# Choosing components for new project - beast, mephisto,? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [May 21, 2007, 8:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/choosing-components-for-new-project-beast-mephisto/104652 "2007-05-21T08:58:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/3ec8ea/32.png) [@n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/n1c)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 8:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/choosing-components-for-new-project-beast-mephisto/104652/1 "2007-05-21T08:58:40Z")
I’m starting a new project which will have need the following functionality to start: - basic cms - forum - review tools For the forum it looks like beast is the answer, or maybe savage beast ([http://www.nnovation.ca/2007/5/18/savage-beast](http://www.nnovation.ca/2007/5/18/savage-beast)) if its any easier to implement. For the cms I’d appreciate some input. Choices are mephisto, radiant or maybe even comatose. Any feedback on ease of integration with those would be appreciated. The review tools I guess I’ll be building myself. Future plans for the app include a big social networking component, ala facebook. I haven’t done any programming with Rails for months, so ease of use and speed with which I can get up and running are important. Any opinions or experiences would be greatly appreciated! Cheers Nick ---
**Author:** ![n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/3ec8ea/32.png) [@n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/n1c)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 9:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/choosing-components-for-new-project-beast-mephisto/104652/2 "2007-05-21T09:28:21Z")
Nick C. wrote: > For the cms I’d appreciate some input. Choices are mephisto, radiant or > > Any opinions or experiences would be greatly appreciated! > > Cheers > Nick Actually, I’m looking at something similar myself (not a facebook like site though) and am torn between the options. So far, it seems that Radiant is a good bet for the CMS aspect of the site. It seems to be (relatively) easier to extend and interface Radiant with other Rails apps. Also, Radius seems to be reviewed quite well in what I have found. I’m considering RForum or Beast/ Savage Beast for the forum in my arrangement to be coupled with a wiki - right now, informl seems to be a good choice for it. I haven’t yet started to look at it closely enough to figure out how all these will play together along with a decent single sign-on arrangement (for the apps). Unfortunately, things that pay my bills (= not web related work) are preventing me from playing with this project. By the way, what kind of review tools are you planning? Cheers Mohit. ---
**Author:** ![n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/3ec8ea/32.png) [@n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/n1c)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 9:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/choosing-components-for-new-project-beast-mephisto/104652/3 "2007-05-21T09:29:21Z")
dear sender, i´m out of the office until may 29th. your email will not be forwarded. for urgent stuff please contact removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid kind regards, alexander ---
**Author:** ![n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/3ec8ea/32.png) [@n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/n1c)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 11:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/choosing-components-for-new-project-beast-mephisto/104652/4 "2007-05-21T11:12:37Z")
Rick O. wrote: > own thing. I like this approach because I can mess with one app > without disturbing the others. As for single sign on, not that it’s a > big deal, but you can use OpenID. Beast supports it now, and I’m > hoping someone will submit a Mephisto patch for it Though, it’s > looking like I’ll have to do that one day. Though honestly with a > decent password manager, multiple passwords are not a big deal for me. Thanks Rick. What you suggest is in line with what I’m considering. Personally, I haven’t seen Lighthouse yet - what do you use that for? I’m thinking of OpenID as one solution too - I don’t personally care about having multiple passwords, but I think people who will see my site as some kind of portal would like to have 1 account that lets them get into the wiki, the forum, their personal account, etc. Any reason you prefer Mephisto over Radiant? I’ve actually been struggling with mephisto for my personal technical blog ([notepad.onghu.com](http://notepad.onghu.com) ) Cheers Mohit. ---
**Author:** ![n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/3ec8ea/32.png) [@n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/n1c)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 10:50am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/choosing-components-for-new-project-beast-mephisto/104652/5 "2007-05-21T10:50:32Z")
> I haven’t yet started to look at it closely enough to figure out how all > these will play together along with a decent single sign-on arrangement > (for the apps). Unfortunately, things that pay my bills (= not web > related work) are preventing me from playing with this project. > > By the way, what kind of review tools are you planning? I keep those functions all separate. Mephisto handles the blog and the ‘brochure site,’ Beast is the forum, and then Lighthouse is its own thing. I like this approach because I can mess with one app without disturbing the others. As for single sign on, not that it’s a big deal, but you can use OpenID. Beast supports it now, and I’m hoping someone will submit a Mephisto patch for it Though, it’s looking like I’ll have to do that one day. Though honestly with a decent password manager, multiple passwords are not a big deal for me. – Rick O. [http://lighthouseapp.com](http://lighthouseapp.com) [http://weblog.techno-weenie.net](http://weblog.techno-weenie.net) [http://mephistoblog.com](http://mephistoblog.com) ---
**Author:** ![n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/3ec8ea/32.png) [@n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/n1c)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 11:56am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/choosing-components-for-new-project-beast-mephisto/104652/6 "2007-05-21T11:56:42Z")
Rick O. wrote: > hacking. I’ve integrated rforum, typo, and instiki before, which all > have vastly different user models. It’s all a big hack though, which > is why I prefer keeping it separate. Using hyperlinks and similar > templates for integration seems to be a more sensible solution to me. I agree with you, though I fear that I may have to visit the > > Any reason you prefer Mephisto over Radiant? I’ve actually been > > struggling with mephisto for my personal technical blog ([notepad.onghu.com](http://notepad.onghu.com) ) > > I wrote mephisto, so I of course think it kicks ass 🙂 Radiant’s fine too. My apologies - I hope I didn’t come across as rude cos I didn’t mean to and I do appreciate Mephisto’s simplicity! At least that answers one question that I had in my mind - why does the name ‘Rick O.’ sound so familiar? 😛 Cheers mohit. ---
**Author:** ![n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/3ec8ea/32.png) [@n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/n1c)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 11:17am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/choosing-components-for-new-project-beast-mephisto/104652/7 "2007-05-21T11:17:38Z")
> Thanks Rick. What you suggest is in line with what I’m considering. > Personally, I haven’t seen Lighthouse yet - what do you use that for? > I’m thinking of OpenID as one solution too - I don’t personally care > about having multiple passwords, but I think people who will see my site > as some kind of portal would like to have 1 account that lets them get > into the wiki, the forum, their personal account, etc. Lighthouse is my main app. But, I’m not going for a completely integrated experience. However, it’s not tough to do with some hacking. I’ve integrated rforum, typo, and instiki before, which all have vastly different user models. It’s all a big hack though, which is why I prefer keeping it separate. Using hyperlinks and similar templates for integration seems to be a more sensible solution to me. > Any reason you prefer Mephisto over Radiant? I’ve actually been > struggling with mephisto for my personal technical blog ([notepad.onghu.com](http://notepad.onghu.com) ) I wrote mephisto, so I of course think it kicks ass 🙂 Radiant’s fine too. – Rick O. [http://lighthouseapp.com](http://lighthouseapp.com) [http://weblog.techno-weenie.net](http://weblog.techno-weenie.net) [http://mephistoblog.com](http://mephistoblog.com) ---
**Author:** ![n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/3ec8ea/32.png) [@n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/n1c)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 12:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/choosing-components-for-new-project-beast-mephisto/104652/8 "2007-05-21T12:32:11Z")
Rick O. wrote: > I keep those functions all separate. Mephisto handles the blog and > the ‘brochure site,’ Beast is the forum, and then Lighthouse is its > own thing. I like this approach because I can mess with one app > without disturbing the others. As for single sign on, not that it’s a > big deal, but you can use OpenID. Beast supports it now, and I’m > hoping someone will submit a Mephisto patch for it Though, it’s > looking like I’ll have to do that one day. Though honestly with a > decent password manager, multiple passwords are not a big deal for me. I’ve scoured the beast forums for integration experiences and there seem to be a few different approaches, with none emerging as a clear “best practice”. I know you favour the separate sub-domains approach but that’s not going to be possible with our site. Rick, what’d be your 2nd best choice? 1. Install beast, integrate mephisto and the rest 2. build app, integrate beast and mephisto 3. install mephisto, integrate beast and the rest Cheers Nick ---
**Author:** ![n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/3ec8ea/32.png) [@n1c](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/n1c)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2007, 3:14am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/choosing-components-for-new-project-beast-mephisto/104652/9 "2007-05-22T03:14:43Z")
On 21-May-07, at 6:32 AM, Nick C. wrote: > > looking like I’ll have to do that one day. Though honestly with a > > 1. Install beast, integrate mephisto and the rest > 2. build app, integrate beast and mephisto > 3. install mephisto, integrate beast and the rest > > Cheers > Nick Hey Nick - I’d like to provide the use cases that for which I built Savage Beast. - Tightly integrated forum(s) - visually, single sign-on, domains, etc. - Many many forums - N forums associated with more than 1 Model The Soup creates forums for each person to project match - using the forum for private project conversations. So with Savage Beast you essentially get the Beast with 3 capabilities that satisfy the above: 1. Stripped out user authentication - this belongs in the application 2. A polymorphic Owner association - join forums to whatever Model you want (belongs\_to :owner, :polymorphic =\> true) 3. Leverage the rails engines plugin - permitting you to over-ride MVC Other than the above, you’re getting stock Beast - I propose that if like Best, and you have the above use cases, Savage Beast should bring joy. I must say that the above would not be possible without a well designed forum - for which Beast is. It does what it does simply, for which SB would not be possible. Feel free to email me if I can help any. cheers, Jodi TNG - powering business through innovation [the-soup.net](http://the-soup.net) - “where projects and people meet”