tag:blog.hasmanythrough.com,2006-02-27:/tag/hostinghas_many :through - hosting2008-01-24T13:05:49-08:00tag:blog.hasmanythrough.com,2006-02-27:Article/1002008-01-24T13:05:49-08:002008-01-24T13:26:44-08:00One Hundred, Two Hosts, Three EnginesJosh Susser<p>I started this blog nearly two years ago. In its first incarnation, it was running on the venerable <a href="http://typosphere.org/">Typo</a> engine, hosted on <a href="http://dreamhost.com/">DreamHost</a>. About a year ago I switched over from Typo to <a href="http://mephistoblog.com/">Mephisto</a>, still on DreamHost. Typo was a great start for me, and Mephisto was a good change when Typo was having some issues with the project. (Typo seems to be back on track these days, and has been for a while.) DreamHost was really cheap to get started on with hosting a Rails app, but I outgrew it in a couple months and have just been living in pain and denial ever since.</p>
<p>Now it's nearly two years later, and <strong>this is my 100th post on this blog</strong>. Coincidentally, it's another big transition for me. As of now this blog is hosted by the awesome force of nature that is <a href="http://engineyard.com/">EngineYard</a>, and it's running on blog software of my own creation.</p><p>I started this blog nearly two years ago. In its first incarnation, it was running on the venerable <a href="http://typosphere.org/">Typo</a> engine, hosted on <a href="http://dreamhost.com/">DreamHost</a>. About a year ago I switched over from Typo to <a href="http://mephistoblog.com/">Mephisto</a>, still on DreamHost. Typo was a great start for me, and Mephisto was a good change when Typo was having some issues with the project. (Typo seems to be back on track these days, and has been for a while.) DreamHost was really cheap to get started on with hosting a Rails app, but I outgrew it in a couple months and have just been living in pain and denial ever since.</p>
<p>Now it's nearly two years later, and <strong>this is my 100th post on this blog</strong>. Coincidentally, it's another big transition for me. As of now this blog is hosted by the awesome force of nature that is <a href="http://engineyard.com/">EngineYard</a>, and it's running on blog software of my own creation.</p>
<p>If you've used DreamHost to run a Rails app, you'll instantly understand why I wasn't happy there. As the folks at DreamHost <a href="http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/01/07/how-ruby-on-rails-could-be-much-better/">have said themselves</a>, Rails sucks on a shared hosting setup, and if you're doing anything more than a toy app, it's not something you want to suffer with. (I should say that in all other ways I've been quite happy with DreamHost, and am going to remain a customer for my non-Rails needs.) My blog has grown and with over 6,000 subscribers it can be a real nightmare when I post a popular article and things start breaking. Now, I'm not crazy enough to pay EngineYard's rates just for my blog (but for a money-making app, I'd be crazy not to). But EngineYard has been good enough to sponsor this blog by providing me a slice to host it on. My experience with them through the setup and transition has been excellent, and I couldn't be happier with the service.</p>
<p>As for the new blog software, I'd say yes, I was a bit crazy to write my own system. But I read Geoffrey Grosenbach's post about the benefits of <a href="http://nubyonrails.com/articles/about-this-blog-memcached">writing your own blog software</a>, and I realized that's what I wanted to do. I guess I sort of outgrew Mephisto in a kind of retrograde way. Mephisto is a solid piece of software, but it's too big for me, and that makes it hard to modify to do what I want. It's development has also lagged - no new release in over a year! And, I wanted something that ran on Rails 2. Plus, Liquid is exactly the wrong choice for me running my own blog. So I took a month of weekends and random evenings and wrote Teldra. She's just about 500 lines of code (not counting plugins), and does everything I want in a blog, but nothing more. Basically, I wanted a blog that didn't duplicate the things I could already do as a Rails developer. I am perfectly capable of editing a view template, so I don't need a theme system in my blog. I can scp assets to my account, so I don't need an asset manager. It's amazing how many features become irrelevant when you can use your innate developer powers.</p>
<p>Some friends have already asked me if they can use Teldra, and the answer is "yes, eventually." Teldra will probably be open-sourced at some point. She's certainly destined for some significant exposure, as half the reason I wrote her was as grist for a talk I'll be giving later this year. By the way, thanks to <a href="http://dreamcafe.com/">Steven Brust</a> for his blessings on using the name.</p>
<p>While Teldra seems ready for prime time, she still has a few rough edges. I expect the feed will refill since I changed the ID schema to conform to the standard (Mephisto is bad about that), and some of the UI looks a bit ragged. But now that I've got a nice platform to build on, those things will get fixed in short order. If you see problems, feel free to leave a comment to let me know. Oh yeah, I've been playing nice and keeping around some redirects to support the old Typo-style URLs for the last year, but I've finally turned that off. If an old URL breaks, there's likely a new one that does what you want. Search works, have fun with it.</p>
<p>Alright, now that all that's out of the way, maybe I can get back to writing all those articles I've been putting off since I couldn't stand my blog dying everytime I posted something new.</p>tag:blog.hasmanythrough.com,2006-02-27:Article/172006-03-28T20:25:00-08:002008-01-24T00:19:29-08:00hosts upgrade to 1.1 - DOOM!Josh Susser<p>Seems like a lot of shared hosts upgraded to Rails 1.1 today, breaking many apps including every Typo blog installation. DreamHost (my host), TextDrive, Site5, etc.</p>
<p>Unfortunately the DreamHost upgrade was so broke that the rails command won't work (so no generating a new app), and neither will rake. Looks like someone forget to test things! But the upshot is you can't use the rake command to get back on a frozen 1.0 release.</p>
<p>Here's a workaround that should let your app run:</p>
<pre><code>cd [RAILS_ROOT]/vendor
svn export "http://dev.rubyonrails.org/svn/rails/tags/rel_1-0-0" rails
</code></pre>
<p>This will create a rails directory in vendor that holds the 1.0 release, and should let your app operate again. Worked for me.</p>
<p><strong>UPDATE:</strong> Sorry about the previous tip that used a tarball of the 1.0 release. The tarball was actually of a project with the Rails release in the vendor directory, so it was slightly ugly to unpack. The svn recipe above does work for me - I just verified it to make sure.</p><p>Seems like a lot of shared hosts upgraded to Rails 1.1 today, breaking many apps including every Typo blog installation. DreamHost (my host), TextDrive, Site5, etc.</p>
<p>Unfortunately the DreamHost upgrade was so broke that the rails command won't work (so no generating a new app), and neither will rake. Looks like someone forget to test things! But the upshot is you can't use the rake command to get back on a frozen 1.0 release.</p>
<p>Here's a workaround that should let your app run:</p>
<pre><code>cd [RAILS_ROOT]/vendor
svn export "http://dev.rubyonrails.org/svn/rails/tags/rel_1-0-0" rails
</code></pre>
<p>This will create a rails directory in vendor that holds the 1.0 release, and should let your app operate again. Worked for me.</p>
<p><strong>UPDATE:</strong> Sorry about the previous tip that used a tarball of the 1.0 release. The tarball was actually of a project with the Rails release in the vendor directory, so it was slightly ugly to unpack. The svn recipe above does work for me - I just verified it to make sure.</p>tag:blog.hasmanythrough.com,2006-02-27:Article/52006-03-01T06:10:00-08:002008-01-24T00:19:28-08:00DreamHost: getting to stats pagesJosh Susser<p>I use DreamHost for my webhosting and so far I've been generally pretty pleased with their package and support. I've yet to try a major Rails app, but I have this Typo blog running and a couple toy apps I built for friends.</p>
<p>Minor annoyance: I discovered that deploying a Rails app on a domain blocks access to the Analog stats pages. I pinged tech support and they came back with this quick fix. Just add the following lines to the <code>.htaccess</code> file, immediately after the <code>RewriteEngine on</code> directive.</p>
<pre><code># enable analog stats pages
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/stats/(.*)$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/failed_auth.html$
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [L]
</code></pre>
<p>Now go to <code>yourdomain.com/stats</code> (you'll need to authenticate) and you can see your site's statistics again. And your Rails app should still work just fine (which is the important part). Wasn't that easy?</p><p>I use DreamHost for my webhosting and so far I've been generally pretty pleased with their package and support. I've yet to try a major Rails app, but I have this Typo blog running and a couple toy apps I built for friends.</p>
<p>Minor annoyance: I discovered that deploying a Rails app on a domain blocks access to the Analog stats pages. I pinged tech support and they came back with this quick fix. Just add the following lines to the <code>.htaccess</code> file, immediately after the <code>RewriteEngine on</code> directive.</p>
<pre><code># enable analog stats pages
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/stats/(.*)$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/failed_auth.html$
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [L]
</code></pre>
<p>Now go to <code>yourdomain.com/stats</code> (you'll need to authenticate) and you can see your site's statistics again. And your Rails app should still work just fine (which is the important part). Wasn't that easy?</p>