In this article I’m going to go over the concepts of ideas of Ruby, it’s not a tutorial on showing you how to make a shopping cart or some other web application/script. The purpose of this article is to give you a base understanding of Ruby on Rails and how it works.

The first thing you have to know about Ruby on Rails is that it’s a framework that’s built on the Ruby programming language; it uses the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture. When you think about Ruby you have to think about it as a web application and not a simple script like PHP or Perl.

So, what is this? The MVC is the architecture of how your application works and the way it performs. The whole point of the MVC architecture is for a developer to experience effortless web development by using minimal amount of code and at the same time making their applications efficient.

The Model
The model can simply be said to maintain the state of the application. A model provides the functionality in your application and is the one that contains logical statements, e.g. Should a customer that ordered over 5 products get a 10% discount on shipping?

The View
The view is responsible for creating a user interface based on the models. All it does is gets data from the model(s) and displays it on the screen for the user. E.g. If the customer was entitled to a 10% discount, the view would be responsible for letting the customer know that he/she got a 10% discount as the view would display this message on the screen.

The Controller
The controller is responsible for responding to the user interaction and call the application logic, this means that data is then processed through the Model and then through the View.

This is the path Ruby follows:

1. Browser sends a request (Client side).
2. The controller receives this request and interacts with the Model (Server Side).
3. If there is a database the Model interacts with the database (Server Side).
4. The controller invokes the view (Server Side).
5. The browser now has a new page displayed due to the View.

That’s basically it! Ruby on Rails is great addition to the web development field, it’s an OOP (Object Oriented Programming) language that’s really easy to use and requires minimal code to get something complex running.

Stay tuned for the next article, I will go over some basics on Ruby on Rails so you can see how the MVC architecture works.

With the launch of every site, you always run into competition, and sometimes, learning to deal with the ever competitive web is a difficult task to understand. This guide will attempt to help you along when launching a new site in a field filled with similars.

Welcome to the Fast Track

When you first start up a new site, almost 90% of the time, the idea from the site was spawned from other sites like it. Take graphic design forums. Truly, could there be enough of them? A few years ago, if you wanted to start a site, your first bet would be to create a design community – but there was one problem. There were simply too many of them.

Soon after the let’s-start-a-design-community craze began to slow down, the communities that weren’t as popular and weren’t one of the first few vanished, allowing others to flourish and expand into very large communities.

You’ll find that with most popular design / development / hosting forums, users are registered on every single one of them, because if they’ve managed to remain up and running with a large user database, users want to stay there. These sites have been able to keep up with each other, in a field that is excessively filled with forums all discussing the same topics.

MajikWidget aims to help everyday bloggers by providing little widgets they can choose to integrate to blog posts. Currently in private beta, although they’re accepting new signups fairly quickly, they have three widgets in place — a rating meter, a polling system, and an 'open-all-links-in-a-new-window' hack. To use a widget, all you need to do is basically customize a few settings if needed, get it to generate the code and then post the code (usually an iFrame) to your blog, within your post, or whatever.

Their revenue model is based on credits — you can choose to get 25 free credits when you signup or buy 500 credits for $25, and so on. Each credit is basically worth one use of a widget, for example if making a poll would cost me one credit. For most bloggers, 25 credits should last long enough — and as for the 500 credits, I think we'll be in Web 5.9 when someone actually uses up all of them.

While I do like the idea of MajikWidget, I think it's been tried too many times before in the 1.0 era — something like Bravenet or Free-CGI comes to mind. What has changed of course is that there is now a much more specific use for this service and it now actually has a focused audience — bloggers — where as back then it was just trying out new things to see if people actually use these them, and without MySpace or blogs around at that time, it's obvious what the outcome looked like. In any case it'll be interesting to see how it's perceived through the bloggers.

For now they're working on a few more handy widgets which they plan to launch soon and you can even help them out by suggesting ideas — and if you're idea goes well like Guy Kawasaki's polling idea did, they'll incorporate you into their Linkware system where every use of your idea potentially gets a link-back to your blog.

About the author: Sid Yadav is a Web 2.0 evangelist, consultant, and blogger who occasionally contributes to devlounge in this category. Sid lives in Queenstown, New Zealand, and currently consults for new and forming Web 2.0 startups and also authors rev2.org, where he posts frequent reviews and writeups on new Web 2.0 startups, tools and services, as well as essays and writeups on the emering era of new web technologies.

No, not the Mighty Ducks silly.

I’ve put up the latest sneak peek screenshot of Devlounge 2, the next major design update of Devlounge (July) up on flickr. Please leave your initial feedback, as we want to improve things for you, so it’s important for us to hear you thoughts, suggestions, and ideas.

View D2 (75%)

As many of you know by now thanks to the 9Rules post in the side notes, Devlounge is a half-step away from officially becoming part of 9Rules. We had planned to make some homepage modifications following the results, but I have decided to hold off.

Why?

Because Devlounge 2 is currently in the works, slated for a July release. D2 will mostly be a homepage face-lift, as we like (and we think you agree) that for the most part, our individual post pages are fine. We will also clean up the articles and interviews indexes to make it as easy as ever to find more content.

D2 will hopefully feature some AJAX goodness to really spice it up, and I have some other features planned (including pulling some 9rules community rss feeds) to keep the best content right at your fingertips.

Want to track the status of D2? I’ll be posting teaser images every once in a while on the flickr group, so make sure you check it out and leave your feedback on the previews of the new look.

With the addition of Devlounge into the 9rules network, the 9rules logo will soon appear in the about section, and will be displayed on the homepage with Devlounge 2. We remind all new visitors to please take a look through our articles section, subscribe to the feeds via the feed center, and join are newsletter from the homepage.

Welcome to everyone new, and we now look forward towards a great summer, and a lot of wonderful new content.

“Your Slogan Here”, the famous one liner found on premade templates everywhere, just to give your site or company the chance to give itself a meaningful title.

But what exactly do you put there?

What Is A Slogan

A slogan, as defined by Wikipedia, is “a memorable phrase used in a political or commercial context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose.” Slogans (or tag lines, whatever you want to call them) are there to express to your user what you stand for right away, but often, slogans are used in the wrong sense, and with the wrong message.

Slogans Gone Right

Take a look at Neowin’s well-known phrase, “Where Unprofessional Journalism Looks Better“. Neowin has stuck with this for years because it has simply worked for them. No wonder why they remain one of the most frequently visited tech-related news sites around.

Neowin’s slogan gets straight to the point, and provides fact, because neowin doesn’t just provide news, but it provides it all in a clean and easy to navigate environment.

Other web related sites that have seen there share of slogan glory include Spoono and 9Rules. Both use randomizing to a great effect.

For Spoono, there tag lines come off as humorous, and draw you right in. With one refresh you may get “Like a horse, easy to get on, hard to get off“, and with another, something like “Utensil for Digital Inspiration“. Two completely different, unserious slogans of many, many more.

9Rules on the other hand, will include a different “rule” of its 9 rules in it’s slogan, to provide better clarity to the content they are showcasing and what it means to be a 9 rules member. Their first rule, “Love what you do“, pretty much sums up their intent.

Slogans Gone Wrong

But for every good, there are wrongs.

Take Dunkin’ Donuts for example. Recently, they introduced a new company slogan, “America Runs on Dunkin’“. Seems pretty practical, since Americans spend billions a year on coffee to get their days started. But, break down the slogan literally – and the meaning doesn’t go at all.

Consider that the U.S. is facing it’s biggest obesity problems in years, and the amount of people that find themselves getting coffee and donuts not once in a while, but every single day. Does America really run on Dunkin’? No, it’s more like America walks. While of course their marketing techs meant that if you get food and drinks from Dunkin Donuts, you’ll be able to power through your day, but in today’s society, the meaning isn’t very clear, or very factual. Just today before writing this, I witnessed an accident outside a local DD, while traffic continued to pour in and out of the place, backing things up everywhere.

So, what can you do about creating your own slogan that makes a strong impression?

Building A Better Slogan

First things first, get right to the point. If you don’t have anything creative, use a simple, descriptive tag as your slogan. If your a web designer, no one is going to stop you from using “Web Design & Development” after your site or company title. All it is is a simple, effective way of getting the point across.

If you want a more creative, original slogan, go for something direct and effective. For example, if you were a web consulting group, head down the road of “Promoting Valuable Consulting Since (Insert Year Here).” It’s simple and gets straight to the point, while assuring your clients that you’ve been around for a certain period of time, giving them a much clearer message.

After weeks of anticipation and waiting, 9Rules finally released the Round 4 acceptance list, even a little earlier then expected.

111 sites were selected out of 700, and I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to narrow down the list to just over 100.

Devlounge was included in the list, and we are extremely honored and privileged to be included with the other 9rulers. We can now get a move on with the homepage updates (we’ll also have to add the 9rules logo somewhere as well), and continue bringing you the highest quality content we can.

The whole list may be seen at the 9Rules Blog. Congratulations to all those accepted, or those not, do not let this get you down in any way. Just continue bringing the highest quality content you can to the table and you will be recognized.

Well when I first made my daily rounds onto Devlounge today, I immediately noticed the feedburner stats. Yesterday’s subscribers of 25 had been..well..greatly improved – all the way up to 50,887! I thought feedburner was having problems, but it appears its not.

Edit: Scratch that, because Feedburner was running into trouble. We’ll reach 50,000 + at sometime hopefully .

Anyways, why not use this post to give you a quick rundown of some things coming up this month:

- Interview with Ryan Sims of Justwatchthesky.
- More and more articles on a wider range of content
- Improvements to the homepage
- A sneak peak at Dev Version 2, due to release in Mid July!
- Of course, much more.