Dreamhost Hates Rails

I’ll admit it, that title is wayyy too sensationalistic. But I think it fits right in with all the back and forth blog posts that have revolved around a recent post at the Dreamhost blog talking about the problems with running Rails apps on shared hosts. Seeing as how I’ve tried, with mixed results, to run Rails apps on a couple different shared hosts, as well as on a VPS with root access, I thought I would throw out a few of my own opinions on the article.

Dallas, the person at DH who wrote the post, starts off by stating how hard it is to get Rails apps up and running, and to keep them running. I find that statement a little hard to believe, considering the only problem I’ve ever had running a Rails app was on Dreamhost. When I started using Mongrel instead of FastCGI, I had no problems whatsoever starting, or maintaining a Rails app. Although, as Dallas states, Dreamhost has 10 years of experience in the hosting business. So of course they must know more than anyone else…/sarcasm

He then goes on to state that Dreamhost decided to go with Apache/FastCGI because it was the best solution for shared hosts, and throws in a bunch of passive aggressive cheapshots at Rails for good measure. Oh, and he’s not done yet! He decides to take a shot at the Rails developer community as well by saying they know nothing about web hosting because they recommended DH switch to another web server. The nerve of those pesky developers! Suggesting that DH should possibly be flexible and willing to change their server setup so that their customers would have a better experience. Dallas seems to be especially pleased that DH didn’t switch because Mongrel was released soon after and became the new standard for hosting Rails apps. Who would have ever thought that a new server would be written for a relatively new framework. Obviously, the usual way to do things is to create a framework, and then stop all development entirely so that shared hosting companies won’t be inconvenienced by so called “advancements” in technology.

The funniest thing about this post is that there are many shared hosts who have absolutely no problems serving Rails apps. The difference between those hosts, and Dreamhost, is that they are willing to be flexible, and modify their server configurations to run things like Mongrel. In my opinion, Dreamhost is just trying to cover their own ass because of their subpar Rails support. If they really cared about Rails, they would be willing to do the work required to make Rails work on their servers, rather than laying the blame and responsibility on the Rails community.

The smarter thing to do here would have been to actually come up with a technical solution to their problem, and then share it with other hosts who were having the same problems. I guess it’s just way easier to complain than to be part of the solution.