Front-end design first, or back-end development first? For Ruby on Rails site

Question

I am doing everything on my own: front-end and back-end. I am proficient with HTML and CSS, but a noob in Ruby on Rails. Now that I want to develop the site, I wonder if I should start from front-end first, or back-end. Cos what I am doing for front-end now are all static. I am afraid that I have to change a lot of my front-end coding when I do my back-end.

Answer 1

As a general rule of thumb (language agnostic), you should first determine what you exactly want the site to do/provide first. From this work out what actions the user can do and what responses they can expect.

From this you should be able to determine your data (models) and be able to play out the design/layout of your site (start rough sketches views).

Now you are ready to code how the user modifies and retrieves the information from the site (your now doing the controllers).

Finally, you can convert your sketches and rough drafts of the user interface into the real user interface work (views)

tldr;

Design the system from the user to the front-end to the back-end (View then Controllers then Models).

Now implement the system from the back-end back to the user (Models then Controllers then Views).

Note: This is of course my humble opinion and your mileage may vary. Also, just in case, I am also not a lawyer...