Bandwagon HQ

All right! By now, you’re all set up with a domain that’s been parked at your host, and nothing can stop you now from blogging, right? Sorry. One more step to go. Right now, all you’ve got is an empty site. Your site is waiting for you to do something.

Just think. Clean, empty, beautiful slate. Nothing on the site to worry about. Guess what? No content means no visitors. No visitors means no business on the web. No visitors means no money. You need money to keep your site going. Time to fix that.

You need the right tools for the job. Once again, the n00b blogger is faced with some options. There are several choices for blogging software. Mephisto, Wordpress and Typo are all great. Which one is the best? You’ll find that the answer to this question is not clear-cut. The better question to ask is which one is best for you.

I went with Mephisto for several reasons.

1. Open Source software – Not bloated, yet very customizable.
2. Built-in tagging, searching, categorizing, RSS feeds and assets.
3. Growing number of 3rd party plugins
4. Created with Ruby on Rails
5. A wiki running on Mephisto.
6. Developer friendly code syntax highlighting
7. Not every page has to be a blog – allows for structured sites.
8. Pluggable liquid layouts
9. Much more

If you’re following my footsteps, this should be as smooth as possible for you. There were a couple obstacles that got in my way and cost me a few hours of time. By following this tutorial, you should have no problem at all. I’ll assume you have ssh’d into your account on your host.

Enjoy, and happy blogging!

Assuming you already found a good host for your blog, you’re now ready to register a domain name for your site. You may already have a really good idea for a name in mind, but chances are that someone else already came up with that ‘one of a kind’ name. Companies, individuals and cybersquatters have been snatching up one word dictionary names left and right for many years now. If you’re absolutely stuck on obtaining a one word name, then you should also be aware that you’ll probably be set back a few bucks for naming rights. You may get the absolute name you want, but it will cost you.

Thinking of a unique name

Even if you’re completely willing to change your original name, be prepared to come up with several alternatives. It took me quite a while to settle on BandwagonHQ but in the end it should just be something simple and catchy. A combination of two short words could work for you. It won’t matter too much if you purposely spell it wrong, either… Cork’d, Flickr, and Stockpickr are examples of very successful sites that simply left out a vowel. In the end, all that mattered was that the site offered a worthwhile service to its customers. It certainly does help to have a memorable brand name, though.

If you are having trouble coming up with a name, try using NameBoy to have their service generate one for you based on keywords that you provide. You might be surprised by its results and find an idea that you never would have thought of.

Feeling creative? Think script.aculo.us.

Registering your name

Multitudes of sites offer domain name registration services. How did I find a good company to go with? Well, I simply google’d for ‘domain name registration’. For the sake of simplicity, I stuck with only looking at the first page of the 23,800,000 results available. Some bare-bones registration sites offer $1.99 registration to first time customers, while the average price is about $7. I actually splurged a few extra dollars ($3 extra to be exact) by going with a service provider I knew I could trust—Google.\

Mapping your domain name to your host

This step may be unnecessary if you went with an all-inclusive host like DreamHost. Assuming you went the same approach I did, you’ll need to update your settings where your domain is registered. Your service provider hopefully provided you to a link to eNom (or wherever your name may be registered) where you can log into your domain name’s administrative control panel. Once you are logged into eNom, try to find the section on DNS Information where you can update your Primary and alternate domain servers. For HostingRails, these servers will probably be something like ns1.hostingrails.com, ns2.hostingrails.com and so on.

Mapping your host to your domain name

I hope you signed up with a host that supported cPanel. It really takes that pain out of administering a site on a shared host. The final thing you will need to do is add your new domain name as a ‘parked domain’ on your shared host. You may want to verify with your host if everything looks normal. Everything may look normal to you at first, but they’ve probably got a lot more experience in dealing with n00bs.

And don’t sweat it if you can’t get the exact domain name you want. You can always be creative and get close with a couple of extra letters (e.g. backpackit.com or campfirenow.com). -37signals, Getting Real

Since my first post, I’ve been getting a couple of the same questions asked to me by multiiple people. What software are you running your blog on? What host are you using? Where did you register your domain? Hopefully this series about blogging will answer those questions.

Lately I’ve been itching to get my blog started, but it took a while to get the wheels rolling. Partially due to not having enough time to get started and partially due to the fact that this was all new to me. Then a couple weeks ago I finally pulled the trigger while sitting in a Stone Creek Coffee shop near my house.

You’ve got quite a few options when it comes to blogging. I decided that I was more interested in getting a site set up for future expansion rather than using one of the popular blogging sites like Blogger. I also planned on hunting for a host that supports a lot of my current needs and considered what I might want the host to support in the future.

Searching for a host

I decided to go with HostingRails, but let me explain why… I’ve heard of lots of people using Dreamhost with mixed results. I hear that they provide a few built in web services; if you want a blog added to your site, click a few options and you’re done. Maybe you fancy some forums; That’s fine, too. Go through their menu system and you’ll have one added for you automatically. This approach can be quite nice. You get a lot of features for free. I can’t argue with simplicity, so I suggest that anyone purely interested in features like that also consider that approach.

Sure, getting some applications added to your site automagically for you for free is nice, but at what cost? Well, some of their plans start at $9.99 / month. But do you really need 146.2 GB of space and 1.462 TB of bandwidth when you are first starting your blog? Not really. Even if you blogged 24 hours a day and contacted every ad agency in the world, I doubt that people will be flocking to your site to see your first “Test post” blog that you’ll probably have up for the first week or so. I wanted something a little less expensive to get into initially, with some room for upgrades. Like anything you buy, you should so a little comparison shopping.

Comparison shopping

I knew that I had some very specific ideas in mind for what I wanted. I knew that I needed support for Ruby on Rails, mySQL and the open source blogging software I’m using called Mephisto. One of my days spent searching for a good host turned up a good find. I suggest using the RoR wiki when you get a chance. The wiki page includes a brief description of each host with a link to the actual host’s site.

For me, HostingRails turned out to be a perfect fit for me. All hosting plans include no additional setup fees, instant activation, unlimited domains, subdomains, databases and email addresses, FTP and SSH access, 24/7/365 support, Ruby (+gems), Rails, PHP, Python, Apache, Subversion, cPanel, and lots more.

For only $3.59 / month, this host provides a very inexpensive entry level plan with FCGI support for your rails apps, 5GB of disk space and 20TB of bandwidth per month. In the event that you should ever want to upgrade your plan, have no fear; you can upgrade on a prorated basis. I highly recommend using HostingRails if you are someone like me.

If you decide to go with my host, please use the any of the links provided above or tell them I sent you. Thanks!

This year’s RailsConf was a blast. Not only was it the first professional conference I’ve ever attended, but it was also my first commercial flight anywhere, ever. I love the acceleration of taking off and the experience of flying so high above the clouds. I just really had no pressing reason to fly before… That is, until RailsConf | 2007 called my name.

My flight started in my home town of Milwaukee, WI, stopped in Minneapolis, MN and ended in Portland, OR. Flying out of Mitchell International Airport on a normal business day was painless. One bit of advice I would give to any other first time flyers out there would be to remember to bring your own drink and food on the plane. As far as the “in flight service” provided by the airline, the miniature 6 oz soda cups they provide to you are simply pathetic. I also discovered that Pringles chips are a highly valued commodity on a plane. Those little salty crisps of gold go for almost $0.20 per chip. You can purchase bricks of golden delight chips in packs of 10. For some reason, however, they chose to stuff these prized snacks in aluminum/cardboard hybrid packaging. I could only help but think to myself… If those chips were so valuable, whey did the airline treat them like all the other “common” food snacks by packaging like some other inferior junk food product?

Needless to say, I learned my lesson from the first leg of the flight. Let this be a lesson for you as well. Buy your food and drink while you’re waiting to board (after the security checkpoint, of course). In fact, there may be some arbitrage opportunities out there… Next time you fly, try buying out the vending machine and sell as many coke & pepsi products as possible for $1 over the what you paid. I’m not sure how well that will go over, but it’s worth a shot. Just try to sell below the radar.

Finally arriving at PDX was pretty fun, too… My wife and I hopped on a free shuttle ride provided by our hotel. We were both pretty tired from the flights so we ate in the hotel dining room and simply planned out our next days to come.

The entire trip was a great experience overall. There was plenty to see and do in Portland, both on the business and fun side of things. In some of my future posts, I hope to share some of my knowledge and experiences with you.

Since the iPhone release only three days ago, 37signals has been busy modifying their Ta-da List application to work seamlessly with Apple’s multi-touch interface.

37signals applications are a testament to the usefulness of simple, beautifully designed applications. Keeping things simple is one of the key reasons why their applications are so successful.