Now that cPanel 11 supports Ruby on Rails as an integrated feature, Birdhouse Hosting has enabled this capability for all users. While we cannot support your specific RoR applications or RoR programming questions, we can help you to get an initial RoR site set up. To get your Rails site off the ground, please follow these steps:

1. Rails apps must run on a full domain name or subdomain. Register and create an add-on domain or subdomain via cPanel before you begin. You cannot run a RoR app at a location such as domain.com/foobar. You will not need to load any code into the docroot for the new domain – for now, just create it and verify that it resolves.
2. In cPanel,  click the Ruby on Rails icon.
3. Give your application a name and specify a directory location that is not under your public_html. If your app name is “foobar,” we suggest that you keep the code for your app at /home/username/foobar, not /home/username/public_html/foobar. cPanel will create the directory for you – you don’t need to create it in advance.
4. Check the box for “Load on boot.”
5. Click Create to have initial scaffolding for your app generated, then click the Run icon or link.
6. cPanel will assign a port for your app to run on, such as 12003. Contact us and ask us to open up the assigned port in our firewall.
7. Once we’ve done that, use the Rewrite section of the cPanel RoR page to point your app at the domain or subdomain you created in step #1.

That’s it! You should be able to access your domain or subdomain in a browser and see the running Rails scaffolding application. The rest is up to you.

See the cPanel RoR documentation for more information.

Return to FAQs