Rails Deployment FASTCGI

Question

I am currently using hostmonster.com for hosting rails application. Does anyone use them? I notice that they are a bit slow with rails applications. Why is that? Does rails really use that much in terms of system resources? Has anyone deployed using scripts, capistrano on hostmonster.com?

This is my current .htaccess script. Could writing a better .htaccess speed up the site? Or is it mainly hardware that's the issue?

  # General Apache options
AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)/!$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]
ErrorDocument 500 "Application error Application failed to start properly"

Any tips on deploying on hostmonster.com greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

FASTCGI is no longer a commonly used way to run your Rails app.

Much better solutions have emerged in the last few years - Phusion Passenger is a common option. You can use it with Apache or Nginx.

You'll probably find that going with a hosting provider that specializes in Rails - such as EngineYard or Heroku - will improve your app's performance and make deployment easier.