How to host Ruby On Rails on shared hosting

[ror-user]

Hi all,

I am not able to deploy my site on shared hosting. I have created a
database there uploaded the files but not able to access them.
I have also freeze the rails gems.
Please tell me the steps to host a rails site to a shared hosting.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Rohit.

[ror-user]

You’re not telling which shared host you are using, and the way they
host RoR apps differs quite a lot (some use fcgi yuck, some host
your app on a single mongrel). All in all, you’re in for a lot of
trouble, both in getting it deployed and most of the times keeping it
running too.

I would direct your question to your shared hosting support and hope
they have at least some experience or faqs they can send you. Most of
them just slap the “ruby on rails support” on their website because
cpanel or plesk support it now, but haven’t got a clue on how to
actually host a rails app.

On 05 Dec 2007, at 10:36, Rohit M. wrote:

I am not able to deploy my site on shared hosting. I have created a
database there uploaded the files but not able to access them.
I have also freeze the rails gems.
Please tell me the steps to host a rails site to a shared hosting.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

[ror-user]

Peter De Berdt wrote:

You’re not telling which shared host you are using, and the way they
host RoR apps differs quite a lot (some use fcgi yuck, some host
your app on a single mongrel). All in all, you’re in for a lot of
trouble, both in getting it deployed and most of the times keeping it
running too.

I would direct your question to your shared hosting support and hope
they have at least some experience or faqs they can send you. Most of
them just slap the “ruby on rails support” on their website because
cpanel or plesk support it now, but haven’t got a clue on how to
actually host a rails app.

On 05 Dec 2007, at 10:36, Rohit M. wrote:

I am not able to deploy my site on shared hosting. I have created a
database there uploaded the files but not able to access them.
I have also freeze the rails gems.
Please tell me the steps to host a rails site to a shared hosting.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

Hi,

Thanks for replying.
I am using C-Panel for hosting. Can you tell me some steps to host the
site on c-panel?

-Rohit.

[ror-user]

And what about plesk? I´m also having problems but with plesk, and i
suppose it must be similar steps…

On 05/12/2007, Peter De Berdt [email protected] wrote:

As I said, this should be your hosting support’s job to help you out, but

Peter De Berdt

–
Alejandro Moreno López
Publicidad en Buscadores y Marketing Online
http://www.tdo.es

[ror-user]

On 05 Dec 2007, at 11:52, Rohit M. wrote:

Thanks for replying.
I am using C-Panel for hosting. Can you tell me some steps to host the
site on c-panel?

As I said, this should be your hosting support’s job to help you out,
but maybe this link will help (and a quick google search would have
gotten you this info too):

http://glowhost.com/forums/knowledge-base/how-create-ruby-rails-
application-using-cpanel-932.html

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

[ror-user]

On 05 Dec 2007, at 12:48, Alex M. wrote:

And what about plesk? I´m also having problems but with plesk, and i
suppose it must be similar steps…

Plesk may have gotten built-in RoR support by now, but i haven’t got
a clue whether it works or not.

On our dedicated server, we use vhost.conf to pass all rails related
requests to pound which balances the requests over one or more
mongrels (http://forums.rimuhosting.com/forums/showthread.php?t=389).
If you don’t have root access, you’re out of luck here, you’ll have
to rely on the goodwill of your hosting provider to do this kind of
setup for you. Once it’s setup however, getting ssh access to your
own account should enable you to use capistrano to deploy your
railsapp and restart your mongrel/mongrel_cluster.

We only got Plesk to enable our customers to create new e-mail
addresses and host static or php sites on subdomains etc. We manage
the rails apps ourselves. All these control panels have the nasty
habit of fooling around with permissions and keeping to their own way
of structuring domain related folders. As a hosting provider you’re
just better off shielding the customer from it.
Using plesk as an example, they put account files in /var/www/vhosts/
mydomain.com/(subdomains/subdomainname/), cpanel probably uses
something like /home/username/. You really need to get familiar with
all of this when you want to reliably host rails applications on them.

Now, the problem with shared hosting, and especially the cheap ones,
is that they have to manage a lot of servers with thousands of
accounts. A lot of them outsource their support and even server
management to low wage countries. When it comes to solving problems
related to rails deployment, you’ll have to go through escalation
after escalation to finally get to a person that is quite linux
knowledgable, but clearly overstressed. The last thing he’ll want to
do is help you out by customizing his already very fragile server
setup. I gave up on shared hosting after going through these kind of
horror stories (and I’m being so kind not to go into detail on how I
was treated by some of them) and living a carefree and happy-
customers life for a couple of bucks extra per month. And if I need
support, rimuhosting’s is just unbelievably good, I just can’t praise
them enough for it.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt