BenCurtis.com

Since I transferred ownership of the conferencemeetup.com domain this morning, it's now official: I've flipped my first business. Confabb is the proud new owner of the domain and the Rails application. Doing this kind of a transaction has actually been something I've wanted to do for a while, but without a definite plan or timeline. Having done it, though, I can look back and pull out a few lessons learned for those wanting to do the same.

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In response to my post about being a Ruby on Rails consultant, a few seemed interested in my writing more about the business side of being a freelance developer, so this post is the first in a series on the topic. The first thing I decided to write about is business insurance, since it doesn't seem to be discussed a whole lot in blog posts of this sort.

I was introduced to the world of business insurance by a kind client who suggested I really ought to look into it. It was something that I figured I would get to eventually, but wasn't in a rush to do. After doing a bit of research, though, and getting some insurance for my LLC, I now recommend to anyone that will listen to get business insurance sooner rather than later. If you are looking into getting some insurance for yourself, the first thing you need to know is that there are, in fact, two types of insurance you should investigate.

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In my last post about RailsConf, I announced my intention to donate $1,000 to Ruby Central. I'm going to do that by donating $4 for each of 250 business cards I give away at the conference to people I meet there. To give you a little extra incentive to find me, take a card, and even hang on it to for a while, I've made it a collector's item. :) Take a look:

The front...

...and the back:

See you in Portland!

Here's a follow-up to my instructions on integrating OpenID with ActsAsAuthenticated: a full, sample Ruby on Rails application that provides an example of how to use OpenID. Much like the caboose sample app(s), this is intended to be a good starting point for building your own application with OpenID baked in from the beginning.

This OpenID sample application uses DHH's open_id_authentication plugin, which has been tweaked to not require the current edge Rails. In other words, you can use this application on Rails 1.2.3 without any modifications. I modified the sample controller code from the plugin to automatically create user accounts with an OpenID login, and to only update the SRE fields for the user when first creating an account.

I'm also using Rick's restful_authentication plugin with the activation email observer commented out in environment.rb, and with the User model tweaked to allow accounts to be created without a login and password if the account is created via an OpenID login. The controller code does ask the OpenID provider for a nickname (mapped to login) and email address, but they aren't required and some OpenID providers may not provide the ability to get that extra data, so you can't really depend on the OpenID provider to provide those. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out a way to collect an email address if responding to an activation email is desired.

Finally, Dr Nic's Gems on Rails is employed to distribute the ruby-openid gem along with the sample application, so you should be able to just unpack and run.

With the help of so many excellent developers, very little of the code in this archive is actually mine. :) However, whatever there is of my code in there is distributed under the MIT license, as is the rest of the code so generously provided by the other authors (aside from the ruby-openid gem, which is distributed under the Apache license).

Download the example Ruby on Rails OpenID application.

Today marks 100 days since I started doing freelance Ruby on Rails development, consulting, and training here in sunny Seattle, WA on a full-time basis. I must say, it's been a blast.

Previous to the full-time consulting work, I was employed at a startup doing Rails for my day job. I worked on some cool stuff, worked with some cool people, and had a great time. Of course, all good things must come to an end, and when the funding stopped, so did my paycheck. Fortunately for me, I had been doing some freelancing on the side, so when the kick in the pants came, I was able to move quickly into freelancing full-time.

I have learned quite a bit in the past 100 days... about running a business, working with clients, and managing stress. A year ago I never would have thought I would enjoy this, but I've discovered that I really do. I'm still working on some cool stuff, with some cool people, and every day is an adventure.

So, if you need a web application built, or if you need some guidance on building one, or if you'd like some one-on-one Rails training, drop me a line. If you're thinking of diving in to freelancing full time and have a question you'd like to ask, send it my way and I'll do my best to impart lessons learned the hard way. :)