How to run Scala files on a web server

Question

This could be either an incredibly easy or horrifically complicated question; but I've started writing code in Scala, and want to run said code on a web server.

There's a few questions that I need answering really, and I apologise for my complete lack of knowledge on the subject, web servers scare me (I'm a PHP developer so all I need to do there is upload to any linux apache server):

• How to save and upload files (I know how to use ftp software, do I need to do anything from Eclipse?)
• What to do to my server to run the files (at the moment I just have a linux apache server from fasthosts, is that enough?)

Any other advice would be so greatly appreciated; and the less jargon the better - the whole thing blags me a little.

UPDATE: To put the sort of work I'm doing into context, I'm making a rather large, social-media style site that'll have a very large amount of small, regular posts/updates. Also thanks for the answers so far!

Seems like i need to do all of the following:

• Learn Scala (I can write in PHP and Java so should be okay)
• Install Apache tomcat on my server somehow
• Install Lift (and then either Maven or the SBT)
• Upload the whole thing?

What do I do about databases?! I need something really serious, with MySQL be okay? Urgh this goes on and on...

Answer 1

Here are the most important points. I'm afraid you will not get this done without lots of reading, but at least you'll know where to start.

• You need your own servlet container, e.g. Jetty or Tomcat. Those can be used as stand alone servers or together with apache.
• You need to package your web application as a .war file. That is basically a zip file with all the classes and some meta information. Then you upload the .war file to the server.
• You should have a look at a web framework for scala, such as Lift.
• It also helps to be on good terms with one of the major build tools, sbt or maven.