EdgeRails.Info Is Live

As I mentioned back on my personal site, the continuation and evolution of the What’s New in Edge Rails series continues here as EdgeRails.info. I’ve long wanted to give the Edge Rails series it’s own dedicated site and have finally pulled my act together to get this party started.

But, rather than just continue publishing my soliloquies under a new domain, I wanted to alter the direction and expand the site to accept direct input and contributions from the community. I feel like this mirrors the growth of the Rails framework itself, growing from a single person into a much more community-driven effort. Also, to be honest, it’s a lot of work to keep up with the sometimes frenzied pace of contributions to the edge rails branch of the repository and far be it for me to not admit when I’m the one holding things up. (I.e., keeping up with the firehouse that has been Rails 3 has been an impossible task for me). I also envision more than just play-by-plays of Rails commits - perhaps including some well-written tutorials, timely news etc…?

So how can you contribute? Well, I’m still figuring out the exact details, but the full content of the site is available on github and I fully intend to allow interested parties in using the reach of the site to publish both their own posts of new features they’re interested in as well as fixes to any mistakes in my posts (past and present). It will be a fully distributed and github-powered publishing and editorial process.

If you’re the motivated type and familiar with forking on github, feel free to dive right in and send contributions my way. If you’re a little on the shy side then hold tight, I’ll be putting some more detailed instructions up soon.

I also wanted to have the new site reflect the vitality of the Rails community by pulling in community activity from around the web and have added an “edgerails” tweets and recent Rails commits feed to the sidebar area. I’ll also be on the lookout for other relevant activity that can be pulled in here to enhance the tutorial nature of the main content.

I’d like to give a shout out to Brandon Mathis who pulled the initial site design together for me and whose Octopress framework is powering this Jekyll-generated static site. If you’re looking for a sharp designer who is great to talk to, designs clean and beautiful sites and understands reusability better than most developers, then Brandon is your man. Get in touch with him - you won’t be disappointed.

I’m stoked to start a new chapter in the Edge Rails series, let’s see where this party takes us, shall we?