# Basic Question about Base Files **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [October 17, 2007, 7:38am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/basic-question-about-base-files/117465 "2007-10-17T07:38:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![banry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@banry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/banry)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2007, 7:38am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/basic-question-about-base-files/117465/1 "2007-10-17T07:38:16Z")
Ooooh, I’m having so much fun with Ruby on Rails. I have the students assigning to parents, the parents are able to come login… it’s great. That’s the functional part. As I get more of it working I am sure I’ll have questions about that. Until then: What do I do for the “static” files on the site. For every site you build don’t you have an “About” a “Contact” and “Help” page? Things right off the root? Right now I have them in the Application directory and a route points ‘/:action’ to :controller =\> Application (or something like that, I’m home now instead of in my office). I want them to all have the layout from the rest of the site, obviously. Is there a usual method for this? Thanks, –Colin ---
**Author:** ![banry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@banry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/banry)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2007, 7:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/basic-question-about-base-files/117465/2 "2007-10-17T07:47:02Z")
> I have the students assigning to parents, the parents are able to come > login… it’s great. Rails rules like no web platform has ruled before. Welcome to the inner circle who no longer need to be told that! Now how are your unit tests? > What do I do for the “static” files on the site. For every site you > build don’t you have an “About” a “Contact” and “Help” page? Things > right off the root? Right now I have them in the Application directory > and a route points ‘/:action’ to :controller =\> Application (or > something like that, I’m home now instead of in my office). I never heard of the Application object used directly as a controller. Put them in the most convenient app/view/controller/ folder, and name them all .rhtml. Don’t bother to write their actions, and access them by default route - /controller/help, /controller/contact, etc. Or put them, as raw html, in /public/, and link to them from /. But this requires the .html extension, which is tacky. – Phlip ---
**Author:** ![banry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@banry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/banry)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2007, 7:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/basic-question-about-base-files/117465/3 "2007-10-17T07:53:27Z")
On Oct 16, 2007, at 10:37 PM, Colin S. wrote: > What do I do for the “static” files on the site. For every site you > build don’t you have an “About” a “Contact” and “Help” page? Things > right off the root? Right now I have them in the Application directory > and a route points ‘/:action’ to :controller =\> Application (or > something like that, I’m home now instead of in my office). > > I want them to all have the layout from the rest of the site, > obviously. > > Is there a usual method for this? My understanding is you still need to (or normally would) use controller/action. So if you put those at /company/about, /company/contact you would still create a Company controller, it just wouldn’t do very much. As for giving all pages the same look, I’ve been exploring how to do this in Rails, and just finished writing an article about it (still some unanswered questions, but I’ll get to those). [http://gregwillits.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/modular-page-layouts-in-](http://gregwillits.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/modular-page-layouts-in-) ruby-on-rails/ – gw ---
**Author:** ![banry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@banry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/banry)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2007, 4:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/basic-question-about-base-files/117465/4 "2007-10-17T16:44:42Z")
On 10/17/07, Colin S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > What do I do for the “static” files on the site. For every site you > build don’t you have an “About” a “Contact” and “Help” page? Things > right off the root? Right now I have them in the Application directory > and a route points ‘/:action’ to :controller =\> Application (or > something like that, I’m home now instead of in my office). I think it’s a good idea to use a single controller for all these, but don’t use ‘application’, since that’s a base class for your other controllers. Call it ‘static’ or something. You can use caching on these pages if they are truly static. Also, use named routes instead of a catch-all route. map.about ‘/about’, :controller =\> ‘static’, :action =\> ‘about’ map.help ‘/help’, :controller =\> ‘static’, :action =\> ‘help’ Then in your view you can write: \<%= link\_to ‘About Us’, about\_url %\> Makes it _real_ easy to reorganize your URL’s without having to track down all your link\_to’s > I want them to all have the layout from the rest of the site, > obviously. If your layout is in layouts/application.rhtml, you don’t have to do anything. Otherwise, you need to specify the layout in your StaticController.