It'll be clear after reading this post that I'm a noob at all of this, but I figured I'd point it out before I started anyway... :thumbsup:

Downloaded Python 2.5.4 and the Google App Engine (GAE) SDK and I'm following the "Getting Started" Python tutorial to familiarize myself w/ Python and the GAE process. Everything was fine and happy until Step 4...


Step 1: Created a folder on my desktop (Windows XP) named helloworld.

(It said to create a "directory" named helloworld, but I saw the dude in the video just create a folder, so I figured "directory" was just tech talk for folder... is that right/wrong?)

Step 2: Used notepad++ to create the helloworld.py file and saved it to the folder.

Step 3: Created the app.yaml file (w/ notepad++) and saved to my helloworld folder (directory?).

Step 4: (The death of all my hopes and dreams.)


Starting the SDK webserver....

First I got stuck on where exactly I was supposed to type the "google_appengine/dev_appserver.py helloworld/" command. I remembered reading somewhere of people complaining that google likes to do everything through the command prompt window (or whatever its called). So I went to start-->run-->typed in "cmd" and it brought it up. (Is that right?) But when I typed in the command (w/o the quotes) it returned:

'google_appengine' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.


So then I changed it to look more like what the dude in the video used instead (and also later tried changing the files to look like his), and typed in...

dev_appserver.py helloworld/

and it returned:

ERROR:root:Application configuration file not found in helloworld/

That seemed better than the other message, so I googled this error message and found that other people are having this same problem, but I don't know enough and have too many noob questions to figure out the fixes. (I tried them and they didn't work for me.)


I got helped here at codingforums a few weeks ago on a javascript question and they really broke it down for me, so I thought I'd post this and see if you guys can help me out again.


Q:

Is a folder and a directory the same thing... is the location of the folder on my desktop ok?

Is the command prompt window correct or is there another place that I should type in the command to start up the web server?

What's the right command? and/or the right location for the folder and files?

what else am I doing wrong?:confused:

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated!