Ruby on Rails... ANYONE?

8 replies
Hi, is there any Ruby on Rails Experts around here? Or anyone that can help me with a couple General questions i cannot find answers to, and then potentially hire/get a referral to - someone interested and believes in what we're building, and knows his stuff, for either one-off feature integration & technology upgrades, or even join us a long-term team member.

In short, im a content guy with a content site. I've a custom built Ruby on Rails site, and have one professional re-design, both which cost me good money. Im basically pleased with the results, but the programmer that did the foundation design and structure building, as well as the redesign doesn't speak the same language as me, bottom line, and is not good at managing and coordinating timelines, and most importantly - paying attention to detail at the level i expect. Im former military, so my standards are pretty high in this regard.

Im even considering learning Ruby on Rails, and am doing some research to see how hard it would be, as doing so would allow me better control over all aspects of the sites and business' growth... But it's not something im particularly interested in, nor is it the best use of my time... It's more of a "out of frustration" and feeling like if i don't do it, no one else will do it right.
I know this is not an uncommon attitude, and is formed from experience, but still i'd love to find someone that proves me wrong. I know if i can find the right person who gets what im doing, knows their end, they'll see that IVE MUCH MORE THAN HANDLED MY END.

Im definitely not a programmer. I've learned some html, and can get around site admin stuff, can use templates and build minisites, can setup a wordpress blog, ive been using a template based program on the mac called rapidweaver for my personal site and other side project sites as well... But this is my business site, this is MY BABY! I've given it all the best, and from my knowledge and experience am prepared for substantial growth as we move into the coming phases with the upcoming launch of the 2.0 site & product. But their are still some features, functions, design tweaks, new header design, and structural question marks... These parts of the plan that require skills and expertise i do not have.

So, is it accurate to say/is this how the pieces of the bigger picture for programming with RoR come together...

I understand Ruby on Rails is an advanced but simplified, yet very effective programming language.

Just correct me whenever or wherever im wrong... This is how i learn.

It allows things that would take a lot of time to do with a language like php or javascript or whatever, a lot less time..

This is because the basic engineering is intelligent and allows you to set it up and then type things in that don't just represent something i.e <b> = bold or whatever, but it can actually answer questions... i.e. 4+2 = 6 etc.

In addition it is similar to say wordpress and rapidweaver for example, because you can just take "plugins" that are already created by someone, and easily add them.

This saves a significant amount of time, effort, and is just substantially more efficient.

Now, given that's all accurate, here's where the questions and confusion comes in...

How hard is it add these "plugins" called "Gems?"

How expensive is reasonable to pay/or how much time does it REALLY take for someone to add even major features, if i found a "gem" template/platform/structure i like that is open-source and free that i want to integrate in to my site?

Now in terms of managing the site design tweaks, a new header, some structural stuff...

I just dont know how/what is modifiable, i need a simplified way of understanding WHAT it takes to make a design tweek, add a feature, change the menu layout etc... So for someone who thinks like me, this is a problem.

Cuz that means i can go to 4 different people, with THE EXACT wireframe, the diagram of what i want it to look like, the page navigation and sales funnel from.. "you click this, and it takes you here, and then that takes you to this page.." and get a much different "Estimate" for how much that would cost.

If i had 10's of thousands to throw away/charge on a platinum corporate expense account, from a boss that said make this happen, i dont care the cost... Then it would be simple, and i wouldn't even care to know, what it was worth, or how much it costs.

But im bootstrapping, and i don't have money to waste.

So never mind that i don't understand how exactly to code that to actually make that appear... I don't even have a scope of the kind/amount of work involved..

Which leads me to finding the answer to this next question...

Is it like Ruby on rails is the computer, HTML is the specific software programs, and ruby gems are accelerated applications that you can plug right into enhance/modify the operating system?

Could you clarify this relationship?


If you are still with me, i greatly appreciate it, this is my first post around here, hopefully i can find what im looking for, or get some clarification to some questions that are kind of stalling my progress.

Best Regards,
Jamie
#rails #ruby
  • Profile picture of the author darthdeus
    Originally Posted by sgtsavvy View Post

    Hi, is there any Ruby on Rails Experts around here?
    Here is one

    Originally Posted by sgtsavvy View Post

    Im definitely not a programmer.
    Ruby on Rails is both very effective and intimidating. It can simplify a lot of things, but it requires you to grasp the whole concept. It's not easy to start, but once you get it, it's more effective than anything else.

    Originally Posted by sgtsavvy View Post

    How hard is it add these "plugins" called "Gems?"
    There are actually gems and plugins, two separate things Gem is a generic Ruby library, and Rails also supports plugins that are tailored just for Rails. Both are very easy to use, usually one line to install.

    Originally Posted by sgtsavvy View Post

    How expensive is reasonable to pay/or how much time does it REALLY take for someone to add even major features, if i found a "gem" template/platform/structure i like that is open-source and free that i want to integrate in to my site?
    Some features that are widely popular, like commenting, voting, etc. are very simple to implement. Whole RoR community is running on opensource, so you don't have to pay for licences either.

    Originally Posted by sgtsavvy View Post

    Is it like Ruby on rails is the computer, HTML is the specific software programs, and ruby gems are accelerated applications that you can plug right into enhance/modify the operating system?

    Could you clarify this relationship?
    Something like this, gems and plugins are basically providing plug-and-play functionality. It's like when you build a house, if you're carpenter, you can make the furniture yourself, but it's almost always better, cheaper and faster to just buy the furniture (use a gem). Unless you want for example very customized table ... then you might need to hire a carpenter to do it for you.

    Originally Posted by sgtsavvy View Post

    If you are still with me, i greatly appreciate it, this is my first post around here, hopefully i can find what im looking for, or get some clarification to some questions that are kind of stalling my progress.

    Best Regards,
    Jamie
    Hope you're happy with my answers If you got some more questions, feel free to send me a PM or contact me on GTalk or email at darthdeus(at)gmail(dot)com
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    • Profile picture of the author sgtsavvy
      thanks! But can any language of code be used with my ruby site... so say i get the source code for something that's in php or whatever, can that be converted or translated somehow so that it can integrate with the existing code. And how much time does it take to integrate gems and plugins for someone who is a ruby expert? i mean, i know that it cannot just be summed up to x = 2 hours hard and fast... of course, because there are always many variables, but can you give me an example, or idea of how much time it'd take for some of the following, or total estimate? i appreciate it folks!

      -Menu bar "Sparkle & Enhancements" (i.e. something with the speaker-broadcast-music "theme" a la buttons on a stereo system. (play around with.)
      Or even just making them bigger and color coded or tabs or something… it is just pretty boring the way it is.

      -Streaming text-bar under menu..
      i.e. twitter.com
      I like the way this banner rotates.

      -Incorporate an affiliate program.

      -Attractive & Fitting Video Backdrop "finesse-work."

      -Rotating Header Graphic.
      (easily editable)
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    • Profile picture of the author Revolves
      @darthdeus

      Thanks for quite a detailed answer above. I had one other question. What is the list of possible hosting solutions for a rails site? I've heard a lot online that shared hosting normally won't make the cut. Thus, I was always worried about the cost-effectiveness of rails for say, indie developers just running personal sites, compared to say, PHP.

      Can you shine more light on that aspect?

      Thanks!

      -Revolves
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  • Profile picture of the author mikeonrails
    It is possible to mix ruby with PHP on a site, but I would never recommend it because a)It is difficult to do(you'll have to modify your webserver settings+other headaches) and b) You can probably get something in ruby which does the same thing. Some exceptions might be completely standalone apps that you cannot get in ruby... I just set up wordpress with my rails site and it's working great.

    You can get someone to translate a php script into a ruby script... but keep in mind they will be doing it by hand and will charge you accordingly.

    I have integrated facebook/twitter,user authentication, flickr, webscraping, etc... gems with a times ranging from 30min - 3hrs per gem. It all depends on what the gem does. Keep in mind that a gem is not a user-facing plugin(like with wordpress), it's more accurately a programming library. This means the programmer must write code which interfaces with the gems. Sometimes you need to change the core of your application to get the gem to work(like with authentication), which can take a lot of time.

    -Menu bar "Sparkle & Enhancements" (i.e. something with the speaker-broadcast-music "theme" a la buttons on a stereo system. (play around with.)
    Or even just making them bigger and color coded or tabs or something… it is just pretty boring the way it is.


    -Streaming text-bar under menu.. i.e. twitter.com
    This is minimal ruby work(just to access the DB for whatever info you want) and a javascript plugin.

    -Incorporate an affiliate program.
    You can sign up with something like commission junction(which gives you step-by-step instructions) or code it in ruby.

    -Attractive & Fitting Video Backdrop "finesse-work."
    This does not really involve ruby programming. Look into a flash or HTML video solution.

    -Rotating Header Graphic.
    This does not really involve ruby programming. You can do it entirely with a javascript plugin, or code the logic in ruby if you really wanted to.
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  • Profile picture of the author ramona_livegood
    I'm currently working on a course for Ruby on Rails, its a more longer term project. More like a fast guide, I'm releasing it in June 2011. In OOP world, Ruby is fantastic!
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  • Profile picture of the author darthdeus
    The best solution to start with is probably Heroku. They provide cloud hosting where you pay only for what you need, it's very easy to upgrade/downgrade and you start for free. Heroku runs on Amazon EC2, so it's very stable and fast.

    Another option is Engine Yard, which is also running on EC2.

    Last option is to set up custom VPS, in which case I suggest Linode, or alternatively Slicehost.
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  • Profile picture of the author kersimp
    I agree with darthdeus. I would also recommend Heroku and Engine Yard for hosting solution because of the same reasons as he said. I would also like to recommend SimpleDeployr, which you can use to install Ruby on Rails in just a couple of clicks.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jahnold
      lynda.com have a couple excellent RoR video training courses available if you decided you wanted learn the language. Kevin Skoglund the trainer is one of the best authors on there imo
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