I'm pretty new to rails, and i'm trying to build a web template editor in rails where users can come in and create their websites without having any programming knowledge.
something similar to:
http://imcreator.com/
muse.adobe.com
www.wix.com
www.squarespace.com
I'm wondering if there are any gems or plugins
I was also told that i should look for a control library? any ideas?
There are a number of CMS kits like Refinery, Radiant, or you can use something like Comfortable Mexican Sofa which is maintained by an associate of mine.
Building a CMS isn't especially tricky, but getting a good general-purpose one built can be fussy.
Would a CMS work for this? Like RefineryCMS.com?
I'm going to be doing this too - but will be taking another approach. More of a 'showcase/showroom' direction where the templates are pre-made but they can upload artwork and change content.
Anyhow - good luck!
Related
I have e-commerce site using spree. What should be ideal blog solution please suggest. Since the blog has to be updated almost daily it should be like CMS with end customer able to do the same. Should I use spree-blogging-spree gem or maybe blog hosted separately on wordpress ? What would be little scalable and convenient for a zero tech customer?
By your own definition ("zero tech customer") I would avoid any solution involving coding or custom code. Blog is an area where dozens of very good solution exists "of the shelf", so I would go for a WordPress or equivalent. You could even get the hosting done for you.
Integration can be as simple as putting the blog on a subdomain, for example if your ecommerce is hosted at pikachu-go.com, you could have blog.pikachu-go.com to point to the WordPress instance.
This means that the blog & ecommerce are totally independant, which should be for the best. You'll have a bit of work to ensure visual consistency between both, but a good palette and a logo may be enough to start.
If for any reason you really need the blog to be part of the same codebase (against, I advice against that), you may want to have a look to blogs that can be added to your Rails application as Engine such as https://buttercms.com/rails-blog-engine/ or https://github.com/kiddsoftware/rails_blog_engine.
Per the doc:
Engines can be considered miniature applications that provide
functionality to their host applications
So this is a way to deploy it inside your Spree app without resorting to custom code.
I have a really stupid question in my mind.
I have used Wordpress to create a website for long time, but I dont want to use it anymore. And now I am looking for little bit different approach. Otherwise, I am quite new in Ruby on Rails. I have read some books and I am not feeling in this matter so confident. So, here is the deal:
My friend asked me to create a simple website for his company. He wants only super simple static website which will contains these pages:
Home
Products
Contact
Each page will contain simple information and there is no need to implement contact forms and other basic functionalities. I also want to deploy this app on Heroku, because he has not a lot of money and we are looking for free hosting. Moreover, I think that the best approach in this matter will be some kind of CMS which will help him to edit the website.
The overview of final solution:
Static webpages with simple CMS
Using twitter bootstrap for basic layout
Deploy on Heroku
I appreciate every contribution in this matter.
Thank you
Everything you have said suggests that you should stick with WordPress. It's perfectly capable of presenting a non-blog static website (use Pages instead of Posts) and there are some excellent themes available. WP has, over the years really become a CMS that's also good for blogging. There are other tools like Drupal that may be appropriate.
I set up a WP site with almost exactly the same goals for some very non-technical people; with a little training they eventually learned how to manage the site, upload images, add content, grant permissions to others, and do a lot of other pretty cool stuff. I have been using Rails since 2007, but for that case, it was not the right solution.
Rails is a very (very!) sophisticated web development environment used to build complex and scalable dynamic websites. With power comes a level of complexity several orders of magnitude higher than WordPress. Even if you use refinerycms you still need to do a lot of complicated setup, and need to know a lot of stuff. Even if you're using Heroku and following a RailsCast like the one for refinerycms, you'll undoubtedly hit some wall where you really need to understand more ... Rails is alluring this way -- seems simple.
If you are using this a reason to learn Rails, and are willing to invest some time, then by all means go for it. But if you want a simple solution, it's not the way. Learning Rails is like learning to fly a plane, but harder.
For static pages with rails, you can use High Voltage gem. You can find the detailed usage of this gem in this blog post . Once you create the pages, then you can easily deploy your app as like normal rails app in the heroku.
I am going to write a ContentManagementSystem for RubyOnRails for administration of static pages.
Which features do you prefer to appear in this CMS?
What do you think might be helpful for daily work?
Best regards
Just a good read on Rails & CMS
The Ruby on Rails CMS dillema
something like an drag & drop Template builder.
Userstory :
Create new Page
Take some boxes from the sidebar and put it on an empty page
click the box
add content , pictures etc. to this box
save & publish
.. yeah i want something like this :-) inspired by Wordpress Widget Management.
Look around for existing Rails CMSs likes Radiant, BrowserCms,
Also study Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla in php, they seem to be doing pretty great as CMS's and are awesome at that.
A Django-like in feature but Rails-ish in nature Admin interface. That is the talk of the town these days..
Did you try: http://shane-hippo.blogspot.com/2009/08/hor-experiment-2.html
This experiment shows how you can set up your own application within 15 minutes, with Hippo on Rails.
I'm looking for a way to modularize Rails applications. As I've seen there is no built-in way of accomplishing it. I've found different plugins/core hacks but I feel untrusted about the way they work and their maturity.
Do you have any experience on this?
So far I found this ones:
Desert: http://github.com/pivotal/desert
Rails engines: http://rails-engines.org/
Rails engines are part of the current stable rails 2.X and so aren't really "hacks" anymore. They seem like a good fit if you want to add fairly course-grained application functionality to an application - a good example might be adding a blog or CMS-style functionality to another application. Checkout the railscast on engines here: http://railscasts.com/episodes/149-rails-engines
If you're looking to modularize on the front end - more "widget" style, you might want to look at cells: http://github.com/apotonick/cells/
I'm looking for a Rails plugin that eases the development of a "friends" system or social networking system for the latest versions of Ruby on Rails.
Before anyone says it...I know, I should probably create it myself, from scratch. And I am fully capable of this (I think). I'm just looking for a good plugin that can a.) make life a bit easier for me and b.) give me some ideas for reference.
I tried to make my own authentication system, and did what I thought was okay, but then I switched to restful_authentication and realized how poor my system was in comparison.
Thanks in advance...
U might wanna try Community Engine
from the website
CommunityEngine is a free, open-source
social network plugin for Ruby on
Rails applications. Drop it into your
new or existing application, and
you’ll instantly have all the features
of a basic community site.
it uses engines, easy to change layouts or do modifications
real world example - http://www.weebabystuff.com/
another option I know is Insoshi as Chuck posted
updated : look at this blogpost http://jimneath.org/2008/04/25/building-a-social-network-site-in-rails/
-- Ed :) --
You could look into http://lovdbyless.com/
This is a free open-source Rails social networking app which should give you plenty of ideas and pointers.
Ronald
You HAVE to see this railscasts video.
try acts_as_network plugin
The only one I know of is Insoshi. I haven't used it myself, but it sounds like that's what you're looking for.
I would recommend using OpenID library for rails to handle authentication.
On top of what others have said, there's also acts_as_network. The bonus of this one is that it's a pure plugin (doesn't require engines). Not having to worry about engines is a huge plus. The downside, of course, is that it's not a full fledged social network. It's just a friending plugin for models.
You might want to checkout the Amistad gem. It looks pretty simple and it supports both Mongoid and Active Record.
For avatars i would use avatar and try will-paginate for pagination. other then that i love can_serach to make it alot easier to search in the database.
You should also look at the other gems by technoweenie. There is alot of great stuff there that can help you
I've just been researching this myself and chosen to go with Bort & CommunityEngine
Bort because I am familiar with it already and it provides all you need in user authentication and basic application functionality. Community Engine because it is an Engines based plugin and some aspects of Engines are being merged into Rails 2.3 so I know what I learn will continue to be useful and because CommunityEngine seems more modular while lovedbyess and Insoshi seem more like complete applications and I suspect it would likely be more work to disentangle the features I want from the ones I don't. However, take that with a huge grain of salt since it is just based on high-level quick browse initial impressions.
If you just want an activity feed then there is the activity streams plugin