Joshua Paling

Hey? That sounds like a bad deal? What's this about?

I've just finished ReInteractive's 15min Rails Blog. It's awesome. If you're wanting to learn rails (as I am) then it's a great start. If you're in Sydney, go to their even more awesome InstallFest, too.

But 15 mins isn't long to dive into a new language / framework. There's lots of "copy paste" and much less "now catch your breath and understand everything".

That's what this series is about - diving deeper and understanding each step of the 15min Rails Blog. And we'll start with a birds-eye view of the 6 post series.

15m Blog Overview

Step 1

• Setting up a new rails app
• Creating basic blog functionality
• Adding basic HTTP authentication
• Adding comments
• Putting your blog live on Heroku

Step 2

• Setting the root / index page
• Commenting via AJAX
• Creating an RSS feed
• Styling with Zurb's Foundation
• Adding some personality (your name, twitter link, etc)
• Questions and homework

NOTE: Don't do the questions and homework. Reason being is that it'll put you out of step for the next posts in the series! Finish the series first, before going off on any tangents.

Step 3

• Automated testing with RSpec
• Acceptance testing with Capybara

Step 4

• Creating an Admin area with the ActiveAdmin gem
• Markdown support for writing blog posts
• Adding a stylesheet for code highlighting in blog psots

Step 5

• Allowing published / unpublished for posts
• Allowing posts to have an author

Step 6

• Assets (js / css / images) in Rails
• Creating a static page with a custom route
• Custom error pages (404, 422, 500)