Content sites on Rails

Craft blogs, docs, & marketing pages in Rails with Sitepress

Tired of juggling Webflow, Zendesk, or static site generators to manage content? Sitepress brings it all into one place in your Rails app. In this course you'll learn:

  • Manage content in Rails. Keep pages, templates, & content organized in one folder inside your Rails app instead of maintaining an external CMS.
  • The Sitepress toolbox. Learn how helpers, frontmatter, and page models build on Rails templates to organize and render content inside your app.
  • Ship content your way. Serve content dynamically in Rails or compile it to static files for deployment anywhere.

With Sitepress, you’ll build content sites that reuse your app’s components, integrate directly with Rails, and free you from paying rent to bolt-on CMS platforms.

Pre-order video course ▶️ Watch introduction

Meet the instructor & creator of Sitepress, Brad Gessler

I built Sitepress while I was CTO at Poll Everywhere to solve a common problem: content scattered across controllers, folders, databases, and third-party platforms. I wanted one place to manage everything inside Rails.

Since then, I’ve used Sitepress for Fly.io’s community docs, this website, and Terminalwire.com. It also powers the Hotwire community website and Pushpad. In this course, I’ll show you how to build and deploy your own Sitepress instance step by step.

Here's the lesson plan 🧑🏻‍💻

Unit 1

Getting started

This course will teach you how to build content-driven websites with Sitepress, a file-based content management system for Rails. You’ll learn how Sitepress compares to other static site generators and how to leverage it to build fast, maintainable websites.

Introduction

This video introduces Sitepress, a file-based content management system for Ruby that lets you manage content as files in your application.

Compare to Jekyll

This video compares Sitepress to Jekyll, exploring the differences in how they handle content management and integrate with Ruby applications.

Compare to WordPress & databases

This video compares Sitepress’s file-based approach to traditional database-driven content management systems like WordPress.

Compare to Middleman

This video compares Sitepress to Middleman, examining the trade-offs between a standalone static site generator and an integrated Rails content management system.

Compare to Bridgetown

This video compares Sitepress to Bridgetown, exploring how each approach handles modern static site generation and integration with Ruby frameworks.

Unit 2

Sitepress fundamentals

Sitepress manages content as files in your Rails application, making it easy to create and organize pages with frontmatter, templates, and powerful traversal methods. You’ll learn the core concepts that make Sitepress a flexible content management system.

Pages

This video explores how Sitepress manages pages as files in your application, including how to create, organize, and access page content.

Templates

This video covers how to use templates in Sitepress, including different template formats like ERB, Haml, and Markdown for rendering page content.

Frontmatter

This video explains how to use YAML frontmatter in Sitepress pages to define metadata, custom attributes, and configuration for your content.

Traversal

This video demonstrates how to traverse and query pages in Sitepress using built-in methods to build navigation, find related content, and iterate through your site structure.

Globbing

This video shows how to use glob patterns in Sitepress to select and filter pages, making it easy to work with groups of content based on paths and patterns.

Unit 3

Content models

Sitepress lets you organize content with Ruby models that work alongside your pages, giving you a powerful way to structure and query content. You’ll learn how to build content-driven features using data files and model objects.

Overview

This video introduces content models in Sitepress, showing how to structure and organize content using Ruby classes that work alongside your pages.

Data

This video explains how to work with data files in Sitepress, including loading YAML, JSON, or other data formats to power your content models and pages.

Unit 4

Sitepress with Rails

Sitepress integrates seamlessly with Rails applications, allowing you to manage content-driven pages alongside your dynamic Rails features. You’ll learn how to install Sitepress, configure routes, and use controllers to build hybrid applications that combine static content with database-backed functionality.

Installation

This video walks through installing Sitepress into a Rails application, including setup, configuration, and verifying that everything is working correctly.

Overview

This video provides an overview of how Sitepress integrates with Rails, covering routing, rendering, and how content pages work alongside your Rails controllers and views.

Controllers

This video shows how to use Rails controllers with Sitepress to add custom logic, handle parameters, and build dynamic content pages that combine file-based content with controller actions.

Unit 5

Static site generation

Sitepress can compile your entire site to static files for deployment to CDNs, object storage, or traditional web servers. You’ll learn how to build and deploy static sites that are fast, secure, and cost-effective to host.

Overview

This video introduces static site generation with Sitepress, explaining how to compile your entire site to static HTML files for deployment.

Compiling

This video demonstrates how to compile your Sitepress site to static files, including configuration options, asset handling, and optimizing the build process for production.

Deployments

This video covers deploying your compiled Sitepress site to various hosting platforms like Netlify, Vercel, AWS S3, and other static hosting providers.

Unit 6

Recipes

From blogs to marketing websites to community documentation, I share my experience building content websites that are easy to maintain and update.

Blogs

Setup a blog for product releases, announcements, and more. We’ll setup a basic blog, add RSS feeds, and integrate it into various parts of the Rails app.

Marketing website

Ditch webflow and create a marketing website with landing pages, product information, legal pages, and a blog.

Support content

Stand up customer support content from help articles to FAQs. This recipe will look at how markdown files can be used to host support content for your website.

Community documentation

I share my experience building a community documentation for Fly.io that’s backed by Github so that anyone can contribute.

Invest in yourself 🤗

Pay once for lifetime access to the video course. No subscription required.

Pre-order video course for $379 $249

Launch pricing: 34% off to help you start building better Rails UIs today. 🚀

  • Build content-driven websites with file-based content management in Rails
  • Organize pages with frontmatter, templates, and powerful traversal methods
  • Create content models that structure and query content with Ruby objects
  • Install and configure Sitepress in new or existing Rails applications
  • Compile sites to static files for deployment to CDNs or object storage
  • Build blogs, marketing sites, documentation, and support content
  • Compare Sitepress to Jekyll, Middleman, Bridgetown, and WordPress
  • Lifetime access to all future updates and lessons

Launch discount 🤘🚀

Join the early wave of developers pushing Rails frontends forward. $50 off launch pricing.

  • Seed supporter

    The first 50 people who order will get to work with Brad to shape the direction of the course.

    Pre-order video course
  • Early adopter

    Get emails as soon as videos are published and give feedback on the course.

  • Launch

    The course will be discounted for the grand opening! Get a $50 discount off the full price of the course.

  • Mainstream

    Course is fully published and full price.

Custom team workshops ⛹️‍

Build content-driven Rails apps that your team can maintain

Content management in Rails often means choosing between expensive third-party platforms, awkward integrations, or building everything from scratch. Marketing pages live in one place, docs in another, and support content somewhere else—all with different tools and workflows. Sitepress gives teams a unified way to manage content in Rails. It keeps everything on your domain, in your design system, and versioned in git.

The workshop starts with your content strategy and delivery goals. We work with your team to design a plan that fits your existing Rails app and coach you through building maintainable, first-party content experiences with Sitepress.

  • Leadership kickoff to align on content strategy and goals
  • Custom training plan based on your existing Rails app
  • Hands-on instruction for building content-driven features
  • Follow-ups to reinforce best practices and maintain momentum
  • Lifetime access to all workshop materials and recordings
Let's plan a workshop together

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to buy one course per person?

Yes. If you think about it, you're not really buying a video. What you're buying is the ability to level up and ship faster, higher-quality code. If there are 3 people on your team who are interested in the course, you'd purchase 3 courses. If 2 more people join the team, you can buy more from account management.

When you check out, select the number of courses you'd like to buy for people on your team with the "Quantity" drop-down. Crafting these videos is time-consuming and costs real money. Your support means I can make even more of these videos. 🙏

Do you do team workshops?

I sure do! Email somebody@beautifulruby.com and let's start talking about your goals and objectives so we can structure workshops, coaching sessions, and lesson plans that will move your product or organization forward.

What if I'm not satisfied with the course?

First, please share what could be improved. If you're still not satisfied, you can get a refund.

Are there discounts?

I get it—$379 is easier to spend when it comes out of a training budget or is a business expense. If you're a student, or if that's not you, reach out to somebody@beautifulruby.com and let's talk.

Can I get a receipt?

Of course! You'll need it for your expense reports or tax documentation. After you pay for the course, you should receive a receipt by email. You can also request one at any time from account management or reach out.

What does "lifetime access" mean?

You'll always be able to access this website to watch videos. If, for some reason, the website needs to be taken down, you'll be offered a downloadable format that you can store on your own device.

Who is this course for?

This course is perfect for anyone who wants to build content-driven websites with file-based content management in Rails.

  • Rails developers who need to manage marketing pages, docs, or blog content
  • Teams tired of paying for third-party platforms like Webflow or Zendesk
  • Developers looking for alternatives to Jekyll, Middleman, or WordPress
  • Full-stack developers who want content versioned in git alongside their code
  • Anyone building blogs, documentation sites, or content-heavy Rails apps

Checkout in minutes

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Pre-order video course for $379 $249