How can I use rails in my public_html

rubyonrails-talk
1

I have no root permission on the server, only a public_html in my $HOME. The http server is not apache; it only support cgi script.

Can I use rails in my public_html?

2

I would find another host, personally. Ideally you would want the actual Rails application to live outside of public_html. I always put mine in $HOME and create a symbolic link from $HOME/public_html to RailsAppDir/public and that works fine.

You could most likely make this work if you wanted to use mod_rewrite and a custom .htaccess files to route all reqests going to / to / RailsApp/public/dispatch.fcgi -- Actually, in thinking about it, you could just modify the original rails .htaccess file to do this.

You'd probably need to put the rails app inside the cgi-bin though, if you don't have permission to change the permissions on files to make dispatch executable.

3

I would echo Matt in many ways. If possible, I recommend getting a VPS somewhere and working with that because you will learn a lot of valuable information about how Rails works.

4

Thanks for your suggestion.

The difficult thing is our http server is not apache, so mod_rewrite is not available.

The only way is to use cgi script, i think. But i have no idea how rails can be used only in a cgi approach.