----- 
permalink: h3rald-v7-overview
title: Back on Track...
tags: 
- website
- rails
type: article
filter_pre: textile
-----
...or better, on "Rails":http://www.rubyonrails.org_. 
Yep, this 7th (!) version of the H3RALD website is powered by the overly-popular Ruby web framework _and_ by the "Typo":http://www.typosphere.org blogging platform.

Nope, I decided not to re-develop my website entirely from scratch this time, although I was tempted to, for three simple reasons:

# My "coding time" is close to non-existent nowadays, and even with a framework like Rails re-developing a site from scratch would have taken at least _some_ time, which at the moment I don't have.
# Typo is a fairly robust and feature-rich blogging platform, and after learning a little bit of Rails I could customize it to my needs straight away. URLs didn't break thanks to Rails' routing system, migration was easy enough, and developing the missing bits (like a rudimentary BBCode parser and a TextLinkAds sidebar) wasn't hard at all.
# I wanted to take a break from my site, not code it again.
_Fair enough, but why the new site anyway?_ 

Again, there's more than one answer:

* Lately I didn't feel comfortable sporting a Cake-powered website \- that makes sense, to an extent, right? Good.
* I got fed up with spam. I wanted to re-open comments but I didn't want to implement spam protection for the old site.
* To be totally honest, I got fed up with PHP itself as well, after trying out Ruby for a few days and ordering  and reading the 2nd edition of the "PickAxe":http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ruby/, which I _highly_ recommend.

...But let's say something about what's new in this new release, shall we?

* A new, black (and red) theme. Something completely different. Probably not that good, but quite useful: Every day I check my site from my laptop at work, and if it looks like a big black blob I know that I have to regulate my monitor. I showed it to my parents on their old monitor, and they realized that perhaps it's time to buy an LCD one...
* Comments, trackbacks, desktop client support, theme support, a cool admin area and everything else Typo offers.
* Full RSS feeds. With no ads. So you don't need to see this black blob anymore, if you really don't like it.
* No projects or bookmarks, just my blog and my articles. Let's keep it simple.

More to come...