# How does Radiant help you make a living **URL:** \ **Category:** Radiant CMS\ **Created:** [May 9, 2007, 11:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751 "2007-05-09T23:30:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2007, 11:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751/1 "2007-05-09T23:30:55Z")
Hi everybody, I’ve been quite busy at work lately working on an implementation of Ektron’s .Net CMS. And wishing that I was using Radiant. And wishing that I had more time to work on my Page Attributes extension, and wishing that I had more time to put together and submit an irresistible patch to bring facets -like functionality into trunk. (and versioning, and and write an in-place editing extension, etc… etc…) Anyway, I was wondering, how do the rest of you do it? Are most of you contractors implementing Radiant for some small client? Are you using Radiant for your own personal Blog? Are you implementing Radiant for free for a friends site (like I am)? Basically, what’s your collective advice on how I could get paid to work with Ruby on Rails and specifically Radiant full-time. thanks, Jacob ---
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2007, 8:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751/2 "2007-05-10T08:33:30Z")
I use radiant as the standard platform for customers, mainly small businesses, who need their web presence revamped. For more specific needs I resort to developing new rails apps or to other platforms (drupal ☹ ) 2007/5/9, Jacob B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid): ---
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2007, 2:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751/3 "2007-05-10T14:02:04Z")
I am self-employed using primarily Ruby on Rails for new work. I use either Radiant or Drupal for most new websites that require a CMS. These websites are a mix between in-house websites and client websites. My clients are typically small businesses who do not care what technology is used as long as it works and is cost-efficient. So, if you’re looking to go full-time, there’s plenty of opportunities to do so. In fact, I had to quit taking new clients within 6 months of becoming self-employed. Best of luck! ---
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2007, 2:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751/4 "2007-05-10T14:58:12Z")
Jonathan: That is partly the point of ‘instance mode’. You can install the gem system-wide, and only check out the minimum of files when you need a new site. Extensions currently have to be installed in every instance you create, however. Back On-Topic: I do Rails development full-time for a San Francisco-based startup (even though I live in KC). I came to Radiant first for personal use, then for a website redesign at my last job. It was at that job that I got involved in the mental branch and developing extensions because we needed slightly more than a static site. So for a while, I was paid salary to work on Radiant, which was cool. In the process, I came up with 4-6 patches that John accepted and then he asked me to join the core team. Since being on the core team I have gotten requests for Radiant-based projects coming in. That’s not to say you need to be on the core team to get projects; what I would suggest is this: Work hard on a personal or pro-bono project if you can’t get a paid one. Get intimate with the Radiant source. Develop extensions. Find bugs, submit patches that fix them. Contribute to the mailing list, IRC channel, and development wiki. Suggest Radiant to clients whose needs match its strengths. Be passionate about what you do. Cheers, Sean ---
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2007, 2:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751/5 "2007-05-10T14:34:10Z")
I am a French freelance webmaster and I would love to setup Radiant for all my clients but the main blocker is the English admin. How could I translate the admin without touching the code base? Is this possible as an extension? Also, I would like to have only one install of Radiant and its extensions, but have multiple virtual hosts using it. But not as the Virtual Host extension does: I want each website to use a different database so each clients do not share the same admin! How should I do that? An extension selecting the appropriate database according to the domaine name? Thanks, Jonathan ---
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2007, 3:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751/6 "2007-05-10T15:04:13Z")
Great testimonial, Sean. I would like to go further on the two questions I asked, and as they are off topic, I will start news threads for them. Thanks. Jonathan ---
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2007, 4:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751/7 "2007-05-10T16:20:24Z")
We are actually wanting to use Radiant more and more and are looking for a full-time Ruby/Radiant developer. If anyone is based in/near Powys/Shropshire in the UK then do get in touch. -Karl ---
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2007, 4:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751/8 "2007-05-10T16:11:21Z")
On May 10, 2007, at 8:57 AM, Sean C. wrote: > Work hard on a personal or pro-bono project if you can’t get a paid > one. Get intimate with the Radiant source. Develop extensions. Find > bugs, submit patches that fix them. Contribute to the mailing list, > IRC channel, and development wiki. Suggest Radiant to clients whose > needs match its strengths. Be passionate about what you do. +1 aiwilliams ---
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2007, 5:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751/9 "2007-05-10T17:18:38Z")
Just an update to whom may be interested I offloaded the images to a separate subdomain that does not fall under the control of the dispatcher (I know, I could have used .htaccess for it, but I’d prefer this method anyways) - Site’s speeding up now; It is still creeping the memory and CPU usage, but not as bad (It’s usable at least.) I’m going to offload the stylesheet from Radiant shortly as well, and set up .htaccess a little better. Any ideas why this would do this to the memory usage? ---
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2007, 4:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751/10 "2007-05-10T16:33:28Z")
Well, I got to talking to a Dreamhost rep, saying that my ‘website’ is leaking memory badly. I found it hard to believe, but with my site issues steadily worsening, I checked out ps aux and logged some rough stats. I know my host kills when I get to a total of 200MB memory usage, or hard memory runs. FastCGI is set up as 5 dynamic on Dreamhost as well. Watching my memory, it does climb, and rather fast; In some cases it manages to peak my memory usage up to 800+MB total spread among the 5 dispatch.fcgis before Dreamhost managed to can my processes. All the while, these processes creep up to 80-90% CPU usage. This cycles every few minutes right now. I am getting only about 800-1000 pageviews a day. I am in production mode (I checked a few times) so this shouldn’t be happening, or so I would think. I am really stuck; I tried last night by rebuilding my entire gem, rails, and radiant install, as well as rebuilding my entire instance to no avail. I’m about to offload all my non-radiant files (Including stylesheet and images) to another subdomain so that they are direct access, hoping this may help with my issues. Could it possibly be a memory leak issue? Your help would be wonderful! ---
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2007, 4:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751/11 "2007-05-11T04:21:00Z")
Hello Daniel! I have aggregation, mailer, reorder and search in and that’s it. As I found earlier, it was the dispatcher being my culprit, and specifically information NOT inside of Radiant (Images/etc.) causing me serious headaches. As soon as I did this, it scaled back to two instances typically with about 70-90MB usage with 6% usage with a slow creep upwards over time but seems to clean itself up without my host canning it. Still not a 100% fix, but its working now until I can wade through this more. I just need to figure out the creep now. 🙂 Andrew ---
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2007, 9:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751/12 "2007-05-11T21:16:17Z")
I’am not working full time with Radiant (yet!), but I’m trying to sell projects thats have some not included functionality, so I can develop it, charge it and, of course, exchange with you. Now I’m part time employed developing in php with Joomla and SugarCRM. It’s good to work with several projects. You learn what you shouldn’t do in your projects! Mergulhão ---
**Author:** ![igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@igotimac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/igotimac)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2007, 3:49am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-does-radiant-help-you-make-a-living/103751/13 "2007-05-11T03:49:56Z")
> Well, I got to talking to a Dreamhost rep, saying that my ‘website’ is > leaking memory badly. I found it hard to believe, but with my > site issues > steadily worsening, I checked out ps aux and logged some > rough stats. I > know my host kills when I get to a total of 200MB memory > usage, or hard Do you have any extensions installed? If you’re using an attachment extension, Rmagick has historically been something that’s prone to eating up your memory, but if you’re using Sean’s attachment extension that shouldn’t be a problem. I use mongrel myself - each process takes about 70MB of memory, which is about what you should expect. 200MB of memory wouldn’t be enough to run 5 FastCGI processes, but it should be in the range of 3-400MB, not 800MB. 800-1000 pageviews a day shouldn’t need 5 dispatchers. I’ve got two mongrels pumping out anywhere up to 10000 pages a day. At your traffic level, you should be able to cope easily with just 2 dispatchers. Dan.