Hey everybody!

Let me show you what we have in our github account for prototyping Rails applications.

Here is skeleton for Rails 3 based applications filled with:

• Basic auth: Devise app/models/user.rb
• Navigation: SimpleNavigation config/navigations
• DRY controllers: Inherited Resources
• Form builder: Formtastic config/initializers/formtastic.rb
• List builder: Tabletastic config/initializers/tabletastic.rb
• Default styles for Formtastic: Flutie
• Application config: Configatron config/config.yml
• JS Framework: Jquery-rails
• Tests: RSpec, Shoulda, RR, Cucumber, Factory Girl, Autotest
• Code metrics: rails_best_practices and rcov

We know there are a lot of other templates like Suspenders and brand new Prologue .

But we want concentrate on scaffolding and that’s is why we have a little bit customized templates for scaffold views, controllers and cucumber features.

If you intrested, please checkout Rails3 Base github repo , feel free to fork, send pull requests.

Thanks,
Timur

We love to receive feedback on the flatsourcing web-site and also on the small open-source projects available publicly in our fs github account. Here was the feedback that have received recently through one of the social networks:

Oleg,

I’ve checked your website (as I do once in a while) - nice interface for exams project.
And just a minor suggestion - it might be better to write ‘Ruby on Rails’
instead of ‘RubyonRails’ on your site - looks like 37signals do that, and they should know. Also you have XHTML as your specialty before RoR - not good…

Cheers,

Michael

Short answer: Customize it.

Long answer: Try to do anything with it for which it wasn’t built. Content Management Systems are built to be installed, not to be customized or tweaked to your needs. Sure, extensions are available, but they are built by an open-source community, so there is no assurance that they work. Want a headache really quickly? Try to do something with a CMS that it wasn’t designed to do.

CMS-systems, particularly open-source ones, like Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, and others are great. They aren’t proprietary and they are free. They are already developed, so you can just download the installer files and …voilà! you have a site in place. Upload your design, change the settings to fit your needs and you’re good to go. Instant website (almost).

We’ve been doing a number of CMS installs for clients lately. And through the experience of working with different CMS installs, we’re learning a lot:

• The functionality of a CMS better be what you need. - Don’t decide what you want your website to do and then try to make your CMS do it. It’ll never work. You can’t custom-code a CMS. Sure, you can add extensions and try different ones until you find one that does more or less what you need. But this is a long and arduous process. If you are going to use a CMS, understand the functionality and limitations of the CMS before you decide on it and deploy it. If it will work for you as its designed, then great. If not, don’t try to tweak it to fit your needs. You’re asking for headaches.
• Open source means no one owns it and lots of people built it. - There are a lot of moving parts, documentation may be limited, and customization may break it. Understand the ownership limitations of non-proprietary software. When your client says something isn’t working, is it because of the implementation or the programming? It doesn’t matter to the client, its just not working.
• Be prepared to deploy the many updates that open-source platforms require. - Very rarely is it a set it and forget it type of deal.
  
• Who ya gonna call? - When something goes wrong, or isn’t working, who built it? Your client is calling you. Who are you going to call?

Bottom line: Open Source CMS platforms are for implementing, not customizing. Make sure you understand the platform’s capabilities and its limits. If it fits your needs great, if it doesn’t, look elsewhere or build the software you need.

Photo credit: Mrs Maze