hostingrails.com shout out..

[Chris Sund]

Hey group,

I just thought I would throw a plug out here for the hostingrails.com
web hosting site. The past day or so I've been working on writing my
first Capistrano routine and trying to get a portion of my web app
published. Their support and willingness to help has been awesome. If
someone is looking for a good place to start when deploying their apps
I would highly recommend them. They definitely get an A for awesome.


Chris

[Jake Cahoon]

-1

Sorry, you might have had a good experience but I've had a completely different experience.  I've only had bad experiences with shared plans and hostingrails.com is one of them.  I used them in the past and got burned.  Currently, my company's bugzilla server is hosted with them and frequently, our server neighbors hog all the cpu cycles.  For any kind of app that needs up time, VPS or dedicated is the way to go. 

I use Slicehost right now but Linode's prices are very intriguing.  

--
Jake Cahoon
M: 801-369-9813
Skype: jake.cahoon

[Joshua Needham]

Linode is great, affordable, and their support staff is very knowledgeable and friendly. 

Sincerely,

Joshua Needham

App Ventures, LLC

(801)726-8665

http://AppVenturesLLC.com

http://iPhoneAppBids.com

http://Twitter.com/iPhoneDevForum

Sent from my iPhone

[Chris Sund]

Hey Jake,

Thanks for the info, I've had a good experience on a "Getting Started" level. I plan to move to a VPS type solution once my app gets bigger or goes live. I appreciate the heads up. 

Chris Sund
Silhouette Solutions
801.850.8173

[Eric Berry]

I'm with Jake on this one too.

They are good for people who are absolute beginners and haven't used better, but as far as my experience goes, they are the last choice.  I always manage my own servers on slicehost, so I may be a bit biased, but if cost is the issue, blue hosting group might be better.  I hear they actually talk with their customers.  Try contacting hostingrails and you're in for a world of pain...  a world of pain.

Eric

[Adrian Madrid]

I gotta mention Blue Box Group (http://www.blueboxgrp.com/). They've been the best R/RoR hosting company I've dealt with. Very knowledgeable/responsive customer support. They surely go the extra mile in helping you get things going/fixed. And their prices are very competitive on the pricing considering their CS experience.

Adrian Madrid
My eBiz, Developer
3082 W. Maple Loop Dr
Lehi, UT 84043
801-341-3824

[Nathan Peel]

If you are referring to bluehost, I would have to disagree. Based on a
several experiences with different clients that used them.

[Charlie Sumpter]

I have to chime in on Bluehost. We'd heard a lot of good things about them, so we decided to give them a try (not for a RoR app...just for email hosting for a client needing about 50 accounts). Unfortunately we had a lot of issues with reliability of their email service. Finally I had a call with them wherein I was voicing my frustration, and their tech support agent told me flat out that they didn't really focus on providing services to businesses of that size and that I'd be best off to take my business elsewhere.

Good on them for telling the truth if that really was how they felt, but bad move for business. This was probably about 1.5 - 2 years ago now...hopefully they've improved.

Needless to say we relocated.

-Charlie

[BJ Neilsen]

Agreed, bluehost is retarded. I'm currently trying to deploy a ror app
for a friend and it's a nightmare. I'm loving SliceHost, though
admittedly the 256 slice is not for production apps. That's not really
about them, more about me not forking out more per month. :)

BJ

[Scott Olmsted]

I have a couple of shared hosting sites at OCSSolutions.com. Very inexpensive,good service, small outfit, the owner handles most non-billing problems. Was highly rated on a Rails hosting comparison site, so I gave them a shot, didn't regret it.

But lately I've put a small app onto Heroku. A few limitations to work within, but deploying with a git push is pretty cool.

I've come to dread Capistrano problems and I've had them in spades at HostingRails.com. For the price my client was paying, I thought they should do much better. Or is it all technical support that doesn't answer questions, or fixes something but doesn't tell how to do it yourself next time, and so on, requiring extra back and forth communication?

Best thing about small, low traffic sites on Heroku: right now they're free. Took less than an hour to set up the first one, bet I could do it again in ten minutes.

Scott
Encinitas, California

[Erick Cantwell]

BJ Neilsen wrote:
> Agreed, bluehost is retarded. I'm currently trying to deploy a ror app
> for a friend and it's a nightmare. I'm loving SliceHost, though
> admittedly the 256 slice is not for production apps. That's not really
> about them, more about me not forking out more per month. :)
>
> BJ
>
>

Being an employee, I'm afraid that I'll have to disagree with you on the
opinion that Bluehost is retarded BJ.

Deploying a Ruby on Rails application on Bluehost is actually quite
straight forward. You simply have to deploy it to run through
fcgid instead of the typical Webserver proxy/Mongrel approach. Granted,
running apps through fcgid is not ideal for Rails apps while
in development mode, but functions well enough for apps that are in
production mode.

With the ability to install and manage your own gems locally, freeze
applications, and basically install virtually anything you want from the
command line I really don't see how you are making a valid point.

I will admit that shared hosting is not for everybody and Bluehost does
not put a lot of emphasis on Rails hosting since there are a lot of
companies out there that specialize in it, but most of the problems that
I see are user based and not server side.

--Erick

[BJ Neilsen]

> With the ability to install and manage your own gems locally, freeze
> applications, and basically install virtually anything you want from
> the
> command line I really don't see how you are making a valid point.
>

Sure. I didn't want to go into the whole discussion of why BlueHost
has been "retarded" for me since that wasn't what the thread was
about. It was a vague slam, so sorry on that bit. What I meant was
that the deployment was not as "straight forward" as you suggest,
since I'm still not up and running after spending several hours
getting things to work on saturday. This deployment would have been
done in 5 minutes on my Slicehost box. I was just adding to the thread
that I wouldn't go with BlueHost due to my issues.

> I will admit that shared hosting is not for everybody and Bluehost
> does
> not put a lot of emphasis on Rails hosting since there are a lot of
> companies out there that specialize in it,

Agreed. Were it my decision, we wouldn't be on BlueHost, but it's not
as I'm just helping a friend out with his fledgling company.

BJ

[Chris Sund]

Wow, my intention wasn't to create such a discussion, but the insight
is helpful. I think the only other way I would have attracted this
much attention is if I had said something derogatory about BYU.....LOL

Many Thanks!

Chris

[Chris Sund]

Hey Group,

Maybe my "shout out" was a little pre-mature. Here's my latest....

2 days ago I did a git push and finally got my cap deploy working via
github on hostingrails with their help (ie shout out). I was prepared
to have cap issues initially because I've heard there can be small
learning curve to get it working. Once I had it working I didn't
expect there to be problems, but it seems I can't deploy now. Nothing
has changed, and my deploy output doesn't show any issues. I decided
to go back and read everyone's posts and it seems the cap deploy
should be pretty easy on the right servers. At this point, it's my
first "test deployment", I don't want to knee jerk and just jump ship,
but it's looking like the writing on the wall.

Slicehost looks pretty awesome, but I wasn't sure how hard it was to
setup a rails app on their servers. I know everyone added their 2
cents to this post already, but I wouldn't mind hearing some thoughts
on the best solution for an "Intermediate" ruby/rails noob like
myself. I have alot of experience with computers and programming in
general so I'm sure I could figure just about anything out. I just
want to make the right choice if I decide to go a different route.

If it hadn't been for this post I would probably stay with
hostinrails, but it seems my current problem has been an issue in the
past for some of you so I don't want to make the same mistakes if I
can avoid them. I'm fairly annoyed that I can't re-deploy my app when
nothing has changed except a few controller methods and some views -
arrgg.

Many Thanks!

Chris

[Ben Mabey]

Chris Sund wrote:
> Hey Group,
>
> Maybe my "shout out" was a little pre-mature. Here's my latest....
>
> 2 days ago I did a git push and finally got my cap deploy working via
> github on hostingrails with their help (ie shout out). I was prepared
> to have cap issues initially because I've heard there can be small
> learning curve to get it working. Once I had it working I didn't
> expect there to be problems, but it seems I can't deploy now. Nothing
> has changed, and my deploy output doesn't show any issues. I decided
> to go back and read everyone's posts and it seems the cap deploy
> should be pretty easy on the right servers. At this point, it's my
> first "test deployment", I don't want to knee jerk and just jump ship,
> but it's looking like the writing on the wall.
>
> Slicehost looks pretty awesome, but I wasn't sure how hard it was to
> setup a rails app on their servers. I know everyone added their 2
> cents to this post already, but I wouldn't mind hearing some thoughts
> on the best solution for an "Intermediate" ruby/rails noob like
> myself. I have alot of experience with computers and programming in
> general so I'm sure I could figure just about anything out. I just
> want to make the right choice if I decide to go a different route.
>

Here are some capistrano tasks, from our very own JohnnyT, that can set
up a slicehost slice in a few minutes... can't get much easier than that. :)

http://github.com/johnnyt/strano

-Ben

[Doug Tolton]

Ben or JohnnyT.  I have need of setting up a new slice for project in the next day or two.  I've browsed through the Strano documentation but I don't see where to get started or how to get rolling with a new slice.  If it's something simple could you post a pointer or two here?  If it's more involved, I''ll volunteer to write up a How To doc for this process if I can get one of you to spend a few minutes with me on the phone.

Doug Tolton

[Ben Mabey]

Doug Tolton wrote:
> Ben or JohnnyT. I have need of setting up a new slice for project in
> the next day or two. I've browsed through the Strano documentation
> but I don't see where to get started or how to get rolling with a new
> slice. If it's something simple could you post a pointer or two here?
> If it's more involved, I''ll volunteer to write up a How To doc for
> this process if I can get one of you to spend a few minutes with me on
> the phone.
>
> Doug Tolton

Hey Doug,
Strano is really the brainchild of JohnnyT and Josh. My contribution to
it was the 'variables'[1] code that allows you to store all of your
server passwords in an AES encrypted YAML file editable via a vim
plugin. This 'Install' page on the wiki seems to be the best
documentation on how to get started:

http://wiki.github.com/johnnyt/strano/install

JohnnyT or Josh should be able to clear up any other questions you have
about it. My guess is that you are probably the first person to use
strano outside of Alliance Health so the docs are probably a little
rough and may be missing a few key directions. It would be great if you
improved them during your learning process. :)

HTH,
Ben


1. http://wiki.github.com/johnnyt/strano/variables

[JohnnyT]

Hey Doug!

We are going to try and update the docs a little more later today.

As to setting up a new slice - after you have gone through the install
( http://wiki.github.com/johnnyt/strano/install ), you can just run:

cap slice:setup

Then it will prompt you for the info it needs.

If you want to see what it is doing - the bulk of the setup is done in
a bash script which is run on the server as root. That file is in
file_templates/slice/setup.sh.erb

JohnnyT

On Nov 4, 10:55 am, Ben Mabey <b...@benmabey.com> wrote:
> Doug Tolton wrote:
> > Ben or JohnnyT.  I have need of setting up a new slice for project in
> > the next day or two.  I've browsed through theStranodocumentation
> > but I don't see where to get started or how to get rolling with a new
> > slice.  If it's something simple could you post a pointer or two here?
> >  If it's more involved, I''ll volunteer to write up a How To doc for
> > this process if I can get one of you to spend a few minutes with me on
> > the phone.
>
> > Doug Tolton
>

> Hey Doug,Stranois really the brainchild of JohnnyT and Josh.  My contribution to

> it was the 'variables'[1] code that allows you to store all of your
> server passwords in an AES encrypted YAML file editable via a vim
> plugin.  This 'Install' page on the wiki seems to be the best
> documentation on how to get started:
>
> http://wiki.github.com/johnnyt/strano/install
>
> JohnnyT or Josh should be able to clear up any other questions you have

> about it.  My guess is that you are probably the first person to usestranooutside of Alliance Health so the docs are probably a little

> rough and may be missing a few key directions.  It would be great if you
> improved them during your learning process. :)
>
> HTH,
> Ben
>

> 1.http://wiki.github.com/johnnyt/strano/variables

[Roger Pack]

> Agreed, bluehost is retarded. I'm currently trying to deploy a ror app
> for a friend and it's a nightmare. I'm loving SliceHost, though
> admittedly the 256 slice is not for production apps. That's not really
> about them, more about me not forking out more per month. :)

I use linode with a 32-bit OS for production--I can run several rails
instances there without running out of RAM.

I currently host a rails app on BlueHost, and one on linode.
Bluehost's tech support has been kind recently but traditionally
they've blown off support requests. Also they once switched ruby
versions on me *without notifying* and then again later with a new
rails version--no notification, site went down until customer
complained to me. Powerful servers though, and unlimited bandwidth
which is nice.

I would note that once my account was disabled because I was running
an svn process that was "using too many resources" -- and all I was
doing was an svn export of the ruby tree. That was surprising.

-r

[Nick]

I've been running all of my side projects on FsckVPS.com.  A word of warning,  its completely unmanaged and thus not for the faint of heart.

[Roger Pack]

> I've been running all of my side projects on FsckVPS.com.  A word of
> warning,  its completely unmanaged and thus not for the faint of heart.

What problems can occur because of it being unmanaged? Isn't
linode/slicehost also "unmanaged"? How has your experience been? They
look cheap...
-r

[Nick]

I've been using them for ~3 months now and haven't had any problems. I don't know about slice/linode but with Fsck I had to setup all the DNS stuff myself.

The tech support has been great and when I blew up my system they did a reload within an hour..

[AJ ONeal]

I'd like to put a strong vote in for NYNOC and ThrustVPS. NYNOC was up and running with no problems within a business day. ThrustVPS answers basic questions with the integrated chat on their website pretty fast.

I had trouble paying my bill on fsck and a commentor on my blog has been having trouble with them too:

http://thesystemisntdown.blogspot.com/2010/02/getting-started-with-fsckvps.html

AJ ONeal

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Utah Ruby Users Group
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