Moved the blog to railsapphosting.com

Finally, the toll of trying to get Apache and FastCGI to work nicely on Windows has worn me down. So, the best move was to head over to Typo's list of recommended web hosts. Dreamhost and SteelPixel caught my eye but then I decided to opt for RailsAppHosting because they focus entirely on Ruby on Rails which is basically what I need. Also, they are having some beta testing session now so there is no fee. Well, so far I like what I see. Setting up Typo was not too bad. I did run into some problems though (discussed below).

First was that it was a bit inconvenient to not know the host to connect to for mysql. It was not spelled out explicitly under the Manage MySQL Databases... menu on the left of the control panel page. Anyway, the forums and the video provided part of the answer. What they did not mention was that the password for the MySQL database is randomly generated! Fortunately, I inspected /config/database.yml and found that out. Then it was a simple matter of click, click in CocoaMySQL to import my existing database.

But wait! It was not that simple. Somehow, by sheer change I detected this almost imperceptible change. The schema_info table has the field version and in the one-click typo set up, it defaults to 7. However, my older .sql file had the value 9! How the 9 got in there beats me since everything else seems the same. But if you leave the 9 there, Typo balks when you visit the admin interface and chokes on updating the database. So, I did the easy thing, switch the value back to 7. And delete /public/index.html. Also, restart the application.

I cannot wait for the DNS name to resolve itself so that I can just use vazexqi.railsapphosting.com. Anyway, railsapphosting is pretty reliable so far. There may not be many members, but the support team does respond promptly. And they made it easy to set up many Ruby on Rails application. This gives me an opportunity to play with these web applications without trying to figure out how to set them up nicely on Windows. I wonder how much the fee would be. So far, this post on the forum has hinted on a lifetime membership. The proposed $20 a month for a two application account seems to be a bit pricey especially since Dreamhost and SteelPixel are offering monthly accounts for much less. I will have to wait and see whether the ease and convenience of RailsAppHosting outweights their price. The most I would pay is $10 a month. Period. Unless there is a new offer which I cannot resist :)