1st Easy Blog

All our latest news, articles and offers

Blog Home

Category: ‘Ruby on Rails’

---

---

We’ve been busy testing, testing and re-testing, and are very happy to launch support for Rails 3 on our shared hosting platform. As part of the work to offer Rails 3, we have added support for bundler, a useful tool for managing your application dependencies (you are now free to install your own gems). Bundler can also be used on existing Rails 2.3.x and Sinatra hosting accounts.

Take a look at our new and updated knowledgebase articles (below) for all the details, or contact our support team if you have any additional questions.

• New: How do I set up a Rails 3 account with bundler?
• Updated: Can I install gems onto my Rails hosting account?
• Updated: How do I set up a database for my Rails application?
• Updated: Example Capistrano deployment script for customers using bundler

---

---

We’re supporting the 3rd annual Ruby on Rails eXchange, organised by Skills Matter and taking place on the 3rd December 2009, at the Skills Matter eXchange, London.

The feature packed day will be structured around six talks and two Parkbench panel discussions, with sessions by leading experts Amy Hoy, Jason Davies (Non-relational Databases and World Domination), David Black (Rails Choices), Frederick Cheung (Databases – Have it Your Way), Sven Fuchs, and Andrew Chalkley (Building iPhone / Android Apps for a Rails Backend). Full program information and details on how to get tickets are available from the Skills Matter website.

Take advantage of this great opportunity to improve and share your skills and ideas with other members of the RoR community – and if you’ve already got tickets, enjoy the event.

As usual, attendees are welcome to take (no obligation) trial Rails accounts with us so that newly learned skills can be put to the test – sign up details are here.

---

---

As several of our customers can attest to, we have in the past had problems with those who need to access any /admin links on their web applications. This is due to it being picked up by Parallels Pro to redirect you to your site administration interface. We have previously been able to change this behaviour, but our changes have always been undone whenever updates have been applied to the server meaning that we have had to ask customers to use work-arounds on their sites.

We have now managed to find a Parallels-approved way of renaming the site admin link, which persists through server updates, so our customers can now have their /admin URLs back if they wish!

If you have a shared hosting account with us and you want to reclaim /admin as your own, please submit a ticket and we will do this for you.

If you have a managed Parallels dedicated server with us and wish to implement these changes, please follow the instructions here: How do I stop Parallels Pro/Ensim redirecting requests to /admin on my server? (or if that all sounds a bit technical, just submit a ticket)

---

---

We have just installed the latest Rails 2.3.4 gem onto our shared Rails hosting servers. Apache has been restarted so Passenger is now ready to serve your apps using this version. This release is a security fix, as outlined on the Ruby on Rails blog, so you should update your app’s environment.rb file to use this version as soon as possible.

To use this version, just modify your environment.rb file so that your RAILS_GEM_VERSION is set to 2.3.4, then restart your app as outlined in our Knowledge Base:

RAILS_GEM_VERSION = '2.3.4'

As always, if you you have any queries about upgrading your app, just open a ticket at http://support.1steasy.com

---

---

Over at his RubyLearning blog Satish Talim is running a mini-series of articles covering Sinatra – a micro-framework for creating (equally mini) apps. Published over the next few days, the articles adopt the format of interviews with several leading Rubyists, of whom he asks questions such as “Which area of Sinatra should a beginner pay particular attention to?” and “What type of projects should a beginner work on to gain more expertise in Sinatra?”.

Two of the series have been published so far, with contributions from Jeremy Evans and Corey Donohoe.

If any of this inspires you to learn more, keep an eye on Satish’s site for details of one of his “Introduction to Sinatra” online courses, the latest of which has recently been announced. And of course, you’re welcome to a trial Sinatra hosting account with us so that you can put your new skills to the test – let us know and we’ll do the rest!

---

---

---

---

RubyLearning are running a third “Introduction to Sinatra” online course. Early bird (discounted) registration is now open for the course, which starts on 11th July 2009 and runs for one week.

As part of our support for RubyLearning, we’re providing Sinatra-enabled trial accounts to course participants who are eager to hone their newly acquired skills – just get in touch or leave your details, and we’ll do the rest!

Possible articles of interest…

• 20+ Rubyists are using Sinatra – Do you? – a nice introduction featuring the views of leading Rubyists and why, when and how they work with Sinatra.
• Sinatra, a Ruby web framework, and Why It Matters.
• Announcing Support for Sinatra applications on our Rails hosting accounts.

---

---

We’ve just finished rolling out upgrades to Ruby Enterprise Edition on our shared Rails servers to protect against the BigDecimal vulnerability listed at ruby-lang.org

All our shared Rails hosting accounts are now protected against this vulnerability.

---

---

RubyLearning have announced a second run of their successful online Sinatra course, which we’re once again very happy to be supporting.

The week-long introductory course begins on Saturday 2nd May, and covers the essential features of Sinatra. Early bird registration will entitle you to a discount on the already minimal course fees, so if you’re interested in learning how to use Sinatra to create mini applications, head over to the course synopsis page. Based on the success of the first run, it should be well worth your time!

If you’re already a Sinatra veteran, you might be interested to know that Tim recently announced support for Sinatra applications on our Rails hosting accounts.

As before, one-month trial accounts are available to course participants – just leave your details, and we’ll do the rest.

---

---

Satish was awarded with Ruby Inside’s “Top Ruby Teacher in 2008″ accolade in December 2008.

---