Also got some basic role authentication working using acl_system. http://brainspl.at/articles/2006/02/20/new-plugin-acl_system It's pretty nice. It doesn't offer model based authentication tho....

Found model_security: http://perens.com/FreeSoftware/ModelSecurity/Tutorial.html It's a generator that creates an authentication system including security at the model level. Very nice looking. ...

So, I started down the road of implementing model_security, and I eventually backed off. It seemed to reaaally slow down page times. And it was problematic with forms in partials. It's got some ...

you've probably heard of it, but textdrive hosts rails sites: http://www.textdrive.com/hosting $12/month for shared hosting.