[tpz]

AFAIK, if you have a Rails app that will be accepting files from users, Rails is probably not the best thing to use. Ruby likewise, short of using something evented (and I say this as someone thoroughly enjoying working with both Ruby and Rails.) Seeing as you'll be tying up processes rather quickly that way, no?

That aside for the moment, and based on your S3-related comments nested below, I thought I might pop by to mention that I (using Rails on Heroku) have been handling uploads by using direct pre-authorized posting to S3 and it has been very nice to work with.

[marcamillion]

What I am handling is basically what Basecamp is handling. If Ruby and Rails can manage Basecamp, then it sure can manage what I am doing.

It's not so much the S3 storage I am concerned about. It's more the allowing me to backup everything properly, concern I have.

[tpz]

Regarding backup, I definitely understand the feeling.

[mnutt]

If you're using something like Passenger, I believe it does the upload in nginx/apache to a tempfile and then hands it off to Rails.

[tpz]

Thanks for that bit of info. At the moment things like Passenger are obscured from my view/concern, as I'm not managing the servers myself, but should that change I'll definitely keep that tidbit in mind.