It’s been a year of transition for RailsApps.

I wanted to find a way to support the open source project, working on it full time, without relying on corporate subsidies or consulting work. The initial plan was to sell subscriptions to support the project. Some people signed up to support the project; others signed up just to read the tutorials. That worked for the first two years but the tutorials got longer and more complex and it became difficult to support the software at the core of the project while writing tutorials. Revenues began to decline because people who wanted new tutorials every month were disappointed.

Facing declining revenues for the project, I left San Francisco and began living as a digital nomad, looking for cheaper places to live so I could keep the project going. I’ve had great experiences living in South Africa and Southeast Asia but revenues have continued to decline.

In July, I tried a new approach for the project, and stopped selling the tutorials on a subscription basis. Instead, I began selling the tutorials for a one-time fee of $95 as the Capstone Rails Tutorials, refocusing my efforts on maintaining the software at the core of the project. Tutorial sales didn’t make up for the loss of subscription revenue, so I raised money for the project with a Kickstarter campaign in October. The Kickstarter campaign raised $8505 from 152 backers, which allowed me to add important new features to Rails Composer, and provided enough revenue to support the project through the end of 2015.

Before I tell you about my plans for 2016, I’d like to review what I accomplished in 2015.

Throughout the year, I’ve kept the dozen RailsApps example applications updated for each new release of Rails, Ruby, and gems such as Gibbon. That has also meant periodic revisions to the dozen tutorials that accompany the example applications, as well as the Learn Ruby on Rails book.

I also released Rails Composer with new features such as Bootstrap page templates and the Administrate gem option.

Rails Composer now has 2285 registered users (and many hundreds more who aren’t signed up for the mailing list). Over 200 people have paid for the tutorials at a price of $95. Over 1000 people have obtained the Learn Ruby on Rails book from Amazon. And over 1000 students have obtained the book for free through Rails Girls, RailsBridge, or other organizations.

My original vision for RailsApps was to provide a dozen starter applications, along with tutorials for each starter application, plus the Rails Composer tool to generate the starter applications. The intent was to save time and effort for developers starting new projects, as well provide up-to-date “reference implementations” of basic Rails applications since Rails changes so frequently. Looking back, I’ve succeeded at accomplishing the original goals and sustaining the project in 2015.

I have a lot of work to do to meet RailsApps project goals in 2016. The Rails 5.0 beta is out now. Extensive revisions are required for all the example applications, the tutorials, and the Learn Ruby on Rails book to update the project to Rails 5.0. If I make the updates to Rails 5.0, the project will continue to be useful for at least two more years. Without an update to Rails 5.0, the project will reach its end of life very soon.

I’d also like to continue to add features to Rails Composer and build new example applications. With Rails 5.0 out, we need some examples of API-only Rails applications, perhaps integrated with JavaScript frameworks like React. I’m eager to explore these emerging approaches to web application development.