Rack::Rewrite + Google Analytics Makes Site Transitions Seamless

November 24th, 2009 by

At SmartLogic we recently rebuilt our website in rails. The previous version was a MediaWiki installation with a ton of content that had garnered a decent bit of Google juice that we did not want to lose. By setting up 301 permanent redirects for the old URL’s, we can hold onto that juice.

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Web 2.0 Expo NYC Wrap Up

November 23rd, 2009 by

John and I went to the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City last week to learn about new trends in Web 2.0 and to try meet interesting people in the industry. We had fun, and I even won a Flip Ultra HD from the folks at a party hosted by Rackspace and Neustar. This post includes my notes from various sessions from the weekend.

Ignite NYC

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Rack::Rewrite for Site Maintenance and Downtime

November 16th, 2009 by

Rack::Rewrite is a Rack middleware for defining and applying rewrite rules. Though it’s not a full replacement for Apache’s mod_rewrite, a great deal of rules I’ve previously written in Apache config files can be replaced by Rack::Rewrite. Run gem install rack-rewrite to install the gem.

I typically leverage rewrite rules to take my sites offline for maintenance. Most capistrano users will be familiar with the following Apache rewrite ruleset.
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