Web Hosting News by HostReview.com

Dimension Servers Announces New Rails CPanel Plug-in

By Jonathan McAllister
HostReview.com Contributing Author
Tuesday, January 16, 2007; 12:33 AM

Ruby on Rails Hosting – The way it was meant to be:

Everyone from startups to non-profits to enterprise organizations are using the powerful object oriented Ruby on Rails programming environment. Ruby on Rails has incredible potential in cutting the development time of web applications down significantly. The only problem is how to host this framework.

The problem: Ruby on Rails was designed to be human friendly and not designed to be hosting friendly. The common web hosting response to Rails has been FastCGI. This poses problems for the developers and hosting companies most notably:

1. FastCGI causes load spikes on linux servers

2. Rails using FastCGI, and Apache v1.3 or 2.0 is buggy
3. Rails developers don’t always know how to use the linux command line

The preferred method for serving up Ruby on Rails is a Load balance Mongrel Cluster, and it proved to be a hassle for hosting companies to offer because the proxy portion of rails requires the server admin to add/remove lines to the httpd.conf every time a customer wants to add or remove a rails application which can be a support nightmare both for client and host if you have lots of Rails users.

The Solution: The solution to this problem is simple. Take the most popular control panel on the market and design a custom plug-in which will allow the end users to create, install and control their Rails applications.

A CPanel Rails Plug-in ?

It allows our customers to take full control of their portion of the mongrel cluster. The new Rails plug-in FULLY Automates most rails tasks. This will speed deployment time considerably and allow our customers to focus on designing sites and not on figuring out how to deploy their Rails application. The new cPanel rails plug-in has the following features:

Install & Start the Base Framework (directly in cPanel)
Install & Start the Radiant GEM CMS framework (directly in cPanel)
Install & Start Custom Rails application (directly in cPanel)
Start and Stop your Rails Applications (directly in cPanel)
Restart your Rails Applications (directly in cPanel)
Remove your Rails Application (directly in cPanel)
Initiate a GEM installation Request (directly in cPanel)

The Dimension Servers LLC web services company opened in August of 2005. Dimension Servers has slowly made its mark on the hosting industry by providing unbeatable customer service, technical support and innovative products Dimension Servers offers an assortment of products, and services, and provides the resources for our clients to quickly, and painlessly publish their web content. With a full range of business web consulting, and technical hosting services Dimension Servers strives to be a vital partner for building, growing, and maintaining a dynamic internet presence.