web development

Want to build a successful web app?
Then it's time to Get Real.
Getting Real is a smaller, faster, better way to build software.

The above quote is from the book Getting Real, which is an excellent guide for doing web development.

My specialty is agile web development using Ruby on Rails, but I also have many years of
experience developing with several programming languages and databases.
A combination of best practices and my experience guarantees a result that you will be proud to call your own.

ruby on rails

  • MerchantBlocks

    Merchant Blocks   *coming soon*
    A Ruby on Rails SaaS app to help small business manage:
      customer/employee info, tills, inventory, newsletters, gift cards, and loyalty programs

  • ZeeStreet

    stuff.clsmith.org
    A staged version of the ZeeStreet Ruby on Rails app. ZeeStreet focuses on recycling items within neighborhoods (hyper-local).
    It is similar to craigslist but with the user's items geocoded based on their address or nearby cross streets. Geocoding allows users to search for items within a certain distance of their home. For initial neighborhoods a rake task can be used to scrape postings from craigslist and seed the database.
    Plugins/gems used: restful_authentication, geokit, attachment_fu, friendly_id, hpricot

  • community building institute

    cbi.clsmith.org
    An example of a content management system built using Ruby on Rails and radiant

  • craigslist/odesk rss watcher

    clwatcher.clsmith.org   *currently password protected*
    A RoR/MySQL app which is used to configure and manage the feeds and queries used by a rake task to process Craigslist and oDesk RSS feeds to search for matching jobs. The rake task is a cron job that executes every half hour to update the database with matching jobs.
    There is a Sinatra app (see below) which is used to quickly display the results.
    Gems used by the rake task: feed-normalizer, simple-rss, hpricot

sinatra

  • clwatcher

    sinatra.clsmith.org
    An example sinatra app to quickly display certain job posting links from a MySQL database. The job posting links are created by a rake task which processes Craigslist and oDesk RSS feeds to search for matching jobs. There is a RoR/MySQL app (see above) which is used to configure and manage the feeds and queries used by the rake task.
    Gems used: sinatra, rack