# New to rails... suitable for what I wanna do?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-to-rails-suitable-for-what-i-wanna-do/108049>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [June 28, 2007, 6:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-to-rails-suitable-for-what-i-wanna-do/108049 "2007-06-28T18:31:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 6:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-to-rails-suitable-for-what-i-wanna-do/108049/1 "2007-06-28T18:31:56Z")

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Hi,  
I have created and now maintain the website [ratsdeville.com](http://ratsdeville.com) (http://  
[ratsdeville.com/index\_e.html](http://ratsdeville.com/index_e.html) for english) for my brother. He creates  
more and more content for it each week and I’m seriously feeling the  
pain now archiving everything manually and making sure that links  
works once items are archived (which I lost control of).

Like you can see, it is basically a news site about art expos and  
people in Montreal. Several sections gets updated on a regular basis  
(this week, culture, art) and the rest is mostly static. I need each  
of this section to show only the most recent items but I also need a  
way to find the older items.

Would rails make a nice solution for me? I know some Perl that I  
learned by doing bioinformatics. I wanna learn an object oriented  
language and Ruby seems very nice. I can handle Postgresql, I know  
Linux very well. If rails is a solution, I would probably have my own  
server running ubunu/mongrel/rails.

Thanks,  
carl

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**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 6:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-to-rails-suitable-for-what-i-wanna-do/108049/2 "2007-06-28T18:55:27Z")

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why not blog it? or custimize the blog. if thats all your planning to  
do, learning ror may be an overkill?

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**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 7:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-to-rails-suitable-for-what-i-wanna-do/108049/3 "2007-06-28T19:01:58Z")

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It can’t hurt to give it a try. The book “Agile Web D. with  
Rails”  
is a great introduction and will show you how to build a basic online  
store.  
You could take what you learn from that and expand upon it to do what  
you’re  
doing. See [http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails/](http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails/) for more on  
that.

If you’re not that keen on learning how to program, you could  
investigate  
one of the many content management systems out there. Radiant is a very  
nice Rails one… see [http://radiantcms.org/](http://radiantcms.org/) for more details.

There are others out there too. Some people even use Wordpress, a PHP  
blogging solution, as a CMS.

Hope that helps!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 7:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-to-rails-suitable-for-what-i-wanna-do/108049/4 "2007-06-28T19:09:59Z")

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Blog would not be enough, I need lots of space (many many images) and  
total  
control on layout. Trying to know if RoR is overkill is my point here…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 7:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-to-rails-suitable-for-what-i-wanna-do/108049/5 "2007-06-28T19:24:00Z")

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Thanks a lot, radiantcms looks very nice!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 9:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-to-rails-suitable-for-what-i-wanna-do/108049/6 "2007-06-28T21:09:29Z")

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Or even Mephisto ([http://mephistoblog.com/](http://mephistoblog.com/)) might be an option, far  
more than just a blogging tool…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 7:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-to-rails-suitable-for-what-i-wanna-do/108049/7 "2007-06-28T19:09:59Z")

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Thanks a lot, radiantcms looks very nice!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2007, 12:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-to-rails-suitable-for-what-i-wanna-do/108049/8 "2007-06-29T00:01:28Z")

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you can total control with mephisto blog tool. it comes with layouts you  
can customize to your own liking. learning a new language + framework  
for 1 small project sounds like an overkill. unless you got the time.

Carl Bolduc wrote:

> Blog would not be enough, I need lots of space (many many images) and  
> total  
> control on layout. Trying to know if RoR is overkill is my point here…