Recently there had been work being done to add FastCGI access to the Linux Hosting plan which already offers PHP5, Python 2.4 and Perl 5. Ruby is still not available on the system as a whole; however, that doesn’t stop you from adding it to your own account which is precisely what I did. Armed with the ability to test out FastCGI I proceeded to work on getting a very simple test RoR app setup and running.

To start with I needed to get Ruby installed. To do this I simply logged into my shell account (another great feature of Web.com’s Linux Hosting) and proceeded to download the necessary sources:

$ wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.8/ruby-1.8.7-p174.tar.gz

$ wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/60718/rubygems-1.3.5.tgz

With the source downloaded I then extracted them into the tmp/ directory in my account and built them.

$ tar -xzf ruby-1.8.7-p174.tar.gz -C tmp/

$ tar -xzf rubygems-1.3.5.tgz -C tmp/

$ cd tmp/ruby-1.8.7-p174/

$ ./configure –prefix=$HOME

$ make

$ make install

$ cd ~/tmp/rubygems-1.3.5/

$ ruby setup.rb

With this completed you should have Ruby 1.8.7 and RubyGem 1.3.5 ready to go. You can test by running the following couple of commands:

$ ruby -v

ruby 1.8.7 (2009-06-12 patchlevel 174) [i686-linux]

$ gem -v

1.3.5

Now we’re ready to rock and roll… We just need a few gems to be thrown in and we’ll have Ruby on Rails ready to go and be able to use MySQL for the database. So we’ll start off with the basics…

$ gem install rails mysql fcgi

This should install any other gems that are necessary for dependencies and you can check the final list of gems installed running gem list later if you’re curious to see them all. Now would also be a good time to go ahead and clean-up your tmp/ directory as you won’t be needing all that source any more so why use up the disk resources.

Now we just need a Rails application to run, so we’ll start out with building one from scratch although if you have one ready to go then you could just upload it to your home directory. For purposes of this I’m just going to setup a Rails webapp aptly called “test” as follows:

$ rails -D -d mysql ~/test

Now we just need to go create our webapps public/.htaccess file with the necessary configuration settings. For my example I used the following for my .htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI

<IfModule mod_fastcgi.c>

AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi

</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]

RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

</IfModule>

Armed with this we just need to setup the virtual host. I set this up as test.example.com so it ran isolated from my regular non-Rails website. To do this I logged into my support account (outside scope of this entry) and setup test.example.com as a website content path as /test/public. Then while still logged into the support site created the necessary database tables test_development and test_production. You could also setup separate database uses at this time for the databases as well if you liked.

Once the databases were created I needed to edit the test/config/database.yml file with the necessary database name and credentials. Also set the database host to the appropriate hostname provided for your account. You’ll then need to setup and migrate the database.

$ cd ~/test

$ rake db:migrate

$ rake db:setup

Everything done you’re now ready to test it out and see if it all works. If you open up your browser and go to http://test.example.com and you should see the default Ruby on Rails welcome page. If you click on the “About your application’s environment” link it should drop-down and show you the version information for your Rails application. From here you’re ready to begin the rest of your webapp development.

So I’ve been a loyal and faithful user of a very good service for the better part of a decade. Well I guess it’s true all good things come to an end! In setting up Alternative Haven I placed the donation link on the site and 2 days after it was put up I get a notification from PayPal that my account has now been permanently limited and to remove all links and references for Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) violation. I of course promptly removed any links and references to PayPal and responded back as such and asking to get my account status return. I did go and re-read the AUP as I hadn’t done so since 2000 when I opened the account and I’d had no reason to believe I needed to constantly go back and re-read a bunch of legal text. So I was unaware that they had updated the AUP to make using PayPal for adult services a prohibited use. Now wait a minute, don’t you have to actually do something to violate something?

That’s correct, I’ve had my PayPal account essentially terminated without having even done any transactions that violated the services AUP. I merely placed a link that could have violated the AUP and been a violation. So an account with over 9 years in good standing is unceremoniously terminated without actually doing any transactions which violated the agreements. A simple notification that the links were against the AUP and told to remove would have seemed a much more reasonable and proportional response but I guess we’re talking about PayPal the big jaugernaut throwing themselves around.  Now you don’t actually have to perform any transactions at all and you can have your account pulled from you.

As if that wasn’t enough, when they limit your account you can’t actually close it and you can’t remove any of your banking or credit card information. All of that is taken out of your control which leaves you only with the option of reporting the accounts as compromised or stolen and having all new account numbers issued to you by those institutions. I don’t know about anyone else but I am very uneasy with the idea of having my credit card and bank account numbers on a site I’ve lost control of by a company that is willing to take these extreme steps without any warning. I am also unfortunately being forced to find a new Xen VPS hosting provider as VPSFarm.com currently only handles PayPal for payment options although I have been informed that they are working to provide other means to pay by credit card directly.

At this point I can no longer endorse PayPal as a reputable online payment processor. I will be checking out what other alternatives are out there but I’d be more apt at this point to endorse Google Checkout or Amazon before I would recommend PayPal to any current or future clients.

Updated: Have spoken with Gabriel from PayPal Executive Escalations and gotten the party line of “We’re sorry for any inconvience” but even though you didn’t actually do any transactions that violated PayPal’s AUP/TOS you thought about doing it, so we’ve permanently limited your account. When questioned about being able to remove my banking and credit card information was told I couldn’t because of “auditing per government regulations” but again “PayPal is not a bank”, and that I would have to trust them that nothing would be done with the account information. I’ve gone and reported 3 of the active credit card accounts as lost/stolen and I’m in the process of working out closing the checking and savings accounts at two separate banking institutions without causing myself undo burdens (namely being without ATM debit card and checks).

If you have any Rails experience, are interested and don’t have a problem working on an adult-oriented website then please get in touch with a sample of your work. Given the nature of the site and the fact it is in stealth development mode we have to be vague on the details at this time.