The 2008 Smörgåsbord

RubyInside was kind enough to bestow upon me top blogger for 2008. I thought in honor of that, I would pick out my favorite topics from 2008 for those of you who may not have been following this here blog for that long. These are in no particular order.

Oh, and before I forget, for those that want to get a better feel for all the stuff I’ve posted, I have created The Smörgåsbord. The Smörgåsbord is a published_at DESC list of every post on RailsTips. Anyway…onward with 2008!

1. Git Rocks!

Back in February, I moved to Git and Github and haven’t looked back since. Recently, I posted some tips for Git’n Your Shared Host On to ease setting up your own private git repos.

2. Google Fun

In March, I showed some Google Analytics Fun that I had been playing with. It features a library I started but haven’t finished called Statwhore. In August, I showed How To Use Google for Authentication in your Rails App. I’d probably only recommend this for personal apps as not many people enjoy handing out their google passwords but it was fun nonetheless.

In October, I noticed that a lot of people wanted to receive email in their applications but weren’t sure how to do it so I posted Using Gmail with IMAP to Receive Email in Rails. Then, to make sure that I covered receiving and sending, I posted Using Gmail to Send Email with Rails.

3. Deep Thoughts By Jack Handy

Way back in May, I posted Getting Down To The Core Of It, a reminder to learn the core Ruby libraries and the Rails framework. Then in June, I mentioned that Programmers Should Give Up More Often. I still believe this and have been practicing it more and more. This month, December, I provided some thoughts on Unless, The Abused Ruby Conditional and that When You Don’t Know, Test. Nothing amazing, but I think it some practical advice.

4. Subdomains and Rails

I spend some time in June working on Harmony, which led to a gentle reminder of Don’t Forget To Reserve Subdomains For Yourself and a helpful tip on Raking /etc/hosts for Sweeter Subdomainage. For extra credit, you can checkout these oldies, but goodies, on Building A Multi-Site Application and Testing A Multi-Site Application.

5. HTTPartyin’

I like to have fun and I do my best to make coding fun. In July, I announced that It’s an HTTParty and Everyone is Invited. Then, just a few weeks ago, HTTParty Divorced ActiveSupport, thus making it more useful for non-Rails Ruby programmers. And, after a misguided day of rewriting the Ordered List contact form to use Wufoo, I posted Using Context and Stump to HTTParty like a Wufoo.

6. XML and Ruby

I spend a lot of free time wrapping web service API’s so I decided to post some of my results on Parsing XML with Ruby and then scratched an itch by making HappyMapper, which attempts to make XML more fun (though it is a bit rough still).

7. RailsTips Screencasts

Inspired by Geoff and Ryan, I gave screencasting a try and rather enjoyed it. First, I posted a tip on Giving Mailers, Observers and Sweepers Their Own Space and then I showed Creating and Integrating Bookmarklets with Rails. Both of these concepts were better covered with video than a long text article. I hope to do more screencasts in the future.

8. Shared Host Deployment Help

I’ve toyed around a lot with Dreamhost and Rails so I decided to start covering the topics I ran into during those investigations. It started with Git’n Your Shared Host On, continued with RubyGems: Yours, Mine and Ours and concluded with a full blown tutorial on Deploying Rails on Dreamhost with Passenger. It was so fun, I even decided to cover Deploying Sinatra on Dreamhost With Passenger, just for the heck of it.

It was a wonderful year. I learned a lot and got to know some pretty cool people. Here’s hoping 2009 is even better!