UK-based Web hosting provider Brightbox (brightbox.co.uk) announced on Monday that it has launched a Ruby on Rails focused hosting service.

Brightbox says its offering is based on the Xen virtualization platform and that the company has reduced the previously complex process of Ruby on Rails deployment to a few simple steps, enabling Rails developers to spend more time working on their projects and less time consumed on configuring their server.

The hosting provider says each server comes with dedicated RAM and CPU resources, an optimized Ubuntu OS, pre-installed Ruby on Rails stack as well as access to a managed MySQL database cluster.

"Ruby on Rails as a framework has experienced huge growth and take-up amongst Web developers and agencies throughout the UK and mainland Europe, but a reliable and scalable hosting service has, until now, been distinctly lacking this side of the Atlantic," says Jeremy Jarvis, founder of Brightbox. "We developed Brightbox based on two years' experience of developing and hosting Rails applications for clients. We hoped a suitable service would arrive in the UK and none did, so we built our own."

function mailpage() { var title = document.title.replace(/&/g,'and'); var url = location.href.replace(/&/g,'and'); mail_str = "mailto:?Subject= " + title; mail_str += "&Body=I thought you might be interested in this page: " + title; mail_str += ". You can view it at, " + url; location.href = mail_str; //alert(mail_str); }