Forest Sangha

The Thai Forest tradition is one branch of the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Theravada Buddhism, also known as the Southern School of Buddhism, is present throughout Thailand, Burma, and Sri Lanka. The Theravada tradition is grounded in the discourses recorded in the Pali Canon, the oldest Buddhist scriptures. Theravada literally means the Way of the Elders, and is named so because of its strict adherence to the original teachings and rules of monastic discipline expounded by the Buddha.

It has been our great pleasure to develop this site in conjuction with the monastic community.

This reimagination of their previous site has allowed them to manage the website without the need for a web master and has vastly reduced the barrier to technology.

Forest Sangha runs on the following technologies:

• Ruby on Rails
• Refinery CMS
• Postgres
• Sidekiq

Aruna Ratanagiri

Aruna Ratanagiri: Harnham Buddhist Monastery is a Theravada Buddhist community on the border of England and Scotland. The abbot, Ajahn Munindo, was ordained by the late Venerable Ajahn Chah of Wat Nong Pah Pong in North East Thailand in 1975. The community comprises of a monastic residence for about nine Sangha members and an adjacent lay retreat facility known as Kusala House.

Giving back to the community is at the heart of what we believe in. The website we have developed and donated to Harnham has resulted in a reduction of time and costs in administration. Resources which can now be spent on other areas of the monastery.

We have thoroughly enjoyed developing this site and will continue to do so for years to come.

Aruna Ratanagiri runs on the following technologies:

• Ruby on Rails
• Refinery CMS
• Postgres
• Sidekiq

Yellow River Soup Kitchen

The Yellow River Soup Kitchen is a not for profit NGO, registered in the UK. A secular organisation that is open to everybody, it is wholly run by volunteers for volunteers and as such has no overheads of any description. Their objective is to organise or source a variety of projects, with the aim of bringing together two specific groups of people; namely those with a desire to serve and those that are in need.

We are very proud to be given the opportunity to redesign and develop a new platform for the charity to update the community on their latest projects. Not only have we provided them with a more user friendly experience, supplied tools to control their content easily but also saved the charity money in annual hosting fees. Most importantly, we are very honered to be able to donate our services to such a good cause.

Yellow River Soup Kitchen runs on the following technologies:

• Ruby on Rails
• Locomotive CMS
• MongoDB
• Heroku

d'Skribe

What once began as an in-house app to help us create eBooks, has now become a public facing tool in order for us to give back to the community what we have found to be a great timesaver. Currently, this is only capable of exporting to .ePub format which can be read in apps such as iBooks and .mobi for Kindle devices

Current features include, the ability to reorder sections (i.e. chapters) of the book by drag and dropping them, editing and deleting sections and supporting the Markdown syntax to write content. Markdown is a very quick and easy way to style and control HTML. We have just recently introduced the option to export your book as a .mobi file which can be used with Amazon's Kindle line of readers. We also plan to include support for adding front cover images and further control over the style of your content. There are also plans to include integrated services to help have your book published or even printed. If you would like to see a certain feature integrated into the site, then we would love to hear from you. Ideas can be sent to us from our contact page form.

d'Skribe runs on the following technologies:

• Ruby on Rails
• Bootstrap 3
• Postgres

This website is actually powered by our eBook Generator Gem, which is freely available to integrate into your own projects. Details on how this can be used and our future roadmap can be found below.

eBook Gem

Our eBook Gem is currently powering our eBook Generator site, details of which can be found above.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'ebook_generator' 

And then execute:

$ bundle 

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install ebook_generator 

Usage

# Generate the tables needed to process the ebooks

rails generate ebook_generator

# Migrate the database

rake db:migrate

# Pass the object of the ebook you want to generate

EbookGenerator.generate_ebook(ebook_object)

# Pass the string 'kindle' as the second argument if you want to generate a Kindle .mobi file

EbookGenerator.generate_ebook(ebook_object, 'kindle')

# This will then generate an ePub based on the values in the db

# and output to the /tmp folder.

Feature Roadmap

1.1.0

• Style editing

1.2.0

• PDF out

1.3.0

• HTML out
• Image support for the front cover

1.4.0

• HTML to eBook conversion

Currently, our gem requires the following dependencies:

• Ruby on Rails
• Redcarpet
• Rubyzip
• Kindlegen (to generate .mobi files)

Future Support

If you would like to see a certain feature integrated into this gem, then you can either fork us, or send on your ideas through our contact page form.

Digital Pali Canon

We are currently in the process of importing the HTML of over 1000 suttas from Access to Insight in order to generate eBooks for free distribution.

Currently a landing page, the Digital Pali Canon site will eventually hold over 1000 suttas from the Pali Canon which are available in HTML on Access to Insight. We are in the process of moving the content into our database after which will be used to generate eBooks of the Pali Canon to make it much more convenient for people to read them away from a computer.

The Digital Pali Canon will be built on the following technologies:

• Ruby on Rails
• Postgres
• Bootstrap 3

Not an NPO, but looking for a commercial website?

Contact us at info@affinity-tech.com with your requirements and we can provide you with a quote.