Category Archives: Web

Acceptance Testing non Ruby web applications with Cucumber

If you’re looking for the sample Standalone Cucumber Test Suite to get you started testing non Ruby based applications with Cucumber, here’s the source: http://github.com/thuss/standalone-cucumber. Sometimes you inherit a non Ruby based web app written in PHP, Perl, Java, C#, … Continue reading

Posted in Continuous Integration, Java, Quality Assurance, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Testing, Web | 1 Comment

iPhone development the easy way

Update 8/7/2010 PhoneGap apps are still being allowed in the app store! It’s not the right solution for every app (for example we went native with the Common Sense Media app), but I still think PhoneGap is really cool. I’ve … Continue reading

Posted in Ruby on Rails, Software Engineering, Web | Comments Off on iPhone development the easy way

Transcending CSS

Working at GreatSchools we do a lot of CSS work and we have a number of CSS books on our library shelf. However, last month we picked up a copy of Transcending CSS and it’s far and away the most … Continue reading

Posted in Design, Web | 1 Comment

Open source caching proxy servers

Hello lazy web, I’m looking for some advice on caching proxy servers and thought you might have some good pointers! We currently front our site with 3 caching proxy servers to offload static content from the web servers and we … Continue reading

Posted in Systems Administration, Web | 7 Comments

GreatSchools wins Webby People’s Voice Award

I’m thrilled that GreatSchools has won the Webby People’s Voice Award for best Family/Parenting site. We’ve been in the nominations before but I think continued growth and brand awareness through a largely redesigned site helped push us over the top … Continue reading

Posted in Design, Web | Comments Off on GreatSchools wins Webby People’s Voice Award

Search engine cloaking, it’s the intent that matters

Back at the end of 2005 I wrote a short post titled Cloaking, no need to be ashamed and now in 2007 even more big sites are practicing some form of search engine crawler targeted cloaking. Yet still most SEO’s … Continue reading

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Web | Comments Off on Search engine cloaking, it’s the intent that matters

Bay Area Indie Rock Bandega Style

My good friends in the east bay have just debuted their new Ruby on Rails based site Bandega :: never miss a show again! If you’re a San Francisco Bay Area resident that loves indie rock and wants to keep … Continue reading

Posted in Ruby on Rails, Web | Comments Off on Bay Area Indie Rock Bandega Style

Keeping Rails running at Dreamhost Part 2

Update 2/2/07: Per Thomas’ comment I’ve released the code below as the dreamhost rails plugin. Update 1/25/07: People have reported difficulties copy and pasting the dispatch.fcgi source code from this blog post so here is a dispatch.fcgi to download. Make … Continue reading

Posted in Linux, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Systems Administration, Web | 10 Comments

Keeping Ruby on Rails running at Dreamhost

Update 1/12/07: This solution has reduced my 500 error rate down to less than 0.2% but it’s still not perfect. I continue to plug away at this… Update 1/24/07: I’ve finally solved my Dreamhost 500 error problems with a different … Continue reading

Posted in Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Systems Administration, Web | 4 Comments

Hello Newshutch, goodbye Bloglines

I’ve been a Bloglines user for a long time. However, after hearing about Newshutch on the Web 2.0 show podcast Episode 26 I’ve made the switch and couldn’t be happier. It sports just the right amount of Ajax, good keyboard … Continue reading

Posted in AJAX, Blogging, Ruby on Rails, Web | Comments Off on Hello Newshutch, goodbye Bloglines