maniacal rage

Thanks to everyone who signed up to test my weblog application. I released the first beta today—hopefully this beta process will be swift and I'll release to the public in a week or so.

This is the first project I've done using Rails for mass release, and I have to say that the process was fast, fun and a great learning experience. I've only recently begun using functional and unit testing in Rails—something I should have been doing from the beginning but wasn't—and I love it. Never has it been so easy to test and debug an application. Rails constantly surprises me.

The only low point in the development and testing process was getting the app to deploy at Dreamhost, whose Rails implementation is just downright difficult and maddening at times. It's frustrating that DH can't seem to get it going correctly (a while back they upgraded to Rails 1.1 and broke everyone's sites because of errors in the upgrade process, and had to roll back to 1.0 because of it). Luckily, with plenty of help from the Rails IRC channel and about three hours of searching Google, I manage to concoct a work-around for all of the silly FCGI issues DH has and was able to install the app on Dreamhost trouble-free. Hopefully my testers will have the same experience.

As I've said before: If you want good Rails hosting, go with Segpub. They are the official hosting provider selection for my weblog application, and I don't get any compensation for saying that. I know I sound like a broken record, but I can't say it enough.

I'm going to switch this site over to the new app in a day or two, once I find the time.

Speaking of hosts, I got a few emails from readers who asked me why, after expelling so much praise for Segpub, I would host the podcast and short films at Dreamhost. The answer is actually pretty simple: Dreamhost offers a shitload of bandwidth and disk space, and I don't care about support when I'm basically just hosting files.

Here's what I mean: Segpub offers impeccable service and quality, and beyond fair pricing for their services. What this means is that they don't oversell on bandwidth and disk space like other, "cheap" hosting providers. At Segpub I get more than enough space and bandwidth (and it's gone up significantly as Segpub has built business and expanded), and I pay a fair price for it. But that price isn't less than ten dollars a month, which is what most people are looking for. I know you've heard it a million times, but it's true: you get what you pay for. And Segpub really delivers.

But then there's Dreamhost. Where I pay less than sixteen bucks a month and have over sixty-seven gigabytes of disk space and nearly two terabytes of bandwidth a month. Do you understand how ridiculous that is? There's no way in hell Dreamhost has that much space to give to every customer. They oversell like crazy, and, chances are, I'll never come anywhere near those numbers anyway. But they're cheap and the space is plentiful, and that's all I care about for the podcast and films.

Now, if I had to run a large web app, I wouldn't choose Dreamhost. Their support is slow and hard to come by, and their control panel—while full-featured—is extremely slow and clunky. But, for fifteen bucks a month, I'm hosting over ten domains there with tons of files, our films, the podcast, et cetera, with space and bandwidth to spare. Of course, it goes down every now and then and dealing with Rails apps is a nightmare, but it works well enough for my purposes.

So there you have it: If you need good, fast, quality hosting and excellent support, choose Segpub. If you don't care and you just need server space, choose someone like Dreamhost. But don't say I didn't warn you.

This site is hosted by Segment Publishing and has been for just over two years. Segpub is a fantastic hosting company with unparalleled support and, quite frankly, the fastest Ruby on Rails hosting on the planet. If you're on Dreamhost or TextDrive right now, you have no idea how fast Rails can be when hosted properly—I urge you to look into Segpub if you're looking to host Rails sites, especially larger, mission-critical applications. I get no compensation for anything I'm saying here, or for referrals. I'm just being honest.

I've spent the last five weeks developing a rather large events management site using Rails, and we launched a week ago with Segpub and the results have been nothing less than perfect. Insanely fast application speeds and great support to work out the kinks (all of which I created).

The more I work with Rails, the more I fall in love with it. The past five weeks have been a ton of work, but it's actually been, well, fun, which is not something most people can say about building a large web app. As the popularity of Rails increases, Segpub is going to prove invaluable to people who need their app to work quickly and pain-free. I'm telling you—start now.

And speaking of that five weeks: A majority of my non-work time was been spent sitting around and sleeping, trying to build energy, so everything else suffered. The podcast took an unexpected hiatus, but is coming back this week, and I haven't uploaded any of the photos I've taken over the past several weeks. I'm mostly playing catch-up at this point, but I'm getting there.