I have managed to put the three applications (forum, gallery, and wiki) on a single appliance and have them work successfully with PHP5 from the LAMP appliance and MySQL from rPath Linux. I was able to use the native web interface for each application to configure each of them, which was a relief. To really fit an appliance model, though, the deployment, configuration, and maintenance needs to be more straightforward. I made some notes on my Fogawi appliance wiki page that outline my observations and what else I will need to do for the appliance before I am comfortable releasing it: http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Appliance:Fogawi

I absolutely dread having to do the rAPA plugin work. This is not because I don't value the result, but because I'm still very new to Python, let alone some of the supporting features incorporated in rAPA. However, rAPA is such a powerful part of the appliance, it will be worth it to spend a few hours, hopefully this weekend, learning the existing code and to manipulate it successfully to create the custom Fogawi plugin. Perhaps I will also keep careful enough notes to use this as an example to contribute to the plugin documentation at wiki.rpath.com.

As I look forward to releasing this appliance, I need to find the best way to advertise it. The intended consumer is an individual wanting to deploy a web server with some combination of these three applications, either for personal use or for a group or small business that can make use of these resources. I will be using the appliance to replace the default Red Hat install that is currently serving as my virtual private server (VPS), and that VPS will aggregate all my current domains in a single server with some manual adjustments (OpenSSH is on the appliance for this option) to serve some of the files I have also had under these domains. Besides my personal use, though, I need to find the target audience; I have a feeling the audience is a scattered bunch that will be difficult to reach from one or two online resources. Since the solution is essentially free for download by anyone, there doesn't seem to be an appropriate target in the commercial realm, either. Perhaps I will encourage my rPath colleagues to help me with promoting it for a start.