Ruby on Rails has gotten really popular owing mostly to its well-earned reputation for rapid web application development. The plugin system has also helped to add loads of functionality not built into the core. It is almost certain you’ll find a plugin (or solution) to solve most problems you run into as long as it’s not too obscure.

However you can do better than typing ‘rails PROJECT’ to start a new rails app. I have used both bort and insoshi as bases for my new rails application and I recommend them highly.

Bort - A Base Rails Application

Bort is a base Rails application with various commonly used plugins pre-installed. Various maintenance tasks have also been done (e.g.  the index.html file has been deleted, the views have been modified and the database has been set as the session store).

The package includes plugins I usually end up installing and saves me a couple of hours when I start a new Rails app. Pre-installed  plugins include Restful Authentication, Exception Notifier, Will Paginate and Asset Packager. I actually use a fork which is essentially the same but uses usernames for authentication with the Restful Authentication plugin rather than email addresses.

The  downside when I started was the use of RSpec rather than Test::Unit but then it did force me to start using RSpec and I’m glad I did.

Insoshi -  Social Networking Platform

For a social site, Insoshi will save a lot of time. It is an open source social networking platform built on Rails and it rocks! Apart from being a complete application you can build from, it’s also got loads of pre-installed plugins which include Will Paginate, Restful Authentication and Attachment-fu.

Like Bort, it uses RSpec rather than Test::Unit. Check it out.