Hi all,
This is my first posting to the mailing list. We are a small but
technically competent hosting company in Savannah, GA. We have
recently been bitten by the rails bug ourselves and while we are
enthusiastic we don’t know a great deal about rails yet. We are
looking at setting up hosting for rails, but we wanted to get
feedback from the community before doing so.
Having said all that, what do you see as your needs in a shared
hosting environment. Are you looking for shell access? Should
apache have suexec turned on for you? Do you prefer to install your
own ruby or should it be available to you as part of the core? How
about custom gems? Should we even set up apache at all, or would you
prefer to be hosted on a server with lighttpd? Then, is the
community preference for FCGI or SCGI?
Well, that sort of leaves things wide open. I hope to hear good
feedback.
Thanks again.
Phil P.
Traffic Engineering
eMarketSouth
912.356.1140 x107
[email protected]
Phil P. wrote:
Are you looking for shell access?
I couldn’t do without ssh access.
Should apache have suexec turned on for you?
Yes.
Do you prefer to install your
own ruby or should it be available to you as part of the core?
I prefer to install all my own software, so I’m not surprised by sudden
upgrades, but I don’t think most people do.
Should we even set up apache at all, or would you
prefer to be hosted on a server with lighttpd?
I would prefer to have control over the configuration of my web server.
Apache proxying for multiple instances of lighttpd seems to be one
possible solution.
Personal opinions only…
–Al Evans
Hi Phil,
I am of two minds on this topic. One of my minds believes the
following:
The “smaller guys” are likely the “newer” guys and would like you to do
lots of stuff for them, while the bigger guys are all “been there done
that” and want to fine tune it themselves. Thus, I would say
shared-server customers are likely to want everything in the world
pre-installed, with maybe some directions on how they can delete various
installations if they want in order to regain some disk space.
Customers who are using a virtual dedicated server are the middle
ground, probably equally split between “do it all for me” and “I set up
my own Iron thankyou very much!”. The full dedicated server customers
are probably mostly in the later camp.
That said, the other mind (let’s call it the right brain) has an idea it
would like to share with you.
Why not work up installation scripts for dozens of rails related items,
and hook each one up to a checkbox on a customer form. User takes a few
minutes to check all of the boxes they want installed, and that just
feeds a dispatching script that fires off all of the requested
installation scripts. Give every user exactly what they want and at the
same time greatly reduce the amount of “I was trying to install
“rhubarb” and now my rails doesn’t work anymore” calls you get from guys
like me that don’t know which way is up yet.
Now that my left brain has seen this idea, it wishes to retract it’s
idea and promote the idea espoused by the right one. I am whole now, my
minds are as one. 
jp
Phil P. wrote:
Hi all,
This is my first posting to the mailing list. We are a small but
technically competent hosting company in Savannah, GA. We have
recently been bitten by the rails bug ourselves and while we are
enthusiastic we don’t know a great deal about rails yet. We are
looking at setting up hosting for rails, but we wanted to get
feedback from the community before doing so.
Having said all that, what do you see as your needs in a shared
hosting environment. Are you looking for shell access? Should
apache have suexec turned on for you? Do you prefer to install your
own ruby or should it be available to you as part of the core? How
about custom gems? Should we even set up apache at all, or would you
prefer to be hosted on a server with lighttpd? Then, is the
community preference for FCGI or SCGI?
Well, that sort of leaves things wide open. I hope to hear good
feedback.
Thanks again.
Phil P.
Traffic Engineering
eMarketSouth
912.356.1140 x107
[email protected]