I just wanted to give a quick update on our progress over the last day or so. I’ve been taking care of some administrative tasks. Things like setting up the test/production databases and the version control repository (svn). I’ve also set up a domain for testing the app as it progresses. Ruby on Rails is known for being quite difficult to deploy, but the new Passenger (mod_rails) Apache module is truly amazing.

Our web host, DreamHost, is using it and they made it extremely easy to set up a Rails app. It is literally upload and go. Being fairly new to RoR I was a little worried about the deployment part, but I’ve already got an app up and running and it was no problem at all. Well, that’s not entirely true. DreamHost currently has Rails 2.02 installed and I had my app in Rails 2.1. I thought that was going to be a big problem, but Rails has this great ‘freeze’ feature that allows your app to use whatever version you want regardless of what is installed on the system. It’s little things (or not so little actually) like this that keep me excited to use Rails.

I hope to get my deployment process set up over the next day or so. I’m going to be using Capistrano for this. For those who don’t know, this is a utility to help deploy and update already existing and running rails applications. Once it’s set up, all you have to do is run one command and your app is updated. I am so excited for this! I have a php web page that I wrote a few years ago that my family uses to keep in touch. It’s not too large, but I never used version control with it, and I have no idea where the most up-to-date code is. For some files the newest version is on my home computer, but others I updated right on the server they’re running from. I know I could figure it out, but it’s so scary that I have no motivation to work on it. I have a feeling that a lot of php projects digress in a similar way. That’s why Capistrano is such a great tool. It keeps you in sync and has other great features as well like being able to roll back changes.

I’ve looked over a few blogs and the Capistrano site and it seems like it can be a little tricky to get set up. So we’ll see how it goes and I’ll keep you updated. Hopefully it’ll go as smoothly as installing my rails app. ;)

On another note, Mike has compiled a list of everyone participating in the 30 day challenge. And I think Richie Hindle has a really great idea for his challenge. The idea of his application is basically to make it safe for children to click around on your computer. Not to keep them away from bad things on the internet or things like that, but to stop them from deleting files and changing settings etc. Here is his explanation about his product: Click Stop.