End of Iteration 7

Yes!! this was a 2 weeks iteration. Going forward, I am planning to have a 2 weeks iteration. With my marathon training , I am not able to spend much time in Varcasa.

Anyways this Iteration 7 was frustrating, but it ended in a good note. In this iteration I was mainly trying to deploy my iteration 6 code in production. I was having problems with acts_as_plugin.

Problem 1) My production hosting had a old version of acts_as_plugin gem.
Solution : I thought I could freeze acts_as_plugin in vendor directory, so I do not have to worry about gem version in production environment.

Problem 2) Rails by default doesn't come with a rake task to freeze third party gems
Solution: Found rake task in web that could do that.

Problem 3) Rake task for freezing third party gems did not work.
Solution: I got the latest code for acts_as_taggable from subversion and copied into my vendor/plugins folder

Problem 4) Still for some reason I was having problem in production environment, that I was not able replicate in my development environment.
Solution: Found that I was having "require_gem acts_as_taggable" in my environment.rb.So I deleted that line and I was able to reproduce that problem.

Production Problem : My Article class does not recognize "tag" method
Solution: Added "require acts_as_taggable" in top of my Article.rb

But in the end of iteration , I felt good that I was able to deploy in production.

Next Iteration:
-> Give more information what Varcasa is to users who want to register
-> Contact Us section
-> Fix some known issues

End of Iteration 6

Finished migratating to Tags instead of categories. Still havn't allowed to edit or add tags. So there is not much change from user's prespective.

By using acts_as_taggable gem and moving away from Categories, I was able to delete so many lines of code. It is a good thing, " Less code, less chances of error" :)

The only problem, I am facing that I was not able to solve is deploying it in my production server. For some reason my database migratation fails in production server. It is looking for articles_tags table in production server, when I have table named tags_articles. It is working fine in my local system. I checked all my gem versions etc.

New Web Template

Let me know what you think.

End of Iteration 5

Nothin much has been done in this iteration.

End of Iteration 4

In this iteration was mainly working on getting rid of categories and using Tags. As I have mentioned in my previous post, I am using acts_as_taggable plugin. I thought I will be done this iteration, but I faced some problems with acts_as_taggable plugin (gem)

1) I installed acts_as_taggable as a plugin. RDoc of acts_as_taggable was having many methods that were not present in plugin code. After investigating I found plugin was installing a very old version of acts_as_plugin. Even after tryin to update the plugin it was still the same.
2) After checking in rubyforge I found out that they are exposing acts_as_plugin as a gem. So I installed the gem in my system. I checked the code and it was latest having all the methods I was expecting.
3) So I unfreezed my rails and freezed rails again. I was expecting all the gems in my local to be freezed. I found it was freezing only gems that rails was dependent on. I was looking is there anyway I could change gem spec for rails to make it dependent on acts_as_plugin gem in vain.
4) Then after googling , I found out that there are many others are tryin to freeze third party gems. I feel this task should be added as part of default rake file.

Loading Dev Database with Fixture Data

I just found abt this nice rake task, that will load ur developement ( or any environment) database with your fixtures. It is so simple,

rake db:fixtures:load

acts_as_taggable

In Varcasa the articles are grouped together by categories. I am in process of moving from categories and using tags to group articles. I came across this plugin ( acts_as_taggable) for making ActiveRecords taggable. I was taken aback to find out how easy it was to make my Domain taggble using this plugin.

Make sure to check it out.

http://taggable.rubyforge.org/

Author Name corrected

I have corrected the author name in all articles in Varcasa.

End of Iteration 4

Nothin much happened in this iteration, that a user can experience. Behind the scenes some important things happened in this iteration,

1) Found a web designer to work on UI. This web designer is more committed to CSS based designing. I am positive. He will start working from next week.
2) Added free ad banner for Asha (US based non profit student organization dedicated to the support of basic education in India). I am thrilled that I have got an opportunity to help Asha in their dedication to socio-economic change in India.
3) Refocused some of Varcasa's goals. Now we are planning to focus more on Education related news items. We wanted "Digg" kind of environment for education related news. I have come with some stories. I will soon post static HTMLs online for everyone to get a feel of this new feature.

Crux of Varcasa.com

An ex Twer mentioned about "Shanti Mantra".

https://hindumommy.wordpress.com/2006/07/19/shanti-mantra/

"Om Sahana Vavatu Sahanau Bhunaktu
Sahaveeryam Karavavahai
Tejas Vinavati Tamastuma vidhwishavahai
Om Shanti Shanti Shantihi"

It means ,
"May He protect both of us.
May He nourish both of us.
May we both acquire the capacity to study.
May our study be brilliant. Peace"

I want Varcasa.com to be place for everyone to acquire the knowledge from each other.