CHILLFILTR®

The Rails app behind chillfiltr.com: a curated music and literature blog with paid song submissions via Stripe and automated publishing of The Weekly Catch, Krister Axel's Wednesday-night show on KSKQ (89.5 FM Ashland, 94.1 FM Medford).

The archive runs from 1999 to today: roughly 2,200 posts by 35 authors, sorted into six topics (music, lifestyle, personal, technology, prose, poetry) plus radio for Weekly Catch episodes, with about 90 tags and location labels.

What it does

• Blog: infinite-scroll index, topic filters, tags, author pages, search, and a monthly archive. Posts can embed Vimeo, YouTube, or Mixcloud players.
• Radio page: the latest Weekly Catch episode plays in a Mixcloud widget, with a paginated list of past episodes (4 per page, 16 max).
• Song submissions: artists upload tracks straight to S3 and pay $3 per song through Stripe Checkout. See docs/song_submissions.md.
• Contact form: a native form on /pages/contact that emails info@chillfiltr.com through the same Brevo relay, with the visitor's address as Reply-To. Each message is also saved in contact_messages; delivered_at is stamped when the email goes out, so ContactMessage.undelivered lists any that were saved but never sent. Admins can read them at /admin/contact_messages (also in the menu under More), with a filter for the unsent ones. Spam defenses: a hidden honeypot field, a signed form timestamp (submissions faster than 3 seconds, or without a valid token, are discarded, not saved), and a limit of 5 messages per hour per IP. Messages with 3 or more links are still saved and emailed, but marked suspected_spam and prefixed "[Possible spam]" in the subject.
• Accounts: email/password sign-in plus Google and Apple via OmniAuth.
• RSS: feeds for all posts or a single topic.

Platform

Ruby	3.4.1
Rails	8.0
Database	PostgreSQL (separate databases for app, Solid Queue, Solid Cache, Solid Cable)
Web server	Puma behind Thruster
Front end	Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus), importmap, Tailwind CSS 4
Background jobs	Solid Queue (runs inside Puma when SOLID_QUEUE_IN_PUMA=true)
File storage	Active Storage on Amazon S3
Payments	Stripe Checkout + webhooks
Email	Brevo SMTP
Hosting	Render (Docker), Oregon region

Design: Instrument Serif + Karla, with the "Open Air" palette defined as Tailwind theme tokens in app/assets/tailwind/application.css.

Getting started

git clone git@github.com:kaxel/chillonrails.git
cd chillonrails
bin/setup          # installs gems, creates and migrates the database
bin/dev            # Rails server + Tailwind watcher (http://localhost:3000)

You need Ruby 3.4.1 and a local PostgreSQL server. Run bin/rails db:seed or restore a dump if you want content to browse.

Configuration

Production settings live in the Render dashboard (names are listed in render.yaml):

Variable	Purpose
DATABASE_URL	PostgreSQL connection
RAILS_MASTER_KEY	decrypts config/credentials.yml.enc
WEB_CONCURRENCY	Puma workers
SOLID_QUEUE_IN_PUMA	set to true so jobs run in the web process
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET	song submission checkout
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_REGION, AWS_S3_BUCKET	uploaded audio

Locally, use .env (not committed) and Stripe test keys.

Tests and checks

bundle exec rspec        # test suite
bin/rubocop              # style (rails-omakase)
bin/brakeman --no-pager  # security scan
bin/importmap audit      # JavaScript dependency audit

GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/ci.yml) runs Brakeman, the importmap audit, and RuboCop on every push and pull request.

Deployment

Render builds the Dockerfile and runs bin/rails db:migrate before each release. Automatic deploys are off, so deploy manually from the Render dashboard after pushing to main.

Publishing a Weekly Catch episode

Episodes are stored as radio posts and imported from db/data/weekly_catch_episodes.json.

1. In the spinitscrape repo, add the new setlist, then run ./export_weekly_catch_to_chillfiltr.rb. It rewrites the JSON and adds the episode's thumbnail to public/weekly-catch-fish/.
2. Run bin/rails weekly_catch:import locally and check the radio page.
3. Commit and push both files, deploy, then run bin/rails weekly_catch:import on Render. The radio page's "Now Playing" section switches to the newest episode automatically.

The import is safe to re-run: it creates missing episodes and backfills the Mixcloud link, image, and tracklist on existing ones.

Scheduled jobs

config/recurring.yml runs PurgePendingSubmissionsJob daily at 4am, removing submissions that were never paid for after 24 hours.