restart gunicorn/occupywallst and do a bunch of stuff on the site
sudo aa-logprof
sudo nano -w /etc/apparmor.d/home.ows.env.bin.gunicorn_django
sudo aa-enforce /home/ows/env/bin/gunicorn_django

Use pgbouncer to drastically reduce the number of processes PostgreSQL needs to run. Now you have more leeway to performance tune PostgreSQL's settings. These settings are very conservative in Debian by default, even more so than the default PostgreSQL sources.

OccupyWallSt is NOT a simple web application. It consists of many network programs all working together and talking to each other. This should hopefully give you a better understanding of the system design in production:

tcp:occupywallst.org:80       nginx redirects browser to https
tcp:occupywallst.org:443      nginx load balancing proxy / media server
tcp:chat.occupywallst.org:80  nginx redirects browser to https
tcp:chat.occupywallst.org:443 chat/app.js: node.js realtime http stuff
tcp:chat.occupywallst.org:843 chat/app.js: flashsocket policy server
udp:127.0.0.1:9010            chat/app.js: notification event subscriber
tcp:127.0.0.1:9001            gunicorn_django backend http server
tcp:127.0.0.1:9040            icecast2 mp3 streaming
tcp:127.0.0.1:8040            freeswitch mod_event_socket
udp:occupywallst.org:5060     freeswitch sip server
tcp:occupywallst.org:5060     freeswitch sip server
tcp:occupywallst.org:5061     freeswitch secure-sip server
tcp:127.0.0.1:11211           memcached
tcp:127.0.0.1:5432            postgresql database server
tcp:127.0.0.1:6432            pgbouncer database connection pooler