Hello all! [Warning: this will be long. My appreciation if you should read through to the end. :)] Intro and "Credentials" My name is Joshua Kugler, and I currently a system administrator for the University of Alaska Fairbanks Center for Distance Education <http://www.distance.uaf.edu/>, and am currently pursuing my Masters in Computer Science. I''ve used Perl for years, writing entire database driven web sites using it <see http://asuaf.org>; simple but functional. I''ve also written an entire database app using MS Access and Visual Basic...nice, but VB isn''t my favorite language. I was also the project leader for several class projects, including our senior design project. My intro to Ruby I''ve known about the Ruby language for some time now, and was especially intruiged by just *how* object oriented it was. Well, a few weeks ago, starting with the O''Reilly series, I found out about Rails. As I learned more via the second part of the O''Reilly series, "Really Getting Started in Rails," and "Four Days on Rails," I really started to get excited. So, yes, I must make a disclaimer: I have yet to program one line of Ruby code. You can stop reading now if that disgusts you. :) I''ve also written a couple of papers on software design and implementation. See <http://asuaf.org/~joshua/papers> What I want to do I''ve done googling, reading, and mail-list searching. Other than a smattering of posts and references (http://textdrive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=24856, and this thread: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.ruby.rails/2349), I''ve found no serious discussion of a solid, open source, Rails-based eCommerce application. I''ll be needing a good, maintainable, extensible eCommerce system in a few (or several) months, and I want to 1) Learn Ruby and Rails, 2) get some project management experience, and 3) create something that could become a "poster app" for Rails (I know, Basecamp; I said "a," not "the"). eCommerce is something that really needs a lot of templating and site design apart from the back-end code and is ripe for something with good MVC separation like Rails. The Details This will not be a rush job. As much as my hacker/programmer instincts want to jump in and start implementing, I know better. I''ve done enough projects where lack of planning came back and bit me. So, this will not be a rush project. If you''re looking for a product in a couple months, this ain''t it. :) We''re probably looking at a three to six month design process to gather and orgainze requirements, do design, and do initial system layout. I''ve registered for a project on rubyforge, and will shortly have more details forthcoming. Conclusion Well, I have a lot of ideas I''ll be distilling in the next few days and weeks. If anyone is interested or has questions, feel free to ask. I know I''ve bitten off a big chunk, but I''m excited about leading a project and learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails. j----- k----- -- Joshua J. Kugler -- Fairbanks, Alaska -- ICQ#:13706295 Every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, that Jesus Christ is LORD -- Count on it!