The Open Source NewsCloud Community Starter Blog

$25 iTunes Gift Cards for Next Five Installs of Ruby on Rails Codebase

We're offering $25 iTunes gift cards to the next five developers who install our Ruby on Rails codebase milestone Release I stable.

Fork the code here: http://github.com/newscloud/n2/tree/release_1_stable

Ask questions and report problems here: http://support.newscloud.com/discussions/ruby-on-rails-codebase

When your site is live, send us your name, mailing address and URLs for verification to jeff at newscloud dot com.

First stable release of NewsCloud Facebook application based on Ruby on Rails

Release 1.0 stable is available at Github. Grab a fork! This is the same code running the Charlotte Observer Insight application on Facebook.

We're planning to post release 1.0 final with this feature set, but a bit more polished, around April 30th.

More later... 

First previews of Rails-based Facebook Application

Yesterday, the Charlotte Observer soft-launched its Facebook application, Insight, using our new Ruby on Rails codebase. Please try it out and post your feedback in our discussion forums.

Our Rails code also runs parallel on the Web with Facebook Connect. A hurried version of our Seattle prototype community site demonstrates this:

• The Needle on the Web with Facebook Connect 
• The Needle on Facebook as an Application

We expect to tag release 1.0 as stable by next week and then will be polishing and improving the release through April.

Our grant-funded development on the platform will continue for another year through April 2011 - so get involved in the open source community. Grab a fork!

Stay tuned: Our 1.0 preview release is coming soon

We expect to have our (Ruby on Rails) 1.0 preview release out by next week. Release 1.0 final is expected by the end of April. We'll have more updates soon - including a live site which you can explore the preview release on.

Roadmap of Features for Future Releases

Check out what we're considering for future releases to the NewsCloud Facebook application. 

http://support.newscloud.com/discussions/app-wish-list/25-release-2-3-4-feature-roadmap

We may not do most or all of these features, it depends on the feedback we get and the time and resources that we have available to us. 

What is most important to you? What would you like to work on?

Are you an open source developer who would like to work on one of these features? 

First Generic Photoshop Comps of NewsCloud Facebook Application Redesign

Eye Level has delivered the first graphical comps of our NewsCloud Facebook redesign. Be sure to look at the current wireframes and planned features for the first release. 

TenderApps.com provides free support systems for open source projects like ours so that we're able to easily provide transparent publication of our work and gather feedback from stakeholders in the discussion threads.

 

What's in the Release I Milestone Definition

Release I will be the first launch-ready milestone for early adopters in early March. Those who want more robust stability will probably want to wait until the end of March or early April.

You can participate in the discussion about the features we're targeting for Release I here:

http://support.newscloud.com/discussions/specifications-release-i-milestone/1-release-i-milestone-march-2010

If you have feature requests for later releases, please review and participate in the Wish List forum:

NewsCloud Releases Alpha Code for Ruby on Rails Facebook Application

Today, we're releasing the first alpha test code of our Ruby on Rails-based Facebook news community application. We first wrote about the decision to migrate to Rails here.

The code for this project is funded by a December 2009 Knight Foundation grant which has just been announced here. All the code developed for this project will continue to be released via open source license.

This code is not ready for production deployment for an actual publication. The purpose of this alpha test release is to share the progress of our work and invite developers to participate. If you'd like to volunteer to take an active role in development of this application, working closely with our team, please post details about your interests and qualifications here. We're especially looking for developers who want to create new modules for this application. However, anyone is welcome to grab a fork and submit pull requests.

The current codebase provides a prototype of base level functionality from our existing Facebook application for testing purposes e.g. posting stories, commenting, voting, etc. Developers will be able to learn a great deal about our architecture and ongoing approach by reviewing the alpha code release. An initial production-ready code release should be ready in April 2010.

The current codebase provides the ability to publish a prototype application as a Facebook application, as a Web application with Facebook connect and as a simple mobile Web application and has the ability to support multiple languages. Note: the current codebase leverages our old Facebook design, not the new Compass-based grid design coming in the next release.

Some of the plugins we are using for this application include: Facebooker, il8n, Formtastic, VoteFu, Taggable, Restful Authentication, Routing Filter, Friendly_id, Rack, Simple RSS, Will Paginate, Cucumber, rSpec, HopToad, and NewRelic. We are also using Bootstrap, HAML, SASS and soon Compass w/960.gs. It may be helpful to review these plugins and technologies before diving into the code.

The codename for our Ruby on Rails platform is N2. You can download the code for this release at Github here: http://github.com/newscloud/n2. So, grab a fork! You can join our online support discussion about Ruby on Rails here. Constructive criticism, feedback and new ideas are always welcome!

Our goal is to be as transparent and open as possible with our ongoing development roadmap. We invite you to review our upcoming design (created by Eye Level), join our feature wish list discussions and review the next release milestone definition.

I also want to give a shout out to the GitHub and TenderApp folks for offering free services for open source projects like ours and the Rails community for such a nice welcome last month!

NewsCloud's Migrating Our Facebook Application to Ruby on Rails

Last fall, I began studying switching the NewsCloud Facebook application code over to a framework to help us improve the robustness of our code, the efficiency of our work and to make it easier for open source developers to collaborate on our project.

I looked most closely at CakePHP but had concerns about the breadth of documentation, tutorials and the comparative robustness of its developer community. I was also concerned by the departure of a leading Cake developer to start another new framework. Then, I began looking more closely at Ruby on Rails (RoR).

Moving away from PHP was not our first choice, but ultimately the advantages, robustness and relative maturity of RoR made it an ideal choice for us.

We began by prototyping a migration of our PHP code base and data architecture to RoR. The results of this work were impressive and conclusive. The speed of our progress and the quality of our prototype implementation led me to overwhelmingly favor continuing in this direction.

Developers can debate the value of various frameworks until the cows come home - each has its own strengths and weaknesses for particular applications. This is how RoR fits into our particular needs.

What are the advantages of migrating our code base to Ruby on Rails?

* RoR provides modular support for simultaneous publishing to multiple platforms: a Facebook application, a Web application with Facebook Connect, a mobile Web application (potentially iPhone & Android Applications too) and RSS/XML. For more information, see Facebooker and JqTouch.

* Multi-lingual support (via I18n) - for providing internationalized language support and multi-lingual applications e.g. click to select French, Spanish or English

* RoR uses a Model View Controller framework (MVC). All RoR applications are structured the same way vs. PHP where each application can have a different architecture. MVC makes it easier for partners or open source developers to jump into a project and get up to speed quickly. MVC makes development faster and more efficient with less bugs. The bugs that exist are generally easier to resolve. 

* We hope that RoR will excite developers about the NewsCloud Facebook source code - RoR is a framework for the future, whereas PHP is an older programming language that lacks a framework. According to this blog post analysis of GitHub, the web-based code collaboration manager we use, "Ruby projects recruit contributors astoundingly well, with Python a close second. Java, Javascript and PHP projects, on the other hand, do particularly badly."

* RoR is extremely well documented and has a vibrant developer community. I was particularly impressed with Railscasts. There are many excellent plugins for enabling common functionality, and reducing the code we need to build from scratch.

* RoR supports HAML and SASS which simplify HTML/CSS code and will allow for easier customization of design skins for clients and open source adopters

* Rails applications offer easier solutions for deployment and hosting upgrades including forward and backward migrations of databases

* RoR applications are generally less vulnerable to security threats than PHP-based applications. Writing secure code should be easier with RoR.

* RoR provides a framework for automated test suites which over time can prove to be huge timesavers and help with validating and integrating work from open source community members.

* RoR provides an excellent suite of programming tools that make coding more efficient including the interactive console and rake command line utilities

* RoR can be easily integrated with HopToadApp, LighthouseApp and NewRelic for tracking errors, managing bugs and tuning/monitoring performance

What are some of the disadvantages of RoR?

* PHP developers would have to learn RoR to contribute to our RoR open source work. Some of our team has to increase its proficiency at RoR as well.

* RoR has a reputation for being difficult to scale partly due to high profile Twitter outages. We do not believe these kinds of issues will affect us or that they apply globally when proper practices are used. Also, most of our projects are moderate in size at this time.

* Our PHP architecture is capable of running multiple sites on a single code installation (which makes managing them easier). RoR, like Drupal for example, is best used with separate code installs for each site. However, RoR's deployment and migration capabilities make managing hosting much simpler than with PHP.

What will we do with our PHP codebase?

* We have updated our PHP codebase with an improved installer and some basic updates so that organizations and developers that wish to use it may do so simply and easily. 

* We will continue hosting existing sites, but most will want to migrate them to the new RoR as soon as it is ready

* We will maintain an area in our open source community tools for PHP work. Whether some development continues in PHP within our open source community (with or without our hands-on support) will be determined by the level of interest.

In Conclusion

We hope you're as excited as we are by this migration. We expect to release an alpha of our Ruby on Rails codebase within the next month. Please stay tuned. Be sure to follow us on Twitter @newscloud.

You can join our online support discussion about Ruby on Rails here.

I also want to give a shout out to the GitHub and TenderApp folks for offering free services for open source projects like ours!

Small update to Open Source PHP Release

Earlier, we released a preview of our easier to install open source PHP release. We've now added a few minor updates to address issues that some developers ran into with virtual hosts and web directory permissions.

Get the latest code at Github now. Please try to install this release and let us know if you run into any difficulties or have questions.

We believe an experienced developer should be able to set up and install the application on Facebook within 15-30 minutes with our configuration menu.

Also, we still have four $25 iTunes cards for open source developers that successfully install this release to a publicly viewable/verifiable domain and post feedback for us on the installation process. Email your contact information to jeff at newscloud dot com once you've completed this.