Open Marriage

The open source website for Leslie Verploegen's and Eric Ferraiuolo's wedding: http://leslie-eric.us/

Wedding planning is stressful and so is dealing with shitty wedding websites, I wanted to reduce our stress so I built the best looking wedding website and easiest RSVP system known to man. Since no other wedding website can compare to ours, I thought it would be nice to share what I built and open source our marriage [website].

It should be obvious that this project is for a very specific wedding, my wedding, and it probably won't work well for your wedding (unless you and your fiancé are named Leslie and Eric). But hey, if you're building a website for your wedding you can use this project as the high bar of excellence :)

Built With

Even though I hand-crafted every line of code and push every pixel into its place, there's no way I could have created a wedding website this good without using some pay-for web services and free open source software.

Services

• Heroku: Hosting
• Heroku Postgres: Database hosting
• Adminium: Database admin backend via Heroku Add-on
• MapBox: Maps
• Mailgun: Sending and forwarding email via Heroku Add-on
• Typekit: Fancy fonts
• Pictos: Icons as web fonts

Software

• Node.js: Runs the JavaScripts
• npm: Package management for Node.js packages
• Bower: Package management for client-side packages
• PostgreSQL: Database
• express: Web framework
• Handlebars.js: Templates
• YUI: Client-side JavaScript framework

Node.js Packages

• async: Keeps Node.js async stuff sane
• combohandler: Combos assets to minimize number of HTTP requests
• csv: Generates CSV files
• db-migrate: Database migration framework
• deep-freeze: Deep freeze config objects so they can't change
• express-slash: Wrangles trailing slashes in URLs
• express-state: Exposes config and state from server to client
• express3-handlebars: Makes Express + Handlebars = <3
• pg: Postgres driver for Node.js
• request: HTTP client

Running

1. Install Node.js, Postgres, and Foreman.

This app uses Node.js as the runtime platform, Postgres for its database, and Foreman is a handy utility to configure and run the app locally.

• Install Node.js from http://nodejs.org/.
• Install PostgreSQL from http://www.postgresql.org/download/.
• Install Foreman from https://github.com/ddollar/foreman.

2. Create a Postgres database.

This app uses a Postgres database to manage invitations and guests and backs the RSVP system. Postgres ships with a createdb executable that can be used from your shell like this:

$ createdb open-marriage

See the Postgres docs for more info on creating a new database.

3. Clone this Git repo and install dependencies.

Download this app's code by cloning this Git repo (fork it first if you plan to make changes).

$ git clone git://github.com/ericf/open-marriage.git

Now install of the app's npm and Bower dependencies (note the Bower dependencies will be installed automatically after the npm dependencies are installed.):

$ cd open-marriage
$ npm install

4. Set configuration and environment variables.

The easiest way to configure and run this app locally is to create a .env file to hold all the configuration and environment variables, and use Foreman to run the app (which will load up the .env file).

Required Variables

These configuration and environment variables need values specified in order for this app to function:

• DATABASE_URL: The URI to the postgres database.
• INVITATION_SECRET: Secret string used to encrypt/decrypt the invitation IDs.
• NODE_ENV: Signals to app to run in development or production mode.
• SESSION_SECRET: Secret string used to encrypt/decrypt the session cookie.
• WEB: The command to run to start the app.

Optional Variables

Additionally, values for the following configuration variables can be set to enhance the app by adding email sending support via Mailgun and fancy fonts and icons via Typekit and Pictos:

• MAILGUN_API_SERVER: Mailgun API endpoint.
• MAILGUN_DOMAIN: Mailgun domain associated with your Mailgun account.
• MAILGUN_API_KEY: Secret string used to sign Mailgun HTTP requests.
• PICTOS: ID of Pictos server icon font set.
• PORT: The port the web server should listen on, defaults to 5000.
• TYPEKIT: ID of Typekit set.

Example .env File

The following is an example .env file which sets all the required variables in the VARIABLE=value format:

DATABASE_URL=postgres://localhost/open-marriage
INVITATION_SECRET=something very secret
NODE_ENV=development
SESSION_SECRET=something else secret
WEB=npm start

5. Migrate the database.

At this point you have the app, all its dependencies installed and a blank Postgres database; it's now time to migrate the database to add all the necessary tables. Foreman comes in handy here:

$ foreman run npm run migrate-up

6. Start the server!

Now you're all ready to start up the web server and start using the app! Again, Foreman is used to make this easy:

$ foreman start

License

Copyright (c) 2013 Eric Ferraiuolo ([email protected]).

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.