Hello, World!
Posted by Ryan Rickerts
I just built up this snazzy application for showing off our beautiful family. I can’t wait to get started! But first, let me tell you how it works:
This site is hosted at RailsMachine. They host Ruby on Rails applications, which are my favorite to work with, but in a special way. For a fairly handsome monthly rate, I get a slice of their server called a VPS, or virtual private server. Basically, it means I can do whatever I want – upgrade the software, run special jobs, almost anything. They also include some pre-written tasks that help me set up my Rails application, which you are looking at right now.
This application is a copy of some open-source blogging software called Typo. It is a body of Ruby on Rails code designed for easily posting content to the web. Not that much different than what we were doing on Typepad, you say? Not much, except 1) I can host it at whatever domain name I choose (see your address bar, and 2) I own a copy of the code. So that means I can totally customize it, along with the server environment, to do almost anything I can imagine. Well, at least as much as quality, open-source web development software will let me.
So let’s just see what sort of cool stuff I can pull off. This is also a practice run for another project I am involved in called BicycleNorthwest.com. More on that later.
