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title: Back on Track...
content-type: article
timestamp: 1182515880
tags: website|rails
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<p>&#8230;or better, on <a href="http://www.rubyonrails.org">Rails</a>_. <br />
Yep, this 7th (!) version of the H3RALD website is powered by the overly-popular Ruby web framework <em>and</em> by the <a href="http://www.typosphere.org">Typo</a> blogging platform.</p>
<p>Nope, I decided not to re-develop my website entirely from scratch this time, although I was tempted to, for three simple reasons:</p>
<ol>
	<li>My &#8220;coding time&#8221; is close to non-existent nowadays, and even with a framework like Rails re-developing a site from scratch would have taken at least <em>some</em> time, which at the moment I don&#8217;t have.</li>
	<li>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&#8217;t break thanks to Rails&#8217; routing system, migration was easy enough, and developing the missing bits (like a rudimentary BBCode parser and a TextLinkAds sidebar) wasn&#8217;t hard at all.</li>
	<li>I wanted to take a break from my site, not code it again.<br />
<em>Fair enough, but why the new site anyway?</em></li>
</ol>
<p>Again, there&#8217;s more than one answer:</p>
<ul>
	<li>Lately I didn&#8217;t feel comfortable sporting a Cake-powered website \- that makes sense, to an extent, right? Good.</li>
	<li>I got fed up with spam. I wanted to re-open comments but I didn&#8217;t want to implement spam protection for the old site.</li>
	<li>To be totally honest, I got fed up with <span class="caps">PHP</span> itself as well, after trying out Ruby for a few days and ordering  and reading the 2nd edition of the <a href="http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ruby/">PickAxe</a>, which I <em>highly</em> recommend.</li>
</ul>
<p>&#8230;But let&#8217;s say something about what&#8217;s new in this new release, shall we?</p>
<ul>
	<li>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&#8217;s time to buy an <span class="caps">LCD</span> one&#8230;</li>
	<li>Comments, trackbacks, desktop client support, theme support, a cool admin area and everything else Typo offers.</li>
	<li>Full <span class="caps">RSS</span> feeds. With no ads. So you don&#8217;t need to see this black blob anymore, if you really don&#8217;t like it.</li>
	<li>No projects or bookmarks, just my blog and my articles. Let&#8217;s keep it simple.</li>
</ul>
<p>More to come&#8230;</p>