Notepad++ has a great plugin called FTP_synchronize that allows you to edit your files directly on the server. With the plugin installed, editing files on the server doesn’t feel any different from editing files on the local machine.

Here’s a list of steps on how to set up Notepad++ to edit files through FTP.

1. If you don’t already have Notapad++ installed, download the binaries from here and install.
2. Download the FTP_synchronize plugin from here and install it by copying the DLL into Notepad++’s plugins folder. (You’ll have to restart Notepad++ to be able to use the plugin.)
3. Open the FTP_Synchronize interface by clicking the “Show FTP folders” button or from the Plugins option in the menubar.

   

4. Click on settings on the FTP folders interface, and enter the login details. The address is your domain name, and the username is the one your hosting provider gives you. (In Bluehost, for instance, it’s usually (not always) the first 8 characters of your main domain’s name.) Set the port to 21.

   

5. Now click on the connect button and choose the FTP profile you’ve created. The folder you’ve selected in the settings gets loaded in the FTP synchronize sidebar, and you can edit the files on the server the same way you would use an IDE to edit a project stored locally. FTP Synchronize automatically syncs your files when you hit Ctrl+S.

It’s been working great for me so far, and unless you’re editing unusually large files, Ctrl+S synchronizes the file almost instantaneously. The only thing that irritated me about the plugin was that it wouldn’t alert me when the FTP connection gets disconnected, so more than once I’ve wondered why there was no change on the site when I changed some code.

How do you edit files on the server? Is there a better option I could use? I’ve heard that the feature’s been added to NetBeans, but haven’t really checked it out. Should I be trying it out?

I realized that setting up a Rails environment might seem a daunting task for a newbie. Here’s a list of steps to get Ruby on Rails working on a windows machine. I use NetBeans with MySQL because I found the least trouble to set up.

1. Go to www.ruby-lang.org and download the ruby one-click installer for Windows.
2. Install ruby using the one-click installer, and remember to select RubyGems when asked what components you want installed.
3. Download and install MySQL from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/.
4. You will need java to run NetBeans, so download java from http://www.java.com/en/ and install.
5. Download the latest version (6.7 at the moment) of NetBeans from http://www.netbeans.org/. You might choose the complete NetBeans package or the Ruby only version. Either of them will do.
6. Install rails for your ruby installation by using this command in the command line:

   gem install rails

7. You will also need the ruby MySQL driver to be installed to be able to use MySQL databases. For this, install the mysql gem by this command:

   gem install mysql

8. When I started NetBeans and created a new rails project, NetBeans asked me to update ruby gems from 1.3.1 to 1.3.2. Unfortunately, the one click installer is available only for Ruby 1.8.6 and contains gem version 1.3.1, so you’ll have to update rubygems using the command line:

   gem update --system

That’s it… you can now use NetBeans as a rails development environment. I know that was a very long list of steps to get a rails IDE working, but it’s worth the trouble. Using ruby on rails as your development environment will make up for the effort required to set up the IDE.

What IDE do you use for rails development? When you were new to rails development, did you have trouble setting up a development environment? And in case you’re a newbie rails developer, is that how you got here?