DSO Website

Orchestras should have sexy websites.

Development

We hope you enjoy developing the DSO website!

Installation

Developing the DSO website requires the following software to be installed:

• A UNIX-like operating system (Linux, Mac OS X), or Windows, Cygwin, and masochistic tendencies
• Git
• Ruby (2.0.0)
  • RVM is strongly recommended practically necessary, meaning you will almost certainly need a C compiler (Xcode or GCC)
• Ruby on Rails (3.2.18)
• MongoDB
• A JavaScript execution environment like NodeJS
• A recent browser with a good DOM tree inspector (Chrome or Firefox with Firebug)

Once you have all of those installed, you can run the website.

$ git clone git@github.com:haplesshero13/dso-web.git
$ cd dso-web
$ bundle install
$ mongod --fork --syslog
$ rails server

Now browse to http://0.0.0.0:3000/ to see your site as you write it, and http://0.0.0.0:3000/admin/ to create, edit, and destroy objects.

Front-end

Front-end developers should start here.

Templating

The HTML templates are written in Slim, a very minimal, indentation-based language that describes the HTML DOM in a clean, readable way.

Styling

The CSS files are compiled from SCSS files. Sassy CSS alows you to use variables, nesting, and more!

Scripting

The JavaScript files are written in CoffeeScript, a saner way to write JS.

Back-end

We develop using Ruby on Rails, a full-stack DSL for modular, highly opinionated, rapid web application development.

Deploying

We deploy to Heroku, the Rails platform-as-a-service host, using a MongoHQ database.

Testing

The DSO website is developed using principles of behavior-driven development using Minitest::Spec. Tests look like:

require 'minitest/autorun'
require_relative '../../app/models/orchestra'

describe Orchestra do
  subject       { Orchestra.new }
  let(:members) { [] }

  it "should be named" do
    subject.name.must_equal "Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra"
  end
end

Easy, right?

The best way to perform tests is to have a terminal window open and to run guard in it while you code. Then tests will automatically run any time a file is modified. Otherwise, you can run all the tests at any time by running rspec.

Todo List

• Develop domain model for website. We expect to have objects such as:
  • Events
  • Member/manager bios
  • Blog posts
  • Concert recordings
  • Mailing list
  • Text/media page content
  • Organization info (email, website)
• Create front-end pages:
  • Welcome page
  • Concert hall
  • Blog
  • Photos
  • Prospective Students
  • Members
  • Alumni
• Evaluate viability of port to Rails 4.0
  • So far, blocked by lack of support for Heroku and activeadmin-mongoid.

Authors

• Sang Lee, web designer and cat lover (actually, he may just be a cat)
• Allison Wang, graphic designer and apple fanatic (as in the fruit)
• Avery Yen, programmer and Pokémon battler (challenge him @ 'haplesshero' on Pokémon Showdown)