I'm Handing Rails Inside Over To.. You!
You totally couldn't tell, but I'm not much interested in updating Rails Inside any more. Despite racking up 6000 subscribers (thanks!), Rails Inside has proven to be Ruby Inside's poor relation - mostly because I'm very pro-Ruby but not particularly involved with or interested in the Rails world anymore. So.. Rails Inside wants you!
You Write The Content
Rather than let the site die, turn into my humor site (sorry about the last couple of posts ;-), or continue to only get a couple of posts each month, I want to turn Rails Inside over to any posts that you or your fellow readers wish to create. I'll be curator and editor so that total trash doesn't end up on here, but otherwise.. you can write what you want, as long as it's Rails related.
So I'm not posting on a regular basis anymore. If anything massive comes along or inspiration moves me, I will, but with only 2 or 3 posts a month since last summer, I doubt that'll be often. Sorry!
Glory, Not Money. Well, For Now..
I haven't had a great deal of luck (in the long term) with paying people to write, so there's no offer of money on the table yet. That said, I'd like to start paying if it the concept works out. In the interim, though, you'll be doing it for the glory of a byline and by promoting your own plugin/library/company and/or by having a byline/credits box on your post. A few hundred visitors heading over to your site has to be worth something :-)
Guidelines and "How To"
Drop me a line at rubyinside -at- peterc.org with any "ready to go" posts and be sure to include a graphic or two, since all Rails Inside posts feature at least one small picture. You also need an idea of a post title. I'll edit for taste and post.. or let you know if it's unsuitable/needs changes. Simples!
Here's a template you can use to send stuff to me:
Your Name:
Your URL:
Post Title:
Post Content:
[Use HTML or Textile, etc.. include subheadings if appropriate]
Your Credit/Byline Box:
[e.g. "Fred Jones is a Rails developer, yada, yada, yada."
Feel free to include links as HTML or Textile, etc.]
Post Image(s): [attach to e-mail or provide URL]Some content guidelines:
- News, opinion pieces, event summaries, and link roundups all welcome.
- At least 3 paragraphs.
- At least 200 words. Ideally 220-280 for news, longer as necessary for tutorials or opinion pieces.
- At least one image - which we have the rights to run.. if you use a Creative Commons licensed image, please credit it appropriately.
- Nothing racist/profane/etc, sorry!
- Ensure that the first paragraph is in the 50~80 word range and summarizes (or at least properly introduces) the topic of the post. See existing posts for guidance.
- If something is more suited to RubyFlow or already exists on your own blog, post it on RubyFlow.
- Content should be new/fresh for Rails Inside initially, but you can post it to your own blog too afterwards, of course :-)
February 5th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
That sounds like a nice solution since Rails has so much community involvement. Are you looking for specific kinds of posts? Do you want strictly news related content or will you accept rants/opinionated articles as well?
Also, are you looking for purely original content? Most people have their own blog and might publish a duplicate article. Or just write a single paragraph with a link to their article. That would fit better on RubyFlow I think.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
I guess I should provide more guidance here. The key is anything that a typical Rails Inside reader would be interested to see/want to read. That includes link roundups, a few paragraphs on a new plugin or library, a summary of an event attended, a mention of a particularly strong, new screencast (e.g. if you did one about Rails 3.0).
Rants and opinionated stuff welcomed. I've just not been particularly good at, or interested in producing, that sort of stuff, but I'd love to see some.
Simple links, etc, are better suited on RubyFlow, as you say :-) I don't think anything under 2 or 3 paragraphs and ~250 words would go on Rails Inside.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Well that's generous of you to lend your bandwidth to other people's glory. And I'm sure with Rails 3 coming closer to a release you'll have more to post about.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
In the long term, I'll probably switch out WordPress for something more automatic and easy for people to contribute to (like a RubyFlow-esque system, perhaps).. but we'll see how this ad-hoc arrangement works first :-)
February 5th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
Very cool.
I'll probably send something your way. Regardless of what happens, somebody will probably have to be a gatekeeper so that a bunch of random stuff goes out all the time (queue posts to go out every morning maybe?) and to pull out duplicate posts.
I'm definitely interested in becoming more involved in this.
February 5th, 2010 at 11:42 pm
That should be "... random stuff DOESN'T go out ..."
February 5th, 2010 at 11:44 pm
And furthermore (feel free to combine these comments, :)), you can add users in Wordpress so that they can be contributors or something can you not? It's been a while since I used WP, but I seem to remember that part.
February 5th, 2010 at 11:44 pm
I can, but it's a bit of a messy process and WP seems to have enough vulnerabilities that I'm not hot on the idea.
February 6th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
The more recent versions of WP are pretty good about security (if upgrading is feasible). Plus, it is extremely well suited (as Daniel Huckstep said) for the tiered multi-user author-editor environment. It might be worth giving some additional thought to.
February 6th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Well I'll have a look and see also what plugins are around to take the rough edges off. It makes sense from a practical standpoint, given Rails Inside is already on WP :-)
February 6th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
If anyone has any recommendations on plugins, things I should read, etc, to do this, just drop stuff here, BTW.. :-)
February 17th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
[...] Cooper matter-of-factly reveals that he's lost his enthusiasm for Rails. He's even donating his Railsinside.com blog (6,000+ subscribers) to the Rails community because he can't muster the enthusiasm to keep it going. I find it refreshing to hear a clear [...]
February 22nd, 2010 at 4:16 am
This is a very generous proposition. I believe the community members who have things to say, things to share, will take advantage of this,
Cheers!
June 13th, 2010 at 6:37 am
@peter, you can use plugins like TDO Mini Forms or Gravity Forms ($39) and install it in RailsInside, so users can post a guest post to this blog in a hassle free way. As an admin, you either can approve or delete the post posted by the users (without needing you to put a author credential in every footer of the respective posts). On a side note, I like the RubyFlow.com design, but I think WordPress is a good choice for a thoroughly explained long Rails post, though it's written by PHP. I observed that some Rails blogs are powered by Mephisto and Toto, but unfortunately Mephistoblog.com is down (I checked few days ago and it still down at the time of my writing) and Toto (No comment about Toto right now).