One of Rails' most commonly mentioned faults is the lack of a turn-key user authentication & content management system as part of the standard install. While a good point, there are a number of open-source projects that have stepped up to the plate to fill this gap. After looking around for some time I've found one which I suspect I'll be using often: Goldberg. Though not the most feature rich, Goldberg does the basics well - user authentication, user access controls, a basic CMS for handling static pages, which is all wrapped up in an easily extensible structure. Well worth trying out.