Down on the Farm
March 1, 2005
Today we’re launching silvercreekfarm.net, the web site of my friend Ben Buchanan’s father’s business. Silver Creek Farm is a small family operation that sells evergreen shrubs for landscaping projects. Ben’s dad, Jace, is a good guy and I enjoyed working with him on the site.
The site is a small but informative introduction to the business. Jace wanted to eschew e-commerce for the time being, instead focusing on giving himself a place to keep existing customers up to date on what’s new at the farm, and introduce himself to potential future customers. The site reflects the personal, informal feel of the business.
What’s significant about silvercreekfarm.net is that it allowed me, for the first time, to gain some experience with Ruby on Rails. I didn’t do anything as complex as build a Rails app, but I did dip my toes in the water. The site includes an installation of Hieraki, a great wiki-style application that allows you to publish full, organized books on the web. I’m using it to give the Buchanans a primer on how to use their e-mail, Textpattern installation, and other TextDrive services.
Thanks to Will Mitchell for helping me get Hieraki up and running. Despite being a great app that’s full of potential, it unfortunately currently lacks any documentation whatsoever. Without Will’s help the manuals page would have been DOA.
I’m going to take a short break now that it’s done, but I’ll return to my regular pontifications (speaking of) all-too-soon.
How is it going with the Rails thing? I read your post on TxD a while ago.
I am still on the “I have to check Rails out” phase and I’m stuck, partially because I can’t find any good “explain it to me like I’m 4 years old” book on Rails…
Everything I read seems so vague. Where are you getting tutorials and stuff from?
So far, so good. It looks like things are about to get really busy for me, so learning Rails has sort of gone on the back burner for now. I just figured out the Hieraki stuff with the help of a few folks online. As far as real programming goes, I’ve got a lot to learn, and like you, aren’t quite sure where I go to learn it. Good luck!