So far, you've learned that Ruby was meant to keep a perfect balance between power and it's simplicity. This is enforced by two Ruby on Rails concepts: "Convention over Configuration" and "Don't Repeat Yourself"

"Convention over Configuration" means that a programmer only needs to write code for unconventional parts of the application they're building. To give an example: let's say you're building a shop, so obviously you need a way to store your customers' details. Between other things, you'll also probably have a Customer class created in the model or something similar, to keep things modular and easy to work with. You'll probably be very pleasantly surprised to see that a table customers is created automatically in the database.

You should probably read our list of Ten things to look for in a Rails Host before you read any of these reviews so you know the general scale we use to rank and evaluate hosts. Know that our top Ruby on Rails Hositng choice (HostingRails.com) has recently shifted to offer affordable plans with Mongrel clusters behind mod_proxy_balancer on Apache2.2 servers, which we'd highly recommend.

Most of today’s web applications are secured. Namely, to get to your information (say in deli.cio.us), you need to register an account, and then login each time you want to update or access your information. This how-to will take you through the steps necessary to start-up a secured web application.

In a few short months, Ajax has moved from an obscure and rarely used technology to the hottest thing since sliced bread. This article introduces the incredibly easy-to-use Ajax support that is part of the Ruby on Rails web application framework. This is not a step-by-step tutorial, and I assume that you know a little bit about how to organize and construct a Rails web application. If you need a quick refresher, check out Rolling with Ruby on Rails, Part 1 and Part 2.