A sample Capistrano deploy.rb file I use as a base for all my projects. It's a straightforward & doesn't add much custom functionality besides symlinking my database.yml into my project from a folder outside of my application (considered good security practice).

deploy.rb

require 'bundler/capistrano'

# Include this if you want to be able to set up different deployment stages (i.e. beta, stage, etc.)
# require 'capistrano/ext/multistage'

set :application, "example.com"
set :user, "linuxusername"

default_run_options[:pty] = true
set :use_sudo, true 

set :repository, "path to git repo"
set :scm, :git
set :branch, "master"

role :app, application
role :web, application
role :db, application, :primary => true

set :stages, ["staging", "production"]
set :default_stage, "production"

set :deploy_to, "/path/to/project/on/server"
set :deploy_via, :copy

# How many versions of your deployed code to keep
set :keep_releases, 5

# Setup Shared Folders that should be created inside the shared_path
directory_configuration = %w(db config system)

# It's good security practice to put your database.yml and other sensitive files in another folder on your server & symlink them in
desc "Symlink shared config files"
task :symlink_config_files do
    run "#{ try_sudo } ln -s #{ deploy_to }/shared/config/database.yml #{ current_path }/config/database.yml"
end

%w[start stop restart].each do |command|
  desc "#{command} Memcached"
  task command, roles: :app do
    run "service memcached #{command}"
  end
end

namespace :deploy do
  task :start do ; end
  task :stop do ; end
  task :restart, :roles => :app, :except => { :no_release => true } do
    run "#{try_sudo} touch #{File.join(current_path,'tmp','restart.txt')}"
  end
end

after "deploy", "deploy:symlink_config_files"
after "deploy", "deploy:restart"
after "deploy", "deploy:cleanup"



#http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3740152/how-to-set-chmod-for-a-folder-and-all-of-its-subfolders-and-files-in-linux-ubunt

# https://gist.github.com/meskyanichi/157958

# http://guides.beanstalkapp.com/deployments/deploy-with-capistrano.html