# Simplest CMS design question **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [September 20, 2009, 1:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simplest-cms-design-question/175813 "2009-09-20T13:19:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/71c47a/32.png) [@greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/greg)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2009, 1:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simplest-cms-design-question/175813/1 "2009-09-20T13:19:00Z")
Hi all, What would be the best design if I wanted a RubyOnRails basic CMS that would allow HTML/images to be uploaded and viewed by users who were allowed to see them. In particular what would be a good / robust way to host the files? For example: a) Let Apache web server (i.e. not RoR engine) host them - this would require RoR could save the files out on the Unix/Linux box to an approach location under the web server (not sure how possible this is). Also it means that user management would need to be integrated/handled by Apache (could be an issue perhaps?) b) Let RoR application store them in it’s own directory area, but not under the “/public” directory as this could be visible on web for the right URL - once stored on file, then the image tag URL in the HTML pages would need to tell the RoR application to get them via a specific controller/action which would then have to retrieve them and stream them out… c) As per b) above but stored in a mysql database – Greg [http://blog.gregnet.org/](http://blog.gregnet.org/) ---
**Author:** ![greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/71c47a/32.png) [@greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/greg)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2009, 1:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simplest-cms-design-question/175813/2 "2009-09-20T13:24:16Z")
On 20 Sep 2009, at 13:14, Greg H. wrote: > b) Let RoR application store them in it’s own directory area, but not > under the “/public” directory as this could be visible on web for the > right URL - once stored on file, then the image tag URL in the HTML > pages would need to tell the RoR application to get them via a > specific controller/action which would then have to retrieve them and > stream them out… > > c) As per b) above but stored in a mysql database I’d go for Apache with the mod X-Sendfile compiled into it. There’s an option in the latest Rails version afaik to use it out of the box and in previous versions it’s just a matter of installing a plugin or crafting the headers yourself. It basically comes down to handling authentication etc with Rails and serving the file through Apache directly using a special header. [http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=rails+2.3+x+sendfile&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8](http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=rails+2.3+x+sendfile&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8) Best regards Peter De Berdt