The goal of this article is to create a "Production-Quality" Rails Server. Thus, the best possible technologies (strictly my opinion) have been selected at the time of this writing to achieve this goal.

Unlike other developers, I prefer to install my Rails Applications under Web Subdirectories, such as http://www.not404.com/MyRailsApp, instead of running it as a Root Application of a Web Root, such as http://MyRailsApp.not404.com/. These instructions are geared for how I lay things out, but will let you know what to adjust in order to run your Rails Apps as traditional Web-Root Applications.

You may also notice that these instructions are SQLite3-oriented. This is intentional. IMHO, it's better to use the simplest-case database to prove that everything else is properly stitched together. Then, once you're satisfied that everything is properly locked down and performance-tuned, you can focus your attention on tying your Rails Application to a real database.