Setting Up on WebFaction

WebFaction is quite popular among the Python and Django community, recently it has simplified Rails and other Ruby web frameworks.

Unlike other Web hosts they do not bundle a domain name, but these can be bought quite cheaply from www.gandi.net. I would then forward the MX records to google and get a gmail handler for your mail. You do not have to get a domain straight away by default you can use username.webfactional.com

First I had to install Passenger (I think this is also called Rack), I set the name to passenger.

This means that if you ssh/sftp/ftp into your account you will see ~/webapps/passenger/

Then I entered the Websites section then created a new subdomain devel.username.webfactional.com and set this to be type:passenger location:/

I had to wait sometime before these setting became active.
There article can then be followed for setting up a basic Sinatra over passenger (Rack).

NB: for a sinatra app you only need to install Passenger (not rails) and gem install sinatra (plus sequel / activerecord etc).