Duane Johnson announced the release of two new Ruby on Rails gems today in the Ruby on Rails mailing list: rails_product and site. Combined, they give you the ability to use one generic web application installation for more than one website, and each site can be customized as per client requirements.

I think this is great news, and although I don’t have a need for the Rails Product Generator at this time, when I do, I’ll have to look at it in more depth. So far, though, the feedback on the mailing list has been overwhelmingly positive! Great work, Duane.

Rails Product Generator:

A “productized” application is a two-tiered application. The first tier is a single base application that encapsulates common functionality for your product. The second tier consists of several customized applications that inherit and extend functionality from that base. It is useful for web developers who want to create a base application with some sort of generic functionality (e.g. a shopping cart) and then extend or modify that functionality for specific clients only.

Installation information is available via the Rails Product Generator page on the Ruby on Rails wiki.

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1. Starting on new Rails site; using Product Generator
2. Installing The Ruby on Rails Framework
3. Nightly Maintenance for Ruby on Rails Apps
4. Late night with Ruby
5. Deploying Ruby on Rails App to TextDrive