Site Checklist

Well, after a little shoehorning, I got my site up and running on DreamHost.

Now I'm just about ready to release it to the world. But first, there's a few things on my mind that I gotta get settled.

Things to Take Into Account Before Releasing Your (Rails) App

• Security: Watch out for stuff like accidentally exposing methods in your controller, trusting the client too much (always validate params[:id]), and allowing the update methods modify any aspect of an object (a client could easily use hidden fields to update more than you expect).


• Setting Up a Blog: A blog is the best way to communicate to your users. And their ability to leave comments is always good feedback. So it's important to have a blog up and running. But consider having the blog hosted on a server other than your own. So in case your server is down, your users can still read your blog to get updates on the status of your site.


• Privacy Statement: Even if you don't collect personal data, it's a good idea to put up a privacy statement so your users feel at ease. And if you're too lazy to write one, this Privacy Statement Generator should help you out.


• Terms of Service: This one is similar to the Privacy Statement but more important, in my opinion. It protects you against lawsuits should your server be unavailable or your accidentally loose data. It'll let you sleep at night, so don't skimp on it.


• Error Pages: This usually gets overlooked but it's a good idea to make custom error pages (404, 500). Having your logo and a friendly message looks more professional than just a bland, generic statement. And this goes for incompatibility issues as well. If a browser is incompatible with your site, let them know, don't just leave them in the dark.


• Deployment Setup: Having a good update strategy is important. If it's a simple website just uploading all the files should be fine. But for a web app you have to plan things out a bit more. What will visitors see during the upgrade? What'll happen to the visitors that were currently using the app? Those are all good questions to ask yourself.

Once all that is done and polished, the next step is to start opening up your site to beta users. But for now, I got my work cut out for me.