ruby on rails - Ascent

tech

A/B Testing Features by Segmenting Users

"A/B test everything." Those of us in the startup world hear it routinely. But it is a useless statement. Ask "how" and you will be met with the shifting eyes of the ignorant. Indeed, A/B testing is powerful but tricky. Whole companies have been

tech

Programmatically Capturing Spam with Detextion.io

There is a [modified] adage about attracting users to web apps. "Build it and spammers will come." The fact is that if your users can enter text others will see, your app is going to be a target for spammers. This means comments, profiles, messages, feeds and even

tech

Fix Rails Converting Backbone JSON Requests to text/html

During a recent project with BackboneJs and Rails, i noticed some very strange behavior. When my controller had an implicit render to Backbone's JSON requests, Rails was throwing an error. ActionView::MissingTemplate (Missing template users/index, base/index with {:locale=>[:en], :formats=>[:html], :variants=>[], :handlers=

tips

Building a Rails Notification Queue 3: Queue Processing

This is the third and final piece on creating a notification queue in Rails. If you are just finding this post, i suggest starting with the first post on the database, as it is quite short. A recap In the previous two posts we have looked * the notification database table

tech

Building a Rails Notification Queue 2: The Notification Class

As the title suggests, this is the second post in a series on building a flexible notification queue in Rails. I'd suggest starting with the first post: on the database table (it's quite short). Our apps create notifications in many places. These notifications are usually tied

ruby on rails

Building a Rails Notification Queue 1: The Database

Many apps live, or die, based on the success of their notifications. Because of this, many apps send notifications about as much as they can. This is not without code cost: notifications end up everywhere in our codebases. Since they are so important, and numerous, we would benefit from a

tips

Setting Up Rails Over HTTPS Using Nginx and Let's Encrypt

HTTPS can be a bit daunting to people who have never set it up before. Luckily, systems like Nginx and Let's Encrypt have lowered the barrier to entry quite a bit. Here are all the steps you will need to set up an HTTPS connection to your Rails

tech

Be The Better Rails Developer

Rails has been very prominent in web development the last 5-7 years, and for good reason. It is relatively easy to learn and its abstractions make it easy to build features quickly. An unfortunate side effect of this has been that Rails developers have learned web development through Rails. This

tips

p() vs. puts() vs. print() in Rails

Use p. Rails has three printing methods, two are common, one is less so. 1. print prints the string (to_s) version of what is passed to it. * puts works like print but adds a newline \n. * p prints the .inspect version of what is passed to it, along with