[ANN] Family Connection 1.0

Rails
1

This is a follow-up announcement from the 0.9 release. There are no
major changes, but this release marks a downloadable (tgz) file as
well as a promotional website, a demo application and screenshots.

Family Connection is an easy-to-setup online hub for your family that
includes a Family News section, and an Address Book.

http://familyconnect.rubyforge.org/

Please note that the download (tgz) may not be available for another
hour or so as it propagates through the rubyforge mirrors. You can
access the subversion repository immediately at:

svn export svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/familyconnect/tags/1.0
familyconnection-1.0

For anyone interested in a copy of this family site without the
hassle of setting it up or maintaining it, I can set something up for
you for a small monthly charge. Contact me privately to talk about
this option.

Regards,
Duane J.
(canadaduane)
http://blog.inquirylabs.com/

2

On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, Duane J. wrote:

so as it propagates through the rubyforge mirrors. You can access the
Duane J.
(canadaduane)
http://blog.inquirylabs.com/

i just downloaded the lastest have had a few errors installing:

  • had to chmod -R 777 . so the photo dir could be created. standard
    stuff
    there.

  • then i was going through the config page and got this error on
    submit of
    the first page

    unable to open image
    `/var/www/html/public/photo/image/tmp/1136357381.296032.28535/FishRobert.jpg’:
    No such file or directory:

    that’s probably because that directory doesn’t exist. it’s worth
    noting
    that my setup is

    out of webroot

    /var/www/ror/familyconnect/
  /var/www/ror/familyconnect/public
  ...

    in webroot

    /var/www/html/familyconnect ->

/var/www/ror/familyconnect/public/

 which is pretty standard stuff afaik.  in any case the links aren't

being
generated correctly under this setup - why ‘public’ should be in
any
generated link is strange… is there something i’ve missed with
configuration?

regards.

-a

===============================================================================
| ara [dot] t [dot] howard [at] noaa [dot] gov
| all happiness comes from the desire for others to be happy. all misery
| comes from the desire for oneself to be happy.
| – bodhicaryavatara

3

Hi Ara,

since Duane seems to be using file_column (great, Duane!), I’ll try to
help with this.

On 1/4/06, [email protected] [email protected] wrote:

   in webroot

     /var/www/html/familyconnect -> /var/www/ror/familyconnect/public/

Basically, file_column uses “#{RAILS_ROOT}/public/photo/image/…” as
the path to store the images. It seems that with your setup, the rails
app is started with RAILS_ROOT being “/var/www/html/” which doesn’t
seem right to me. If you could somehow start your app in a way that
RAILS_ROOT points to “/var/www/ror/familyconnect”, everything should
be fine…

Hope this helps
Sebastian

4

On Fri, 6 Jan 2006, Philip R. wrote:

Does the setup HAVE to have RMagick? It looks like a pain to install . .

in linux you can simply do

yes|sudo yum install ‘magick’

yes|sudo gem install RMagick

Australia
Mobile: +61:(0)411-185-652
Fax: +61:(0)2-8221-9599
E-mail: [email protected]

-a

===============================================================================
| ara [dot] t [dot] howard [at] noaa [dot] gov
| all happiness comes from the desire for others to be happy. all misery
| comes from the desire for oneself to be happy.
| – bodhicaryavatara

5

Duane,

On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 14:11 +0900, Duane J. wrote:

hour or so as it propagates through the rubyforge mirrors. You can
Regards,
Duane J.
(canadaduane)
http://blog.inquirylabs.com/

I have downloaded this and set it up:

  • untarred into: /home/phil/src/ror/familyconnection-1.0

  • edited the database.yml file for postgres (8.0.4):

    adapter: postgresql
    database: family_connection
    username: phil

  • done: rake db_schema_import

(the tables are setup in postgres OK)

  • I then ran: ruby ~phil/src/ror/familyconnection-1.0/script/server

( which seemed to work OK)

but when I try and use:

http://127.0.0.1:3000/family_connection/administrator/setup

I get:

no such file to load – RMagick

RAILS_ROOT: /home/phil/src/ror/familyconnection-1.0/script/…/config/…

Application Trace | Framework Trace | Full Trace
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:21:in
require__' /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:21:in require’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-1.2.5/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:214:in
require' #{RAILS_ROOT}/vendor/plugins/file_column/lib/magick_file_column.rb:139:in file_column’
#{RAILS_ROOT}/vendor/plugins/file_column/lib/file_column.rb:686:in
`file_column’
#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/models/user.rb:7
#{RAILS_ROOT}/lib/login_system.rb:1
#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/controllers/application.rb:1

This error occured while loading the following files:
/home/phil/src/ror/familyconnection-1.0/script/…/config/…/app/controllers/application.rb
login_system.rb
user.rb
RMagick

Does the setup HAVE to have RMagick? It looks like a pain to install .
.

Thanks,

Phil.

Philip R.

Pricom Pty Limited (ACN 003 252 275 ABN 91 003 252 275)
GPO Box 3411
Sydney NSW 2001
Australia
Mobile: +61:(0)411-185-652
Fax: +61:(0)2-8221-9599
E-mail: [email protected]

6

On Jan 6, 2006, at 2:45 AM, Philip R. wrote:

Duane,

Does the setup HAVE to have RMagick? It looks like a pain to
install . .

Thanks,

Yes, it does. I suppose there’s an opportunity for hacking if you’d
like to get file_column to work with the command line ImageMagick
tools (rather than via rmagick)–however, I don’t think that’d be any
easier than just installing rmagick.

Out of curiousity, what platform are you running on? I’ve found that
until recently getting rmagick to run on FreeBSD and Mac OS X was a
pain, but the ports scripts have become much better. I was
pleasantly surprised and wrote a blog about it (for Mac OS X) [1].

Duane J.
(canadaduane)
http://blog.inquirylabs.com/

[1] http://inquirylabs.com/blog/?p=34

7

This looks like a great start! Any more features planned? I currently
use
a mambo site for this exact purpose With a family calendar and shout
function I would be able to convert.

Good stuff!
Andrew

On 1/4/06, Duane J. [email protected] wrote:

or so as it propagates through the rubyforge mirrors. You can access the
Duane J.

–

8

On Jan 7, 2006, at 7:19 AM, Andrew VanSpronsen wrote:

This looks like a great start! Any more features planned? I
currently use a mambo site for this exact purpose With a family
calendar and shout function I would be able to convert.

Good stuff!
Andrew

Thanks, Andrew.

There are several planned features–some of which are far in the
future. Some people have already expressed interest in adding i18n
support. We’ll see where that goes. As for the immediate future,
here are some of my plans:

  • Ability to delete users/change user info for admin
  • Ability to edit posts as admin- Photo album
  • Date of last member visits
  • Add birthday to users table?
  • Email notifications for news postings or address changes
  • Make own page say “Add a photo” if there is no photo. Add a link
    that says “Change photo”.
  • “Add your family photo here” on front page if none uploaded during
    setup

These are possibilities in the future:

  • Gift registry / interests / hobbies
  • Add events and calendars
  • Print address book
  • Annecdotes / history
  • Recipes
  • File cabinet - wills, birth certs
  • Reviews
  • Group mailings

What, by the way, is a ‘shout’ function? Is it the same thing as
‘email notifications for news postings’ as above?

Regards,

Duane J.
(canadaduane)
http://blog.inquirylabs.com/