Giving up on fixtures.

This post is somewhat technical, but this problem has been giving me headaches for some time now, so I want to document my decision.

The problem has to do with setting up the databases with seed data.  Rails has something called fixtures, which allow you to create seed data for testing purposes.  This is ok, but not great for seed data which should be permanently loaded into the testing and production apps.  There is also a seed function, which does exactly this.  Ideally, you would first seed the test or dev databases, then add your fixture data so you can make your tests (test environment) or just play around (dev environment). The problem is that when you load fixtures, it deletes the seed data.  If you try to load fixtures first, then some of the  base data that the objects in the fixtures require is missing, so they are incomplete.

My solution will be to use fixtures, just for testing, which will require duplicating some of the seed data (grrrrr) and just use the seed function  for dev and production.

Choosing a CMS

It's time to start adding content to my site to start driving search traffic.  I envision three content types that will drive search traffic.

I will create a section of evergreen content comprised of articles related to tender risk management principles. This can be added to steadily over time. Obviously we will focus on currency risk in the beginning.  Later, I hope to entice experts to contribute articles as well. It will help them build their personal brands and help me by providing content.

The second type of content will be to post summaries and links to relevant articles on the web.  This will hopefully provide lots of useful content for potential visitors without too much effort. In the future, scanning for articles, writing the summaries and uploading the content could be outsourced, when cash flow allows.

Finally, I would like to have a Q and A forum based on the stack-overflow model.  I have seen that you can use their concept, but I have no idea what it will cost.  Also, I do not know how much effort it requires to administrate.

A content management system (CMS) will be used to streamline the content generation process. After some quick searches and playing around with a few demos, I have settled on Radiant, which is based on rails and aspires to be a relatively basic CMS, which suits me fine.  It also has a decent extensions framework for customization.

Tying the content site to the application is not so simple.  I could run the two sites side by side with some cross linking - easy to set up, but no chance to share user_id's so the content site would really just serve content, no app functionality. I could also migrate the app to the radiant based site, which is theoretically possible, but it would be some effort.

I will choose the first option as I don't even know if this model will make a viable business yet. Lets see if we can get some users on the app before spending a significant amount of energy to make it easy to use.

The evergreen content and the link summaries will be setup first. The forum will have to come later (when we have users/visitors).