“He who has not first laid his foundations may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building.” — Niccolo Machiavelli

The Making of Watchdoggie – Part 2 (Implementation Details)

In this series I will document my approach to building a web business called Watchdoggie.com. It’s a product that continually monitors your website or blog and sends you a notice if your site ever goes down. I’m hoping this series will be helpful to web entrepreneurs. I also expect it will be helpful for me to document on my own experience and reflect on it later.

In this part I cover the implementation details involved in developing the site. If you missed the first part, you can catch it here The Making of Watchdoggie – Part 1.

This episode sets the foundation for the technologies used in delivering the site. The following pieces all play a role:

• Ruby on Rails for web framework
• TextMate for basic text editing
• Haml for HTML templating
• Ruby Twitter Gem to communicate with Twitter’s API
• heroku for hosting/deployment
• Git for version control
• Spree for e-commerce

Will this series be helpful to you? Do you have any ideas on how I can improve the product, or my development process? Comment and let me know.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” — Larry Elder

The Making of Watchdoggie – Part 1 (Business Development)

In this series I will document my approach to building a web business called Watchdoggie.com. It’s a product that continually monitors your website or blog and sends you a notice if your site ever goes down. I’m hoping this series will be helpful to web entrepreneurs. I also expect it will be helpful for me to document on my own experience and reflect on it later.

In this part I show the very first steps in establishing an online presence and a brand for your product. In the even-numbered parts I will demonstrate the technical implementation details.

This episode covers selecting and registering your domain name, choosing a look and feel, and designing your brand and logo. The following services are used to do this:

• Jacknames for domain registration and email
• csstemplatesfree for page layout and CSS
• iStockphoto for logo design
• oDesk for hiring freelance contractors
• heroku for hosting/deployment

Will this series be helpful to you? Do you have any ideas on how I can improve the product, or my development process? Comment and let me know.