Ruby on Rails: An Overview

Get Rolling

ONLamp.com: What Is Ruby on Rails?

Curt Hibbs explores Rails' productivity and flexibility.

ONLamp.com: Rolling with Ruby on Rails

Curt Hibbs shows off Ruby on Rails by building a simple application requiring minimal Ruby experience.

ONLamp.com: Rolling with Ruby on Rails, Part 2

Curt Hibbs shows off Ruby on Rails, finishing his sample application in 47 lines of code--total.

ONLamp.com: Ajax on Rails

Curt Hibbs demonstrates the use of Ajax with Rails.

Update: Rails 1.0

Rails 1.0 has many useful features.

Update: Rails 1.1

Rails 1.1, over 500 features and bugfixes.

Resources and Documentation

You'll want to bookmark these.

Ruby on Rails Home

Ruby on Rails Wiki

Beginner's guide, tutorials, FAQs, setup information, howtos, and lots more.

RailDock

Searchable documentation from several sources.

Rails Framework Documentation

Ruby Language Documentation

Ruby on Rails Cheat Sheet

Print it. Love it.

Tools: Project Management

37Signals' Basecamp

Web-based project management software ideal for small teams.

Backpack

Personal, mini-project management and information tracking.

Trac : Integrated SCM & Project Management

Bug tracking, a Subversion interface, wiki, and reporting.

TortoiseSVN

Windows interface to SubVersion.

Prefer CVS? TortoiseCVS.

Tools: Text Editors and IDEs

TextMate - The Missing Text Editor for Mac OS X

Have Mac, will TextMate.

jEdit - Programmer's Text Editor

Running Windows?

JEdit features auto-indenting, syntax highlighting, code folding, macros, and dozens of plugins.

Be sure to grab the Ruby plugin.

RadRails - A Ruby on Rails IDE

Eclipse based IDE

Tools: System Utilities and Misc

PuTTY: a free telnet/ssh client

Use PuTTY to connect to your webhost via SSH.

WinSCP :: Freeware SFTP and SCP client for Windows

Copy files to your webhost securely using SFTP or SCP.

WAMP5

Install Apache, MySQL, PHP5, and PhpMyAdmin the easy way.

Recommended Blogs and Podcasts

Nuby on Rails | Ruby on Rails for Newbies

Geoffrey Grosenbach's blog, covering Ruby, Ruby on Rails, graphic design, and other good stuff.

Signal vs. Noise - A design and usability blog

A weblog from 37signals (the creators of Rails) about entrepreneurship, design, experience, simplicity, constraints, pop culture, our products, products we like, and more.

Planet Ruby on Rails

Aggregates dozens of blogs that cover Rails into one RSS feed.

Ruby on Rails Podcast

Geoffrey Grosenbach interviews core Rails developers and other Rubyists who are doing cool stuff. Released every other week or so.

Find a Good Host

DreamHost

$9.95/month: 20 GB storage, 1 TB bandwidth, unlimited domains and mysql databases, Subversion, PHP5, SSH access, and free registration of one domain.

** Use the promo code 22BACK, you'll save $22 on any plan.

Site5 Web Hosting

Check out the Gold Plan - 15GB disk space, 500GB/month bandwidth, unlimited domains and databases, SSH access, a free SSL cert, PHP5, Python 2.2, and a 60-day money back guarantee.

TextDrive

Open-Source Developers

TextDrive provides free hosting for open source projects, and has individual plans starting at $12/month.