Starting Rails Project from Scratch - Part 1

While I've been working with Rails for about 4 months now, I've never started any project from scratch. As I'm doing my personal project while also learning more about Rails, let me just document my journey here.

I'm creating my project with Rails 2.0.2 on Windows platform using Netbeans as the IDE. Somehow Ruby programs take some time to load on my PC, which is why I have some extra time to write this, lol.

OK, let's go to the meat. These are the first few steps I did.

Configure Subversion for Rails
http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowtoUseRailsWithSubversion
Just follow it blindly. I tried to be smart and ended up missing out some things. Don't forget to create the branches, tags, and trunk structure in the first place.

Import to NetBeans
And ignore the NetBeans project files: svn propedit svn:ignore nbproject

Use Piston for Plugins
http://www.rubyinside.com/advent2006/12-piston.html
Those unfamiliar with Piston need to know that Piston doesn't work like script/plugin. You must specify where the plugin files are created.

piston import http://dev.rubyonrails.org/svn/rails/plugins/simply_helpful/ vendor/plugins/simply_helpful

Add authentication using Restful Authentication
http://railscasts.com/episodes/67
http://www.railsforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=14216

Note:
If you're following the Railscast and creating "session" controller instead of "sessions", this error might happen when you try to log in:

Error: uninitialized constant SessionsController

at routes.rb add this

map.resource :session, :controller => 'session'

instead of

map.resource :session