I am planning to use Ruby to develop a website which will be hosted on
Windows using IIS, Access 2000 and SSL.
Having ** never ** done any kind of Web development before, what would the
Gurus recommend, in terms of software tools, Ruby packages, etc. required.
Any suggestions will be highly appreciated.
TIA,
– shanko
I am planning to use Ruby to develop a website which will be hosted on
Windows using IIS, Access 2000 and SSL.
Congratulations! A number of folks here have built web sites using Ruby.
Having ** never ** done any kind of Web development before, what would the
Gurus recommend, in terms of software tools, Ruby packages, etc. required.
Question: Was the choice of platform/web server/database yours? I ask because you might do better using another web server
(Apache) and/or another database (PostgreSQL or MySQL).
What is the site meant to do? Are you sure you need a database?
Will the content be mostly static (i.e., changes once in a while) or dynamic (changes moment to moment, like slashdot, for example)?
Will you need to track user preferences? Manage a shopping cart? Process credit cards?
More detail would be good to help us help you.
James
I have no reason to believe that you need anything special to make your
website. Specially in terms of Ruby packages. Ruby comes with cgi by
default. I don’t know about database access, but it probably does too.
I would not suggest eRuby since it’s your first project, leave it for
the second.
I don’t know any HTML editor for Windows, so I can’t recommend. They are
not necessary but some are certainly very nice.
It’d help to know what you intend to do on the website.
Cheers,
Daniel Carrera
Graduate Teaching Assistant. Math Dept.
University of Maryland. (301) 405-5137
On Tue, 31 Dec 2002, Shashank Date wrote:
I am planning to use Ruby to develop a website which will be hosted on
Windows using IIS, Access 2000 and SSL.Having ** never ** done any kind of Web development before, what would the
Gurus recommend, in terms of software tools, Ruby packages, etc. required.Any suggestions will be highly appreciated.
TIA,
– shanko
Shashank Date wrote:
I am planning to use Ruby to develop a website which will be hosted on
Windows using IIS, Access 2000 and SSL.Having ** never ** done any kind of Web development before, what would the
Gurus recommend, in terms of software tools, Ruby packages, etc. required.
Toss in a Wiki.
I suspect there are several Ruby Wikis out there.
Any further site behaviors should emerge from the Wiki, via tiny tweaks to
the source. For example, if you add code to the Wiki that searches for date
strings (in the form DD-Mmm-YYYY), and if you add a Calendar page that
reports the results of that search formatted as a Calendar, your Website
now has a calendar, >without< all the crud that a traditional calendar
would need.
The latest (unreleased) zip of this Wiki does that:
http://www.xpsd.com/MiniRubyWiki
The “Wiki strategy” will slash your development time down to almost
nothing, and get your writers boosting in content on the first day.
–
Phlip
greencheese.org
– Please state the nature of the programming emergency –
I’ve used, and can recommend, Evrsoft’s 1stPage. Came in very useful
when I was teaching myself HTML, and remained handy even afterwards.
martin
Daniel Carrera dcarrera@math.umd.edu wrote:
I don’t know any HTML editor for Windows, so I can’t recommend. They are
not necessary but some are certainly very nice.
jbritt@ruby-doc.org wrote in message
Question: Was the choice of platform/web server/database yours?
I ask because you might do better using another web server
(Apache) and/or another database (PostgreSQL or MySQL).
No I do not have a choice (for now …)
What is the site meant to do? Are you sure you need a database?
The site is meant to allow registered users to securely transfer sensitive
information which will update a database on the back-end and automatically
generate an email to the site owners. They will process this information and
return the results back into the database which will again email to the
respective users that their work has been done and will allow them to see
the results. So yes, I am pretty sure I need a database (which my client
currently insists on having Access 2000).
I see some use of forms here. And session management, security management,
server side scripting etc.
Will the content be mostly static (i.e., changes once in a while) or
dynamic (changes moment to moment,
like slashdot, for example)?
Mostly static.
Will you need to track user preferences? Manage a shopping cart? Process
credit cards?
Ummm … user preferences: not initially. But something like a shopping cart
yes. Process credit cards is a “nice to have”.
More detail would be good to help us help you.
Thanks for you prompt response.
And a very Happy New Year !
“Daniel Carrera” dcarrera@math.umd.edu wrote in message
I have no reason to believe that you need anything special to make your
website. Specially in terms of Ruby packages. Ruby comes with cgi by
default. I don’t know about database access, but it probably does too.
Well, except that I have to still convince my ISP to support Ruby.
I would not suggest eRuby since it’s your first project, leave it for
the second.
Ok, thanks for letting me know …
I don’t know any HTML editor for Windows, so I can’t recommend. They are
not necessary but some are certainly very nice.
Yes, I will hunt for a good (preferably free) HTML editor.
It’d help to know what you intend to do on the website.
Please see my earlier post.
Thanks and Very Happy New Year !
– shanko
“Phlip” phlipcpp@yahoo.com wrote in message
Toss in a Wiki.
I do not understand why I would need a Wiki.
Any further site behaviors should emerge from the Wiki, via tiny tweaks to
the source. For example, if you add code to the Wiki that searches for
date
strings (in the form DD-Mmm-YYYY), and if you add a Calendar page that
reports the results of that search formatted as a Calendar, your Website
now has a calendar, >without< all the crud that a traditional calendar
would need.
Sorry, I am still at loss.
The latest (unreleased) zip of this Wiki does that:
http://www.xpsd.com/MiniRubyWikiThe “Wiki strategy” will slash your development time down to almost
nothing, and get your writers boosting in content on the first day.
What writers ? Please pardon my complete ignorance in this matter.
I will have to take a look at it.
Thanks and have a Very Happy New Year !
– shanko
“Martin DeMello” martindemello@yahoo.com wrote in message
I’ve used, and can recommend, Evrsoft’s 1stPage. Came in very useful
when I was teaching myself HTML, and remained handy even afterwards.
Will check it out …
Thanks and have a Very Happy New Year !
Shashank Date wrote:
“Phlip” phlipcpp@yahoo.com wrote in message
Toss in a Wiki.
I do not understand why I would need a Wiki.
Then why do you need a Web site?
Sorry, I am still at loss.
I leapt into topics that assumed you were familiar with both Wiki
architecture and their common uses.
The point is to let features emerge from their open context. The
alternatives, such as MS Frontpage, work under the assumption that
authoring must be secure and must use pure complicated HTML. They cause
problems and then sell the solutions.
–
Phlip
greencheese.org
– DARE to resist drug-war profiteering –
Happy New Year!
On the database issue and your client’s interest in using Access 2000:
As I understand it, Access 2000 is not a database server, its a desktop
database program and is most suited to a single-user environment
without “mission critical” data (which could easily be lost if multiple
users are reading and writing over a network). Even Microsoft
recognizes this – they acknowledge that, in a multi-user (multiple
readers and writers) environment, Access 2000 is, at best, a desktop
front-end to a more robust enterprise level database server system. Of
course, they recommend MS SQL Server. If I were choosing, I would pick
the free open-source, ACID compliant, postgresql.
And there are Ruby tools available to work with postgresql and mysql.
jbritt@ruby-doc.org wrote in message
Question: Was the choice of platform/web server/database yours?
I ask because you might do better using another web server
(Apache) and/or another database (PostgreSQL or MySQL).No I do not have a choice (for now …)
What is the site meant to do? Are you sure you need a database?
The site is meant to allow registered users to securely transfer
sensitive information which will update a database on the back-end and
automatically generate an email to the site owners. They will process
this information and return the results back into the database which
will again email to the respective users that their work has been done
and will allow them to see the results. So yes, I am pretty sure I
need a database (which my client currently insists on having Access
2000).
[snip]
On Tuesday, December 31, 2002, at 08:04 PM, Shashank Date wrote:
And a very Happy New Year !
“Shashank Date” sdate@kc.rr.com wrote in message
news:sTqQ9.36879$eB.654165@twister.kc.rr.com…
… I will hunt for a good (preferably free) HTML editor.
HTML editor (free)
Overview (from this site):
HTML-Kit is a full-featured editor and an integrated development
environment designed to help HTML, XHTML, XML and script authors
to edit, format, lookup help, validate, preview and publish web pages.
Newcomers to web page development can benefit from letting it point
out errors and provide suggestions on how to create standards compliant
pages.
Experts can save time spent on common tasks using the highly
customizable and extensible editor while maintaining full control over
multiple file types including HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSL, JavaScript,
VBScript, ASP, PHP, JSP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, VB, C/C++, C#,
Delphi / Pascal, Lisp, SQL, and more.
Write Plugins using Ruby (and others) -
http://www.chamisplace.com/asp/hkp.asp?f=hkpgen
daz
I leapt into topics that assumed you were familiar with both Wiki
architecture and their common uses.The point is to let features emerge from their open context. The
alternatives, such as MS Frontpage, work under the assumption that
authoring must be secure and must use pure complicated HTML. They cause
problems and then sell the solutions.
That’s something of an overly broad generalization; there is much in-between. Wikis are great tools, but not every web site can or
should be a Wiki.
Such advocacy makes it sound like a bit of a “Golden Hammer.”
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GoldenHammer
James
On the database issue and your client’s interest in using Access 2000:
As I understand it, Access 2000 is not a database server, its a desktop
database program and is most suited to a single-user environment
without “mission critical” data (which could easily be lost if multiple
users are reading and writing over a network). Even Microsoft
recognizes this – they acknowledge that, in a multi-user (multiple
readers and writers) environment, Access 2000 is, at best, a desktop
front-end to a more robust enterprise level database server system. Of
course, they recommend MS SQL Server. If I were choosing, I would pick
the free open-source, ACID compliant, postgresql.And there are Ruby tools available to work with postgresql and mysql.
If possible, database interaction should go through an abstraction layer such that swapping out a particular database doesn’t break
stuff. You can start out with Access, and should the day come when it fails to scale, replace it with something better.
I believe the Ruby DBI code (http://ruby-dbi.sourceforge.net/) will let you work with Access via Win32OLE and ADO, or with ODBC.
James
“dooby co.uk>” <dooby@d10.karoo. wrote in message
HTML editor (free)
Write Plugins using Ruby (and others) -
http://www.chamisplace.com/asp/hkp.asp?f=hkpgen
Cool ! Thanks …
I recall having spyware problems with HTML-kit. This was about a year or 8 months ago.
James
jbritt@ruby-doc.org wrote in message
news:NGEDJNFKAGDNDOIPFPBDCEDBDDAA.jbritt@ruby-doc.org…
HTML editor (free)
I recall having spyware problems with HTML-kit. This was about a year
or 8 months ago.James
Not spyware and no ads.
The first thing I did was to click on Help which woke up the firewall
because it opened an internal browser window to access the online
help.
I see now that it does this in an external window (Build 292).
As you’ll know, documentation can soon fatten a download and soon become
out of date, so not much is included. Online resources are huge.
<>
I see that Chami is trying to get it running on RH Linux + Wine:
http://www.chamisplace.com/asp/supportdoc.asp?id=H000134
</>
Hadn’t intended to wander [OT].
daz