A Nginx Maintenance Configuration That Works

January 16th, 2012 in Web Tech by Chris | Tags: | Comment |

nginx maintenanceWe use the lightening fast Nginx web server to handle our mightyvites.com requests. Like most sites we need to go offline once in awhile to deploy new code, address server issues, etc. When we take the main site down we start a single-page website that gives the obligatory “down for maintenance” message. Recently I updated the configuration file for this maintenance site so that it worked properly. By properly I mean all incoming requests get the maintenance page and are returned a HTTP 503 “Service Unavailable.”

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Upgrade To Rails 3.0.10 And Ruby 1.9.2 Reviewed

January 5th, 2012 in Web Tech by Chris | Tags: , | Comment |

ruby on rails 3 upgradeOver a year ago (!) I announced my intention to upgrade mightyvites.com from Ruby 1.8.7 and Rails 2.2.2 to Ruby 1.9.2 and Rails 3. Took me long enough but I’m now finally following up on the issue.

No, it didn’t take me a year to do the upgrade. Shortly after I wrote that post I took a full time Rails job. Then my business got busy with paying customers. Then I got engaged and a few months later married. There were a lot of distractions which kept throwing me off my Ruby On Rails upgrade plans. I did do it though. In fact I completed two Rails upgrades this summer. One for mightyvites.com and one for my employer. In both cases I transitioned webapps from Rails 2.x to Rails 3.0.10 and introduced Ruby 1.9.2. Doing so was definitely worth it. Rails 3 feels so much more mature than previous releases. The upgrade, however, was not easy. Below are the issues I had to deal with to make it happen.
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Ruby On Rails Transactional Email Using MailChimp And SendGrid

December 16th, 2011 in Web Tech by Chris | Tags: | Comment |

mailchimp sendgridSince launch mightyvites.com has sent email through Gmail using very basic HTML/ERB templates. There have been no graphics, little styling, and zero email client testing. In other words our emails have sucked and looked very unprofessional. Why? Because those are the last things you worry about when you’re trying to push out the door a product that you’re not sure anyone will buy. Once your site has users, however, these are the bells and whistles you need to put time into.

Recently the time came for me to spruce up the emails mightyvites.com sends. I wanted slick-looking HTML that looks good in all email clients, makes it to users’ inboxes, is multipart, and can be tracked. In addition the email templates should be easy for non-geeks to edit. That way they can be changed often and not always by me.
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Ubuntu Upstart Gotcha When Monitoring MySQL With God

December 22nd, 2010 in Web Tech by Chris | Tags: , , | 2 Comments |

Ubuntu Upstart Gotcha When Monitoring MySQL With GodI recently upgraded our two Slicehost VPSs from Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) to Lucid Lynx (10.04). That’s from one LTS to another, and the process, overall, went very smoothly. To pull it off I followed the 8.04 to 10.04 instructions on the Slicehost Wiki. There were, however, two gotchas that I came across during the upgrade process.
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The Mighty Nice March To Ruby On Rails 3 And Ruby 1.9.2

November 16th, 2010 in Web Tech by Chris | Tags: , | 1 Comment |

Ruby On Rails 3

I’ve been working with Ruby On Rails 2.2.2 and Ruby 1.8.7 for a little over a year now. The Mightyvites site is built on that foundation, as is the Mighty Nice site, and a few of our client sites. However, with the release of Rails 3, and it’s compatibility with Ruby 1.9.2, I’m itching to upgrade both. There are a few reasons why I want to upgrade the cores of our RoR sites: Read the rest of this entry »

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