Should I use Ruby or Drupal to build my web app?
4 comments
Neither actually sounds like a good fit, to me, but maybe I don't understand your definition of "site". Are you talking about something like Weebly, Blogger, Wikia, what?
The sub-domains stuff is actually pretty hard in every CMS I've ever used, so I suspect it's a challenge in Drupal, too. Besides that, I don't know that a community-style CMS like Drupal brings you any benefits, does it? By this, I mean, are users connecting in some way? It seems like you're just looking for a way to make scaling out to multiple machines a nightmare. RoR, also, is a CRUD building tool. It's really good for building CRUD apps. I'm not sure what you're building is a CRUD app...but, then, I don't know what you're building.
If you're thinking straight up, "build a website" in the Weebly, Synthasite vein, then you probably don't want a framework or CMS at all, except perhaps for the management layer (which doesn't have to scale much at all). Perhaps relevant: I helped a free website hosting operation scale up several years ago, and he achieved his 1.5 million websites scale from a handful of off-the-shelf machines (in 2001, or so) by deploying to static pages. He also could add new machines and re-hash without any trouble at all--no database was involved, except for the creation and management of pages. I believe Weebly does the same (and they're kicking ass with nearly a million websites now, and scaling up without even having to think hard about it, because they designed it appropriately for scaling).
I think maybe you need to spend a bit more time thinking through your problem domain before deciding what the solution looks like.
The sub-domains stuff is actually pretty hard in every CMS I've ever used, so I suspect it's a challenge in Drupal, too. Besides that, I don't know that a community-style CMS like Drupal brings you any benefits, does it? By this, I mean, are users connecting in some way? It seems like you're just looking for a way to make scaling out to multiple machines a nightmare. RoR, also, is a CRUD building tool. It's really good for building CRUD apps. I'm not sure what you're building is a CRUD app...but, then, I don't know what you're building.
If you're thinking straight up, "build a website" in the Weebly, Synthasite vein, then you probably don't want a framework or CMS at all, except perhaps for the management layer (which doesn't have to scale much at all). Perhaps relevant: I helped a free website hosting operation scale up several years ago, and he achieved his 1.5 million websites scale from a handful of off-the-shelf machines (in 2001, or so) by deploying to static pages. He also could add new machines and re-hash without any trouble at all--no database was involved, except for the creation and management of pages. I believe Weebly does the same (and they're kicking ass with nearly a million websites now, and scaling up without even having to think hard about it, because they designed it appropriately for scaling).
I think maybe you need to spend a bit more time thinking through your problem domain before deciding what the solution looks like.
Good advice. I am looking to build a site similar to Weebly, but for a specific niche audience. I like your idea of static pages. Thanks!
Could Wordpress MU fit in?
To many people today, a blog and a traditional website are almost the same thing, so perhaps a multi-user multi-blog framework might get the job done.
http://mu.wordpress.org/
To many people today, a blog and a traditional website are almost the same thing, so perhaps a multi-user multi-blog framework might get the job done.
http://mu.wordpress.org/
The answer is pretty simple. Use the language you are most familiar with. It's tough enough building an innovative web site without also building new language skills.
My question is this: should I build this from scratch, or should I use Ruby on Rails or Drupal? I haven't built an app in either, so I'm not sure if one would work well in this situation. Any advice? Thanks.