Prelauncher

A nice and easily deployable prelaunch signup page for your startup.

Getting started

• Download this repository as a ZIP-File

• Rename the folder. The app will be available at http://folder_name.dev.

• Install and update the gems.

  $ bundle install
  $ bundle update

• If you are on a Mac:

  • Install Pow if you haven't already.
  • Install Powder if you haven't already and link the app.

    $ gem install powder
    $ powder link

  • Browse to http://folder_name.dev and see if everything is working.

• Else

  • Just run the $ rails s and point your browser to localhost:3000.

Customizing

You'll be able to customize pretty much everything in this app, however it comes with great defaults.

Things you must customize

• Mailer
  • default from address
  • default to address

Things you should customize

• All views and stylesheets

Things you can customize

• Everything, including
  • The Subscriber model (i.e. you could add some fields)
  • The outbound mail templates
  • ...

Git

• Initialize Git repo (skip if you cloned the repo instead of downloading it)

  $ git init
  $ git add .
  $ git commit -am "First commit"

• Optional: Push your app to Github in a private or public repo. You'll find instructions after creating a repo on Github.

Hosting

Prelauncher is ready-made for a quick and easy [Heroku] deployment. These are the steps:

• Install the Heroku gem or Heroku toolbelt if you haven't already.

• Create your app on Heroku.

  $ heroku create prelauncher --remote production

• Add a SECRET_TOKEN config variable

  # Either
  $ rake secret
  # => random secure string to copy
  # or 
  $ rails console
  SecureRandom.hex(48)
  # => 123123.........123123; Copy this string and exit the rails console
  
  $ heroku config:add SECRET_TOKEN=123123.......123123

• Add the nescessary addons. The free plan suffices for each.

  • MongoHQ
  • Sendgrid
  • Memcachier
  • New Relic

• Deploy.

  $ git push production master

• Optional: Tail the logs in a second terminal window.

  $ heroku logs -t

• Browse your Heroku app to see if everything is working.

• Add New Relic availability monitoring to prevent dyno idling. Go to New Relic from your Heroku apps page and set it in Settings > Availibility Monitoring. Every 10 minutes is plenty.

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request

If you have questions, just open an issue. You'll also find me at @thomasjklemm and by mail at github_at_tklemm_dot_eu.

Thomas Klemm

Licence

MIT