Loading ...SoIndustry was offline for a while due to moving hosts from Engine Yard to SliceHost - but it’s back online now and ready for you to jump right back in. Check it out here; http://SoIndustry.com
The move from Engine Yard to SliceHost was a tricky one, partly because of the number of dependencies that SoIndustry relies upon (background processes, search indices, daemons, multiple cron jobs, etc) and partly due to my lack of Rails deployment knowledge. Rails deployment isn’t quite as simple as it is with Wordpress, for example.
Capitalizing on this opportunity, Engine Yard offer a service which takes responsibility for the Rails deployment set-up & ongoing maintenance of dependencies (such as the Rails framework and associated Ruby gems), but SliceHost are a completely hands-off DIY VPS hosting option (you configure your OS, Rails gems, etc). However, the price difference between the two is huge ($399 vs $38 in SoIndustry’s case) - and, thanks to past experiences, I’m now a believer in web businesses taking a little time to understand their production environment in the early stages, and saving a ton of cash on the hosting costs, by ‘optimising for now’ and going with a cheaper self-managed hosting option, rather than one of the all inclusive completely-managed Rails hosting options. Managing your own server slice can sound frightening, but let’s put it this way - if you’ve managed to put together a development environment on your Mac or laptop, the production environment isn’t drastically different. And if you’re lucky enough to have a friend who can help out when you get stuck (Ryan Townsend has helped me out on tons of occasions - thank you Ryan!), or an IRC client connected to #rubyonrails - there’s always someone you can turn to for advice.
While SoIndustry is still in private beta right now, it’ll soon be opening up to the wider Web, giving you an opportunity to share your industry insights & knowledge in combination with a sharply presented profile and resume (but there’s more to come on those, too). However, I’m really eager to hear your thoughts on SoIndustry as it is right now, especially if you’re a Twitter user; have you had any thoughts on the direction of SoIndustry? Are there any features that would make it a must-have product for you? Leave a comment here or post an update from your SoIndustry profile.
