Hi,

Have you ever used Ruby on Rails framework and do you know web hosts that offer Ruby? I mean do you experience both with Ruby and hosts that support it?

RoR is best run in hosting with fastcgi.
Recommending bluehost and hostmonster, both are supporting fastcgi now.
using for few months, really good hosting

I'd say that to get decent performance from RoR you really need a dedicated server, or at least a VPS. It is a great platform for rapid/agile development, but it doesn't work very well in a shared environment (partly since SSH access is of great benefit).

I'm not an expert on RoR, but those I've spoken to about it do not recommend fastcgi as the best method (can't remember exactly what they prefer instead); it's a necessity to do it this way for a shared platform though, which is why those listed above (and us) provide it this way.

I'd recommend that you take a look at CakePHP instead (or as well?), since that implements a lot of the rapid/agile development concepts used in RoR (some borrowed from RoR itself, some they've taken their own direction). CakePHP will work on (virtually) any PHP host, and is cross-compatible with PHP4 / PHP5 (they load different modules based on the version you're running under). Combine this with the general ease of finding PHP hosts, and you have a nice platform that's easy to deploy!

As you can maybe tell, I've had a play with CakePHP and very much like it...

Originally Posted by aeromit

Hi,

Have you ever used Ruby on Rails framework and do you know web hosts that offer Ruby? I mean do you experience both with Ruby and hosts that support it?

If you need a web hosting that offers Ruby on Rails I'd recommend you use A2hosting.com.
They writes:

At A2 Hosting, our motto is "Leading Edge Hosting. Exceptional Support." We stay on the leading edge by maintaining a developer friendly environment that offers the latest versions of the most powerful hosting software including cPanel manager, PHP 5.2.1, MySQL 5.0.x/4.1.x, PostgreSQL 8.2.x, and Ruby on Rails 1.2.x.

.

I talked to a friend of mine who is good in tech issues where my knowledge is poor. He said that the best way to use Ruby is with VPS or server. I've seen that some of you guys alsome mentioned this.

Originally Posted by aeromit

I talked to a friend of mine who is good in tech issues where my knowledge is poor. He said that the best way to use Ruby is with VPS or server. I've seen that some of you guys alsome mentioned this.

Why do you think ROR is good with VPS? Explain it please.
I think this feature is provided with many companies (Onthespothosting.net, A2hosting.com and others) on shared web hosting.

Originally Posted by newneo

Why do you think ROR is good with VPS? Explain it please.
I think this feature is provided with many companies (Onthespothosting.net, A2hosting.com and others) on shared web hosting.

Ok. Here's why RoR is best not on shared hosting:

Rails is designed to be served up in a dedicated environment and runs best with cached ruby, models, pages, etc... sitting in memory ready to spit out data to requesting browsers

This requires that your site can be left in RAM undisrupted, which completely contradicts the shared hosting configuration. If you want exclusive use of some RAM (which will make your rails site work well) then you need to use a VPS/dedicated server.

Ideally, you'd use Mongrel (which is the one I couldn't remember before) instead of fastcgi as again this provides better performance.

Aside from all of the above, it's also mighty useful to have SSH with rails. In a shared hosting environment then customer SSH access is a huge security risk and (aside from the obvious) I wouldn't take hosting from any company offering this; it's quite trivial to break out of the jails etc. used in order to gain root level permissions on the server - from there on it's obviously downhill!

In order to get SSH access safely, you need a VPS or dedicated server since both of these provide isolated environments - there's no way that you can login to the VPS and end up logged into the node by malicious manipulation (perhaps excepting a huge security hole in the virtualisation software); a dedicated server speaks for itself on the SSH security front.

Originally Posted by newneo

Why do you think ROR is good with VPS? Explain it please.
I think this feature is provided with many companies (Onthespothosting.net, A2hosting.com and others) on shared web hosting.

That's odd but hosts who offer RoR on shared account doesn't offer it on VPS, i thgnk it's the case with a2hosting.com as well.

Originally Posted by Jeyce

That's odd but hosts who offer RoR on shared account doesn't offer it on VPS, i thgnk it's the case with a2hosting.com as well.

Unless the VPS is managed (and the VPS provider is particularly poor) then you don't need the provider to explicitly offer RoR - or anything else - in order to use it on your VPS.

Shared/reseller hosting, you're stuck with whatever features/versions/software etc. are provided; VPS hosting you can decide whatever you want, providing it'll work with the resources you have available.

RoR will work well on most VPS's (depending what else you want to do with your VPS as well) since RoR will be able to leave things in memory exclusively for your sites - see my previous post.

Again, SSH is hugely beneficial for RoR and therefore shared hosting isn't suitable - take a VPS or dedicated server.

However, I should stress that if you're just looking to try it out and/or do some development work, the best place for this is your own computer - not a hosting server (these are for deployment, not development - especially with RoR due to the way it behaves in development 'mode').

Originally Posted by Jeyce

That's odd but hosts who offer RoR on shared account doesn't offer it on VPS, i thgnk it's the case with a2hosting.com as well.

No, you are not right here. I have looked through A2hosting.com's packge plans and have found that they provide RoR on VPS too.

Originally Posted by Jeyce

That's odd but hosts who offer RoR on shared account doesn't offer it on VPS, i thgnk it's the case with a2hosting.com as well.

They don't have to offer it! If you have a VPS, either you can install everything yourself or ask your host to do it if it is managed.

Here are a few shared hosts that offer RoR:
http://site5.com
http://www.hostingrails.com/
http://www.textdrive.com/
http://joyent.com/
http://www.asmallorange.com/services/hosting/
http://www.eastsolid.com/
http://www.networkredux.com
http://railsmachine.com/
http://www.slicehost.com/
http://www.techhosting.com/

Hi Jordan!

I think you missed the point somewhere? There are loads of shared hosts offering RoR, but the problem is that it isn't a very good option - particularly for the TS.

If you're just getting into RoR, then you should install locally and do some bits of development etc on your own machine - this is the way to do it because RoR in development "mode" will kill any hosting service.

For production (i.e. live website) then you should be looking to use (at least) a VPS in order to get usable performance from RoR - the way the platform works requires plenty of memory for caching your site, and this goes completely against the shared hosting environment where your site is unlikely to sit cached in RAM due to the number of other sites competing for it...

Originally Posted by damien_ls

Hi Jordan!

I think you missed the point somewhere? There are loads of shared hosts offering RoR, but the problem is that it isn't a very good option - particularly for the TS.

Actually, I didn't miss the point at all. The original poster wanted some RoR hosts, and I gave a an un-biased list.

If you really want to get into it, then you might as well recommend a dedicated server because you won't have to continue sharing resources as a VPS still does. There are a lot of hosts that have memory set for a VPS at 512mb burstable, and 256 or less dedicated. Obviously it all depends on your provider, but it just seems odd that you'd go straight to a VPS rather then some of the shared hosts I mentioned.

If you take a look at some of the links provided, they are perfect RoR hosts, even being shared. They are all involved with RoR; Not just buying a shared account, getting SSH access, and installing RoR yourself.

I have had experience with a few of the hosts I listed and using RoR on them with LIVE websites. If it's not going to be a vastly intense site, it will work out.

I'm just not trying to subconsciously beef up someone into buying my own services, that's all

But pettiness aside, it IS possible to use and run RoR in a shared environment. It's being done on a lot of the hosts in my aforementioned posts (especially considering some of them are RoR based/heavily inspired).

Obviously if you really want to get heavily involved, it's best to skip the VPS crap and go with a dedicated, especially if you know what you're doing. No sense in going with another shared service, when you can have a box of your own, and sometimes for the same price.

Originally Posted by Riane

I'm just not trying to subconsciously beef up someone into buying my own services, that's all

I think that's a little unfair... and for the record, I wouldn't recommend using Layershift for serious RoR hosting - unless you're prepared to do a lot of the work yourself.

Unlike some (and I'm not implying you in this), I come here to try and be helpful - not to sell services. However, it's obvious that I don't make any secret of my associations with Layershift; hiding that would be equally dishonest.

Anything I include in my posts is my genuine opinion based on the technical and industry knowledge I have on the matter. It's nothing more, and nothing less.

Originally Posted by ihtikk

No, you are not right here. I have looked through A2hosting.com's packge plans and have found that they provide RoR on VPS too.

Why can't it be provided on shared hosting?
Does A2hosting.com provide ROR on reselling?

Originally Posted by juio

Why can't it be provided on shared hosting?

It can - but read the rest of the thread to understand some of the reasons why shared hosting isn't best suited to the RoR platform.

In a nutshell, the rails platform demands "spare" memory to dedicate to your particular website in order to get decent performance from it; this isn't a feature of shared hosting and therefore if this works out on shared hosting it's through luck.

The alternatives (i.e. VPS or dedicated server) both offer memory which is dedicated for your uses; assuming that you have enough of it, rails will be able to happily consume the memory it requires to run your site well.

I should also point out that even if rails happens to work on shared hosting for your needs now, if you expect your site to grow then you would benefit from starting on a VPS for easier upgrades - the cost difference is not huge, but before anyone jumps on me... let me emphasise: if you expect your site to grow.

If you're just creating a little photo album for your friends/family or something like that then try shared and save money! When I talk about hosting, I'm usually referring to business hosting where reliability and stability are crucial... otherwise people lose money and