Too bad it can't all be Rails
I finally finished the minor remodeling of my personal page, as I transferred the old, plain HTML files to Ruby on Rails. It didn't take too long, since the site is all static (for the time being). Just in case you're wondering, I moved everything to Rails mostly because I was tired of having to make a change to a menu, and I had to change every single HTML file. Not anymore. Although this apparently is the only benefit I've gained, I'm planning on adding many more things in the future (using Rails, of course).
Anyway, I was explaining what I was doing to the website to a co-worker. Although he doesn't understand much about programming, he did seem to understand the whole Rails thing. So he asked me if the blog was also made with Rails. I told him no, it was using Wordpress, which runs on PHP. SO his next question was a natural one: Why don't you use a Rails blog?
I'm sure some people who visit this site will ask the same thing. I have a couple of answers to this. I had tried to use Typo previously on this site, but rapidly removed it and started using Wordpress. First off, the web hosting company I'm using isn't the fastest or most reliable host around for Rails applications. So Typo felt damn slow, probably due to the amount of memory it needs to run. I know there's other blogging software built on Rails, but I haven't had time to review them thouroughly yet, and I don't seem to think they're good for what I want.
Besides the slow speed, Typo hasn't been updated in quite a while. The last update was in August of last year. Now that normally wouldn't be a problem. But I think that at the very rapid pace Rails is evolving, most Rails developers need to keep up with this pace. Granted, that's not always possible. But with all the new additions Rails gets with each release, I'm sure Typo and other Rails software could greatly benefit from those changes.
So for the time being, I'll stick with Wordpress. It's relatively fast and stable, and very easy to manage. Can't ask for more. Maybe in the future Typo will be updated, or I'll switch hosting companies and find Typo to be great, or maybe there's some blogging software out there built on Rails that can solve this minor dilemma for me. For now, it's too bad all my site can't be built on Rails.