Ruby on Rails 3.0 is available

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Submitted by Bryan on

I'm not much of a programmer but I can appreciate the value of a good programming language when I see it. While I know Python and dabble with PHP, I've always appreciated Ruby and Ruby on Rails. There is something about the Ruby development scene that perks my interest in this programming language.

Ruby on Rails 3.0 was just released this week. The development of Rails 3.0 has been two years in the making. David August writes:

Rails 3.0 has been underway for a good two years, so it’s with immense pleasure that we can declare it’s finally here. We’ve brought the work of more than 1,600 contributors together to make everything better, faster, cleaner, and more beautiful.

Some of the biggest changes and additions in Rails includes:

  • New Active Record query engine - makes it easier to build complex queries over several iterations.
  • New router for Action Controller - the syntax has been modified to to favor the REST style
  • New Action Mailer
  • Manage dependencies with Bundler - Bundler allows you to specify the libraries, frameworks, and plugins that your application depends on.
  • XSS protection by default
  • Encoding issues resolved
  • Active Model: Validations, callbacks, etc for all models
  • Official plugin APIs
  • Documentation

If you're interested in Ruby on Rails 3.0, check out the download page at RubyonRails.org.

Webiva Launches SaaS Hosting Platform for Open Source Rails-based Content Management System

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Submitted by karyn451 on

BOSTON, Mass. – Webiva, an open source Ruby on Rails content management system (CMS) designed to compete with the likes of Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress, today launched a new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) hosting platform. Webiva.com allows web professionals to build websites on a load-balanced, backed-up and replicated cloud without the hassle of installing and maintaining a Ruby on Rails installation.

“Webiva has been absolutely critical to the growth of our business. We reviewed dozens of platforms to adopt, and have found nothing that compares in quality to Webiva,” said Jonathan Karush, CEO of Liberty Concepts, the nation’s largest provider of campaign websites to U.S. congressional candidates. “It has powered some of the nation's most recognizable advocacy campaigns over the past two years.”

Built from the ground up with a designer’s and a developer’s needs in mind, Webiva is a web 2.0 open-source website building system (WBS) that allows web professionals to build custom websites that look and operate the way they want them to. Based on a Ruby on Rails framework from a software perspective, Webiva does its best to build on the concepts and methodologies that Rails creates. It has an extensible module system that allows additional functionality to easily be dropped into the system. Webiva offers support for forums, e-commerce, social networking other mediums needed by web professionals building top-of-the-line websites.

“Until recently there were two CMS options: a blog engine that’s user-friendly but limited, or a full-stack CMS that’s powerful, but complex to manage,” said Webiva Partner and Developer Pascal Rettig. “Webiva offers the best of both, a Rails-based system with the accessibility of a blog engine and all the features of a big CMS on the back-end.”

With 18 years of combined web development experience, Pascal and Martha Rettig are the inventive developer-designer team behind Webiva’s creation. They have been using the system for more than four years. Every feature available on Webiva was added in response to a specific requirement that arose during its use. Key benefits to web professionals using Webiva include:

  • Easy-to-Use - A user-friendly interface similar to a blog engine with all the features of a powerful open-source CMS
  • Non-CMS Aesthetic Appeal - Webiva is transparent from a site’s front end, giving designers full control and easy access to site HTML and CSS with built in editors.
  • Quick Click Site Creation - Build and deploy dozens of sites from a singe install- no need to FTP templates and assets.
  • Well documented, Open-source Platform - Built-on and extensible with Ruby on Rails, web professionals can use core modules (including e-commerce, social networking, forums, etc.) or write their own.

Radiant CMS 0.9.0 is out and about

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Submitted by Bryan on

A new version of our favorite Ruby on Rails CMS has been released, Radiant CMS 0.9.0. Obviously, I spoke a little too soon last October when I announced that 0.9.0 was coming soon. Each open source community has their own pace and time-line for releasing the release candidates of their software. In retrospect, I should have noted that Radiant CMS developers like to take their time in making sure the Radiant releases are at a level of quality and stability they're comfortable with before releasing the final versions to the general public.

So what's new in the 0.9.0 version of Radiant CMS? Radiant now has a new UI, support for internationalization and loading of extensions as gems. Some of the more significant new features in this version of Radiant include::

  • There are new features for pagination (requiring will_paginate).
  • You can now run Radiant from a sub-directory.
  • When selecting a published date in the future, Radiant will treat the content as hidden until that date
  • Extensions may be loaded as gems and generated extensions now have features to easily create gems with Jeweler
  • Radiant CMS is now running on Rails 2.3.8 (bundled with Radiant)

If you would like more details on the changes in Radiant CMS, you can always check out the CHANGELOG. Radiant 0.9.0 CMS is available for download from the RadiantCMS.org website.

Radiant CMS 0.9.0 coming soon

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Submitted by Bryan on

A new version of Radiant, a Ruby on Rails content management systems, is coming soon. Radiant 0.9.0 has just been released as a release candidate.

In this release the interface for the CMS has been updated to make Radiant more stylish and compact. Apart from the stylistic changes, there are a few other significant changes to the user interface worth mentioning:

  • There are now two levels of tabs. The intent here is to provide more organization for folks that have a lot of extensions installed. The primary top level tabs are now “Content”, “Design”, and “Settings”.
  • Hot-keys have been added for saving. You can now press Ctrl+S to save a page and continue editing, or Ctrl+Shift+S to save a page and return to the index page.
  • The number of flash messages have been reduced in favor of status messages that pop up when you submit a form.
  • Support has been added for the tab key to text areas. On Safari and Firefox there is also support for multi-line indent and unindent.

There are a number of changes that did not make it into this release candidate that still may make it into the final version in one form or another. Additional features that may be added by the developers in the final version include internationalization, asset management, password reset, filter toolbar, and a revamped settings interface.

The original announcement for this release candidate has additional information and can be found at RadiantCMS.org.

Radiant CMS 0.7.0 Coming Soon

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Submitted by Bryan on

Radiant, a Ruby on Rails based CMS, will soon be released under version 0.7. The new version is currently available as a release candidate. 

The most significant changes between Radiant 0.6.9 and 0.7 will include:

  • Admin controllers are now “RESTful”, i.e. they conform to the Rails convention for resources.
  • Rails 2.1.2 is included.
  • RSpec and RSpec-Rails are no longer packaged and are marked as gem dependencies. You need 1.1.11 or newer.
  • There are now generators for mailers and migrations in extensions.
  • The addition of some database indexes to increase performance.
  • Radius tags can now access request parameters and URL helpers directly.

Complete Story

Radiant 0.6.6 CMS Released

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Submitted by Bryan on

Radiant 0.6.6 was released over the weekend, shortly after the release of Radiant 0.6.5.  Obviously, 0.6.6 of this built with Ruby on Rails CMS was released to fix some bugs in 0.6.5.  So instead of focusing on the bugs, let's focus on what is new in 0.6.5/6 since Radiant 0.6.4 was released in November 2006.

Since Radiant 0.6.4, the latest versions of the software introduced two major changes:

  • Rails 2.0.2 included (0.6.4 used Rails 1.2.5)
  • RSpec 1.1.4 is used in core and supported in extensions

New book on Ruby on Rails

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Submitted by shriharshb on

Building Dynamic Web 2.0 Websites with Ruby on Rails is a new book from Packt which helps users to design, develop, and deploy a fully featured website using Ruby on Rails. Written by A. P. Rajshekhar, this book is a tutorial to create a complete Web 2.0 website with Ruby on Rails.

Ruby on Rails is an open-source web application framework ideally suited to building business applications; accelerating and simplifying the creation of database-driven websites. Often shortened to Rails or RoR, it provides a stack of tools to rapidly build web applications based on the Model-View-Controller design pattern.

Each chapter in this book adds a new feature to the site, adding new knowledge, skills, and techniques. This book is for anyone who has basic concepts of object-oriented programming as well as relational databases and wants to develop online applications using Ruby on Rails. Prior knowledge of Ruby or Rails is not expected.

For more details on the book, please visit http://www.packtpub.com/building-dynamic-websites-with-ruby-on-rails/book.

 

Learn to Build a complete Ruby on Rails Business Application

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Submitted by shriharshb on

Ruby on Rails Enterprise Application Development is a new book from Packt that helps readers to build a complete Ruby on Rails Business Application from start to finish. Written by Elliott Smith and Rob Nichols, this book concentrates on application development as a whole process and is intended to complement existing Rails tutorials. Each chapter deals with a key feature or functional area of a complex, full-scale Rails application.

All businesses have processes that can be automated via computer applications, thereby reducing costs and simplifying everyday operations. This book demonstrates that a modern web application framework makes an ideal platform for such applications. It shows how the attributes that make the Rails framework so successful for Internet applications also provide great benefit within a business intranet. These attributes include easy roll-out and update of applications, centralized processing and data handling, simple maintenance, straightforward code development, and scalability.

phpRadiant to imitate Radiant CMS

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Submitted by Bryan on

Philippe Archambault wrote to us that he is working on a PHP version of Radiant CMS. Radiant CMS is based on the Ruby language. Mr. Archambault has appropriately named his CMS, phpRadiant. If imitation is a sincere form of flattery, then lets hope the Radiant CMS folks are blushing!

Mr. Archambault isn't the first person to suggest taking what they liked in Radiant CMS and migrating it from the Ruby language to one that is PHP based. However, his project is the first one that I know about which has actually seen the light of day.

 

Official Ruby site redesigned

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Submitted by Bryan on

Another "official" site has received a face, this time the Ruby language site. The Ruby site runs on the Ruby-based content management system, Radiant. My impressions in one word...Impressive.

In my opinion, Ruby as a programming language and Radiant as a CMS are still in its adolescent years of development. However, if the Ruby language site is any indication...it is more than ready to compete with those that have been around a lot longer.

There can be a lot of politics involved in changing community sites, but it seems that the site maintainers did everything right:

As you can see the much anticipated redesign is now live. It was over a year ago that it was suggested that a “visual identity team” be formed for the purpose of redesigning the Ruby Web site. The redesign team created over 20 mockups for the the new site, posted several for the Ruby community to comment on, and finally decided on the current design.

Once the design was chosen it was lovingly converted to CSS and XHTML and an administration system was written for it. The content was then ported over from the old Web site and massaged by an enthusiastic group of volunteers.

Congratulations to all those involved with this both leading edge languages and CMS.

Rails discloses security vulnerability to heroic users

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Submitted by Bryan on

Ruby on RailsThe past couple days has been a busy time for those involved in the Rails open source project. Just as busy as the Rails core developers were the users running Ruby on Rails applications (such the Radiant content management system). On Wednesday, the project's developers released Rails 1.1.5. In the announcement of the Rails release, David August called upgrading the new version "mandatory" since the security vulnerability was so severe. However, he didn't want to go into the details to the exact nature of the vulnerability and only stated that, "The issue is in fact of such a criticality that we’re not going to dig into the specifics. No need to arm would-be assalients."

Every project team, whether its software is open source or propriety, faces the challenge of disclosing their software's vulnerabilities. Such disclosures can have positive and negative impacts on the software's users. For example, releasing the exact nature of the vulnerability can give contributing software developers and users an edge in how best to protect their site, remove the vulnerabilities, and address concerns for any security patches that may not fully fix the problem. However, as August mentions, releasing details of the vulnerability can provide information that could enable would-be hackers to cause damage to users of the software.