New Ruby on Rails Plugin- Launching Soon has launched
“Launching Soon” is a new plugin that VinSol has developed.
Working on client projects, we saw a pattern – the client owns a domain, which is either parked or has a blog running on it, and then they commission us to build an application. While the application is being developed, they want us to setup a landing page on the server, with a couple of links – to the blog etc. and want to capture email addresses of people who are interested in the service that the application would offer.
We actually found a few ready to use options for this. This php based paid script was one and there is also a free launching soon module in PHP/Jquery.
However, we did not find anything for Rails so Satish set out to write a plugin for it. Then we thought it would be good to integrate it with Campaign Monitor , since most of our clients use this service for running their email campaigns. And subsequently Satish extended it to add Mail Chimp integration also.
Give it a spin and send us your feedback via the LightHouse project.
Ever tried Rails.root
Guys, have you ever tried Rails.root. It gives same value as RAILS_ROOT. But now in edge rails it is modified and you can do much more with it.
You can use Rails.root at places like:
as
Both gives the same result.
Presented faceted search using ultrasphinx
The first ruby funday held on 22nd Nov 2008 in New Delhi, India. I presented on faceted search using ultrasphinx. I also gave a live demo there. Here are the slides:
You can ask me if you have any doubt.
Hoptoad: A Rails Exception Handling Service
Many of you guys(as me) may have used Exception Notifier plugin to get Rails app exceptions right into your mailbox, and may also have faced some problem like this.
Also if you have 2-3 or more apps running in production then managing such exception mails is also a big headache. In such case one have to keep track of many things like which type of error is resolved/unresolved for which project etc… .
So, here is a good news for those who don’t know about Hoptoad. It is an hosted service by thoughtbot which receives your exceptions, notify you once per error type by email and keep track(resolved/unresolved, count etc…) of your errors on project basis.
By now its a free service. I’m gonna use this as my next project goes live. What abt you??? ;-P
Rails Plugin Annotate Models For Spec And Spec Fixtures
I have been using “Annotate Models” rails plugin written by Dave Thomas since I found it around one and half year ago. It really helps while writing fixtures. But if you use RSpec you might miss schema info at the top of your rspec fixture file as I do. So, today I modify the plugin file so that it prepends schema info to spec file and fixture file. Below are the links of patch file:
svn patch to add schema info to spec file and spec fixture file
git patch to add schema info to spec file and spec fixture file


Working with Vinsol has been one of the most rewarding and productive collaborations I've ever had in the technology industry. Manik is an intelligent and honest engineer with a great faculty for open and clear communication, and his team include some of the swiftest and keenest developers I've ever had the pleasure to work with. They're great value for money, excellent people who are a joy to know and interact with, and above all they really know their stuff