I’ve made considerable progress since my last post. I have a first-cut working Ruby on Rails application built on a development box - an Ubuntu VM (on Windows). The first round of widgets (Amazon-based) are ready to go. Much of the build process for the widgets and the web site is automated. I’ve signed up with Slicehost to host the site - they come highly recommended and the price was extremely compelling. I’m now coming up to speed on things like DNS configuration, setting up a scalable production web server environment, and maneuvering around Linux. While it’s been an eye opener as to all of the components needed to get a web application off of the ground (and I’m sooo barely scratching the surface), I’ve also been thrilled at the plethora of readily available tutorials, how-tos, forums, wikis, etc. to make this easier. Many others have trodden similar ground to get their fledgling efforts off of the ground, and this is a very good thing.