Saturday, June 30th, 2007 - 2 Comments
I love CSS Galleries!
If your running low on inspiration they can be a great source of creativity and excellent design, perfect to inspire you or help you put that winning tweak on your design.
They can also be a useful and powerful marketing tool, if you have just launched a gorgeous new site and it gets picked on the numerous galleries then you can get a lot more eyeballs on them, nowhere near as much as say.. a digging, but a nice constant flow of traffic plus if your lucky it could lead to being featured on something like Smashing Magazine.
So why not grease the wheels a little and submit your website to them yourself rather than waiting for others to do it? Here is a list of about 24 of my favourite galleries:
Enjoy!
Friday, June 22nd, 2007 - 5 Comments
Rails has made it incredibly easy, fast and enjoyable to build web apps but when it comes to deploying them to the net it can be a little tricky. Being such a new framework the methods of running rails apps in production are constantly changing and improving but it’s still nowhere near as simple as PHP deployment.
Having said that I’d much prefer to spend a little extra time in deploying a rails app that a few extra months in developing a php app!
So what is the best way to go about doing it? At the moment mongrel your best bet, using apache as a front end, but this can be a little confusing and difficult to set up. Enter Capistrano, a way of automating deployment of web applications, especially rails!
So here is a guide to setting up your Rails production server, I’m basing my guide on Slicehost VPS using Ubuntu, mainly because that is what I use and from what I’ve been hearing from other rails developers it’s their favourite for the price as well (only £10 per month) and you get full root access as if you had your own dedicated machine.
I’m also doing this from a mac so windows users might have to add “ruby” in before some commands and I suggest using putty for SSH access.
So lets get started!
- First up once you have your Slice ordered and ready from slicehost you’ll need to do some setting up via SSH, so on your local machine in the terminal put:
ssh root@your.slice.ip
- Add a new user - since you dont want to be running everything as root you need to create a new user:
adduser --ingroup users andrew
- Give your new user some permissions - So that you can still do everything you need lets give the new user some power:
visudo
Add this line to the bottom of the file:
andrew ALL=(ALL) ALL
Save and exit.
- Add some more sources of software for apt-get - so that we can install everything we need later using apt-get:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
And uncomment (remove the #’s ) these lines from the file:
# deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe
# deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe
…
# deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe
# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe
Then save and exit and we then need to update apt-get:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
So that should be all you need to do over SSH on your slice or server, everything else can be done from your local machine using Capistrano and Deprec gems.
Repeat: The rest of the steps are done on your LOCAL MACHINE
- So first up make sure you have both capistrano and deprec installed on your machine (along with the rest of your rails development environment, if you’ve not done that yet go here: Teabass.com/super-simple-ruby-on-rails-with-macports/
sudo gem install capistrano deprec --include-dependencies
-
Next you’ll need a rails application and since so it is so easy we might as well just make one now:
rails myapp
cd myapp
- Now get deprec to work some magic and set itself up within you application:
deprec --apply-to .
- You’ll now need to go into the config folder in your rails app and edit deploy.rb and database.yml with your server, user details and database settings.
- Once that is done you can run the awesome command:
cap install_rails_stack
This will take quite a while as it installs every piece of software you need to run a standard production server via ssh on your Slicehost VPS
- And now to finalise the setup:
cap deprec_setup
Note: the database password should be blank at this point, you can secure it later
Congrats, your done! Hopefully that was fairly painless, you’ve set up a full rails stack and the server is just waiting for your application, the command to deploy is:
cap deploy_with_migrations
And then you might find it helpful to restart apache after this as well if its the first time you’ve deployed you app:
cap restart_apache
If you’re going to get an account with slicehost it would be really cool if you used my refferal link so I can
save some on my hosting bill:
https://manage.slicehost.com/customers/signup?referrer=347966070
Thanks!
Thursday, June 21st, 2007 - 4 Comments
I’ve been setting up quite a few Ruby on Rails development environments on various mac’s just recently and I’ve found a pretty nice work flow, so why not share it with the world?
So first up, this is MAC ONLY, sorry windows chaps you’ll have to look else where. I have a list of some other good windows tutorials here.
Update: If you are using OS X 10.5 Leopard you’ll want to use this guide instead: Teabass.com/super-simple-ruby-on-rails-install-with-macports-for-leopard
So lets assume that you have a brand new mac or a clean install and dive straight in:
- Install X11 - You’ll find this on the software disc that came with your mac or download from Apple
- Install Xcode - Again on the software disc with your mac or you can download the latest version from ADC
- Install Macports - Download Macports and run the installer (1.4.0 at the time of writing and you’ll want 10.4 if your using OS X Tiger)
- Add macports to your Terminal - Since macports gets installed in /opt/ you’ll need to add the path to your terminal config so you can use it.
Open ~/.profile with your favourite texteditor and add this line to the bottom of the file:
PATH="/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin"
and then save the file, close it and restart your terminal.
- Check for macports updates - in your terminal type:
sudo port selfupdate
- Install Ruby and friends - This is the big one, installing loads of software using macports, in your terminal put:
sudo port install ruby rb-rubygems rb-termios subversion +tools
This command could take quite a while to complete as it’s compiling everything from source, make a cup of tea and have a browse on Greenvoice while you wait!
- Install MySQL - This is the one that usually causes the headaches so I’ll go slowly:
sudo port install mysql5 +server
sudo ln -s /opt/local/var/run/mysql5/mysqld.sock /tmp/mysql.sock
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql5.plist
At this point restart your machine.
For a performance boost you can also run this command:
sudo mysql_install_db5 --user=mysql
- Install Ruby’s MySQL adaptor - One last port install:
sudo port install rb-mysql
- Install Rails and friends - So the hard part should be over now, all that is left is to install a bunch of gems:
sudo gem install rake rails capistrano mongrel mongrel_cluster deprec --include-dependencies
Some optional gems you might like - Money, ferret and OpenID to improve your apps with:
sudo gem install money ferret ruby-openid --include-dependencies
And your good to go! If this is your first step into rails then head over to “Getting Ryan on Rails” and find out more.
Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 - 7 Comments
So seeing as I’m getting pretty into this whole internet thing now, what with me spending about 18 hours a day on it, I thought it best that I take some time to make a bit of name for myself, or at least get my act together when it comes to promoting myself online.
So one of the first things I’m going to try and do is get myself to the top of a google search for my name: Andrew Nesbitt which is not going to be easy, for one thing I have Wikipedia to beat!
Does anyone have any suggestions how I can go about doing this?
So far I have change the meta data and page titles of Teabass.com to include my name and I’m trying to use my full name when ever I can on the net now including all of my online profiles:
For example there is my LinkedIn Profile: Linkedin.com/in/andrewnesbitt
The Greenvoice Developers page: Greenvoice.com/help/developers
My Greenvoice Profile: Greenvoice.com/users/155-andrew_nez (add me as a friend!)
My ClaimID Profile: Claimid.com/atariboy
Over the past year and a half I’ve left a trail of content and profiles across the net using a load of different names and stuff so I figure it can only be a good thing if i go back a clean them all up and list them on the Teabass.
I’ve also been tagging lots of my content on other sites with “Andrew Nesbitt” such as on Flickr which should hopefully add some google juice to the mix.
Any other suggestions for SEO are all very welcome, plus any link love would be great, may I suggest:
<a href=”http://teabass.com” title=”Andrew Nesbitt’s website, Teabass”>Andrew Nesbitt</a>
Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 - 3 Comments
We’ve been very busy at Greenvoice.com, adding more features and improving the whole site in general. I thought I’d tell everyone about some of the new stuff we have added just recently and what we are planning to add in the coming weeks.
Shoutboxes - Now you can leave comments on your friends profiles, its stupidly easy to do as well since the comment form in right there on their profile.
Social bookmarking - At the bottom of every campaign is a selection of links which if clicked will submit that particular campaign to your social bookmarking site of choice.
New friendship model - We have reworked the way that friends and contacts work on the site, now your not forced to become someones friend if they want to follow you, you have a list of friends (people you added) and followers who are people who have added you.
Appeals - To make it easier for people to change the world we have added appeals to the campaigns section, now you can ask people to promise to do something, or mabye not doing something to help your cause giving you an idea of how many people are interested and want to help.
Better discussion areas - conversation is important to us so we put in the time to clean up and improve the forums sections that are part of groups and campaigns making it easier and better to get your ideas out there or discuss an important issue.
Improved all pages - I’ve been working hard to bring the whole site (a good 250 template pages) up to the same level of quality as the main areas of the website and I’m very nearly complete, every page looks and feels better and I’m not stopping there, expect to see the usability of the site improve 10 fold over the coming weeks.
Running considerably faster - We have done a lot of optimization of our production servers recently bring the load time of the homepage down from 3 seconds to 0.3 (for the html) as well as a number of caching improvements, this is one area where we are planning to push rails really hard, we want to have one of the fastest rails sites on the net!
Some of the new features we are currently working on are:
1. Internal messaging
2. Greenvoice Blog
3. and big improvements to the news section
Thanks to all the people who made suggestions or pointed out bugs in the Greenvoice Feedback Competition, I thought it was a bit mean to just pick 10 people everyone who entered is going to get a brand new t-shirt! We are currently printing them up and we’ll be sending them very soon.
If you have not tried it yet why not signup and have a look around and while your there add me as a friend: http://www.greenvoice.com/users/155-andrew_nez and leave me a comment!
