How to Deploy your First Rails App: New on Premium
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How to Deploy your First Rails App: New on Premium

on Sep 30th 2011 with 22 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Availability: Premium Exclusive
  • Format: 15 Minute Screencast
  • Post Image: Available on GraphicRiver
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In this Premium video tutorial, we’ll teach you how to deploy your first Rails web application with Heroku. Particularly if you’re somewhat new to Rails, you may find that you’re met with a long string of errors when pushing your app and database to their servers. Don’t worry, though; this screencast will take you through the entire process from scratch.

Become a Premium member to watch this video, as well as hundreds of other advanced tutorials and screencasts from the Tuts+ network.

You’ll Learn How To…

  • Work with models and controllers
  • Adjust routes
  • Source control with Git
  • Install and work with Heroku
  • Convert a Sqlite3 database to PostgreSQL
  • Debugging Heroku errors

 
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I'm the editor of Nettuts+, and love making the process of building for the web as easy as possible. Also, I'm finishing up my latest book on Laravel Testing! If you want be friends, say hi on Twitter.  

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  • Rahul

    Now I gotta get a premier membership..

  • http://ek.alphaschildren.org Ethan

    @Jeffrey will this be available on the tuts+ market place?

  • http://rommelcastro.me Rommel Castro A

    i need to renew my premium membership!

  • http://bazhan.com.ua Bazhan Denis

    Why on heroku better to Rackspacecloud. Heroku a lot of lessons. 8(

  • https://github.com/dublinan Andre Dublin

    Great tutorial Jeff, would there be a possible future for explaining the Passenger gem (mod_rails) for launching on Apache servers?

    • http://baylorrae.com Baylor Rae’

      +1. Deploying on Heroku should not be a premium tutorial.

      • http://www.rockhopperdigital.com Benjamin Zalasky

        Agreed. If you can figure out how to commit to Github, you can deploy to Heroku.

      • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
        Author

        That’s not true at all — especially if you’re new to Heroku. Those guys won’t realize that they don’t, for example, support Sqlite databases, or how to perform migrations on Heroku, or how to convert their table data to a different format with the Taps gem, or how to debug Heroku issues in general.

        If you know how to do those things already, fantastic — this tutorial isn’t for you.

      • Ethan Kramer

        @Jeffrey I want to learn how to do this for new app <a href=”http://forrst.com/posts/WIP_A_Sneak_Peak_At_My_New_Service_EDDITT-9vZ”>edditt<\a> which will based off Rails. I am willing to pay for a tutorial on the tuts+ market place. But i don’t want to tie myself into monthly plan (mostly because i can’t afford to). Like i said earlier, would love for you to put this on the tuts+ market place like you have done with some of your other premium tutorials

      • http://baylorrae.com Baylor Rae’

        Jeffrey you’re right to a degree. I’m still very new to rails and Heroku, but I was able to move my database over with the Heroku documentation.

        It’s all right here
        http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/rails3

        —
        To be clear, I’m not dissing your tutorial or its content. In fact, I considered buying it through the Tuts+ Marketplace. But the “what’s covered” list is almost completely available in Heroku’s documentation and a quick google search which makes me question the level of premium content being delivered.

      • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
        Author

        I’m right completely. Sure, the “refer to the documentation” argument can be used for most tutorials. Some people need a more visual tutorial to work through these new technologies and such. If you’re not one of those people, fantastic. This tutorial is not meant for you.

        It’s like me commenting on a “Get Started With jQuery” tutorial, and noting that most of the information can be found in the jQuery documentation. Well yeah! Obviously that’s true. But documentation is often a bit more sterile and confusing.

      • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
        Author

        You can’t make assumptions that everyone is familiar with Git, and GitHub, and Heroku, and Rails, and the command line.

      • http://www.rockhopperdigital.com Benjamin Zalasky

        Jeffrey, I totally appreciate your perspective. If I would have taken a moment to collect my thoughts the other day, I might have said something more along the lines of… it’d be cool to see a tutorial that covers common issues a beginner might face using Passenger to deploy on a VPS. Heroku is cool for deploying a tutorial app quickly for free, but can get extremely expensive with actual production apps. I’ve heard good things about Engine Yard’s Cloud service as well, but I’ve never used it.

      • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
        Author

        I have a Passenger tutorial in my author-recommendations list. :)

      • http://baylorrae.com Baylor Rae’

        You’re right. I did make the assumption that everyone is familiar with Git and command line. But I do think my point “I’m questioning the level of premium content being delivered” still stands. The only reason I posted my comment, which I never intended to debate over, was that Heroku is super easy to use and I didn’t understand why this was a premium tutorial.

      • Rory

        “It’s like me commenting on a “Get Started With jQuery” tutorial, and noting that most of the information can be found in the jQuery documentation. Well yeah! Obviously that’s true. But documentation is often a bit more sterile and confusing.”

        This. This, and this again. This is the sole reason I purchase and read your articles. Having you narrate what’s going on and dropping nuggets of wisdom every so often tops any 20 page doc that assumes a familiarity with whatever it is you’re doing.

        Thanks again

  • Joris Ooms

    Thanks Jeffrey! More Ruby on Rails tutorials please, premium or normal doesn’t matter ;)

  • http://www.sigididesign.com Vezu

    I deployed my first rails application on heroku. Took me three days to figure it out. lol. http://www.stagesong.com/

  • http://baylorrae.com Baylor Rae’

    Are you planning on adding this to the Tuts+ Marketplace? And do you think you’ll ever a tutorial on deploying to something like Linode?

    • http://www.rockhopperdigital.com Benjamin Zalasky

      Linode has some great resources available to logged in customers (as you’re probably aware). I’ve found them to be a little bit dated though.

  • http://www.bizmo.co.uk Robbie Done

    Great tutorial, there is nothing out there that i could find that showed you how to migrate to postgres, well done :)

    • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
      Author

      Thanks, Robbie!