Posts Tagged: web development

Technology — 2 Comments
26
Mar 09

New Web Host

This afternoon I took the plunge and transfered my website from BlueHost to Webfaction. There are two main reasons for this switch. First of all, I’ve been learning website programming with Python and the Django framework. My previous host does not support Django, and it seems Webfaction is the most popular host among Django geeks. Also, BlueHost does seem to oversell a litle too much, while I’ve heard good things about Webfaction in that regard. There is one good thing that I’ll say about Bluehost though, which is that their tech support is friendly and very fast.

This afternoon I purchased my Webfaction account, then made a dump of my MySql DB for Wordpress, created a tarball of the Wordpress site files, then downloaded both to my laptop. Webfaction supports full shell/SSH goodness, so I then SCP’d both files to the server. I had a bit of trouble with importing my MySql dump into a new database, so within minutes of submitting a support ticket, I recieved a responce containing two SED lines to fix the problem. A few minutes latter I was up and running.

30 minutes ago I pointed my domain name to the new servers, and I am waiting for the settings to propagate to DNS servers world wide. Meanwhile, Webfaction does not provide DNS hosting, so I purchased a Network Solutions account, and am waiting for crashsystems.net to transfer there. Once that happens, I’ll finally be able to create my own bloody cname records (DNS tunnel FTW!).

Technology — Comments Off
17
Dec 08

Switching to Django: The Saga Continues

As I announced in a previous post, I plan on switching this website to something Django based early next year. As of today, I am a heck of a lot closer to this goal than I was when I wrote that first post. I’ve been studying the Django framework, learning about models, views, url regular expressions and templates. Though it is quite a bit different from previous forms of web development I’ve learned, it does make quite a bit of sense.

In this post I mentioned some of the apps that I was considering using. I’ve done some experimentation, more reading, etc. and have decided upon the following apps:

Most of the rest of the work that I need to do involves writing the template files (ugh!). However, the code itself is functioning quite as well at this moment. Feel free to download it. The database is already set up (sqlite3), and the username and password for the super user are both “admin.” There are still a few minor bugs, such as an occasional “ajax-validation” when rendering the admin page. Oddly enough, this only occasionaly happens. Also, I followed the instructions in this installation guide for using tinymce in the CMS, but to no avail. If you happen to spot the reason I’m experiencing these two minor bugs, please leave a comment. Enjoy the code!

Technology — 1 Comment
10
Nov 08

Oh My My, Great Gobs Of Code!

As I have recently mentioned, I have decided that early next year, when I switch web hosts, I’ll also be switching from the comfy confines of WordPress to a site made with Django. For those of you who want to follow along on this little journey, subscribe to this feed.

Since there are so many Django apps running wild on the Internet, I have decided that I will probably not actually write any myself for this project, to focus on practicing putting sites containing multiple apps together. This will change however if none of the candidates I have found for a category suit my purpose. Speaking of which, I’m beginning to notice that many of the apps available online have absolutely no documentation, which is a little frustrating. Perhaps I’ll pick a few pet projects in the future for a little documentation love.

Anyways, the features I am looking for are basic CMS functionality, blogging, photo gallery, bookmarking and site search. In hunting for some suitable apps online, I obtained more questions then answers, so I’m looking for advice. If you have a preferred app for any of these categories, please tell me about it in the comments below, along with why you like it.

Without further delay, here is my list:

CMS

Without hesitation, the winner in this category is Django CMS. It looks fully featured, easy to use, and it is from Switzerland. What could be better?

Blogging

There is no clear winner that I have decided upon yet, though I am leaning towards Socialblog. I could not find a great amount of info about any of the blogging apps available, so I’m leaning towards Socialblog simply because it is something that broke off of the Pinax project, which is one Django project that I happen to be quite impressed by. What I need for blogging isn’t all that advanced. So here are the list of contenders in the blogging category:

Photo Gallery

In this category so far I have two main contenders, though I’m leaning more towards the first one on the list below. What I want in a photo gallery, besides basic “galleries,” is the ability for visitors to comment on individual photos, and tagging for both photos and entire galleries. Geo-location support would be nice too.

  • Photologue
  • Fleshin
    • note: I find this to be a rather odd name for a photo gallery app.

Bookmarks

I only found one app in this category, with the unique name of “bookmarks.” The project page gives absolutely no information on this app. If you know anything about this one, or know of any others, please leave a comment. I’m looking for something basic, with which I can create entries with titles, descriptions, URLs (duh!), and support for tagging.

Site Search

I want visitors to be able to search all of the content of my site, including CMS content, bookmarks, photo gallery content, and bookmarks. The ability to couple search queries with tags would be a great plus, but isn’t necessary. I’ve considered just using Google site search, but it takes time for new site content to make it into their indexes.

So now you have seen my grand plan for world domination… er… a new website. To top it off, check out the fancy mind map below. Again, I’ll appreciate any advice you may have.

Technology — 6 Comments
10
Nov 08

Switching crashsystems.net To Django

After a week of reading, thinking, playing around with code and talking to the friendly folks in #django on irc.freenode.net, I have decided that next year I will rebuild crashsystems.net with Django. Why last year, you might ask? I have been contemplating a switch of web host recently. Bluehost.com tech support is rather friendly and nice, but their server’s seem a bit slow, likely due to overselling. After a plethora of advice, some of which was conflicting, I have decided that I will switch to WebFaction.com, both due to general good reports by people who have purchased their services, as well as their support of Django 1.0.

As for why I’ve decided to switch to Django, there are several reasons. First of all, I’ve decided recently to start getting into server-side programming. With 1/3 of the world connected to the Internet, and the other 2/3 likely to be connected within the next two decades, website programming is not only a very useful skill, but a very important one as well. The reason why I’m switching my site to Django in specific is because I am already familiar with Python, and have heard a lot of good things about Django. This framework allows developers to launch fully functional websites with advanced features in a fraction of the time it would take to write all those features from the ground up in PHP, or even with Python without a framework, for that matter.

I think that moving my site to Django will be good incentive for me to practice what I am learning. Also, though such a site will require a little more work than a WordPress powered site, it will also be far more versatile as well. I still think that WordPress is a really good blogging platform / CMS. However, in being so easy to use, it does detract somewhat from potential versatility.

Besides, everyone and their mother has sites powered by WordPress, so why follow the crowd?

P.S.

I’ll be posting an update soon once I have decided upon what apps I’ll be using, features, etc.

P.P.S

For those of you on the Interwebs who would like to follow this little project of mine, I’ve created a “crashsystems.net-2.0″ tag. Subscribe to this feed to follow it via RSS.

Technology — Comments Off
14
Jul 08

WordPress 2.6 released a month early!

I’m both surprised and exited to see that WordPress 2.6 has been released almost a month ahead of time. By far the feature I’m most exited about is post revisions, which gives WP content wiki like revision history. This should be very useful for multi-author blogs and sites. Another interesting feature is integrating Google Gears into the admin interface, which results in faster page loading.

One thing that should be interesting to see is how many plugins will need to be updated to run on 2.6, and how long this update will take. I’ll probably upgrade tomorrow, but I hope this doesn’t break compatibility with my beloved plugins!

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