Reinvention: Django A Go Go

June 26, 2006 | 13 Comments

This is the fifth in a series of posts documenting and exploring my online reinvention. See this post for more.

What’s gone before

I’ve decided to lay Asterisk to rest.
I’ve set down some goals for what I want with my new site
I’ve tossed around some ideas
I outlined my goals (split into three groups; content, technical and creative)
I’ve talked a bit about the specific “features” I’m looking to include
I’ve shown you some of my creative process
I talked about my reservations with my new design

Going forward, with Django

I’ll keep this short. Since we last spoke I’ve decided to do two things:

Move forward with the new design. I’m going to try and work out the kinks and make it great. If I fail I’ll just redesign. ;0)
I’m going to build my own CMS with Django. I realize this is a bit of a risk, but I’m excited about the attempt. Sure this’ll make the project drag a bit, but it’ll be loads of fun.

I hope to have a bit of time during a simply CRAZY month of July to work on this and my goal is to have something live soon. Until then, enjoy the sun.

Filed under: Reinvention
Keyword Tags: django design

Comments

1. Tom Watson said:

Glad to hear you’re going with the custom CMS with Django. Good luck with it!

Posted on June 26, 2006 11:45 AM | #

2. Jeff Croft said:

Great! Let me know if you need help, man. :)

Posted on June 26, 2006 12:03 PM | #

3. Keith said:

Tom - Thanks yo!

Jeff - I will. To be honest, after doing quite a bit of research, I think I’ll be able to do this on my own. It might not be pretty, I might have to hack a bit and lean on trial and error, but I think I can do it. But if I get stuck I’ll let you know and thanks for the offer of help.

Posted on June 26, 2006 12:44 PM | #

4. Scott McCracken said:

Excellent choice! I am one of the thousands who seem to be turning to Django and have been thrilled with what I’ve found so far.

I’d love it if, over time, you’d be willing to share your experiences with this amazing web framework. Best of luck, look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Posted on June 26, 2006 01:13 PM | #

5. Thomas M. said:

Keith,
Great to hear you’re going forward with Django!

Did(are) you follow(ing) Jeff’s Dreamhost install or the one posted on Dreamhosts’ wiki?

I got through the Django install on my own machine, and have been playing a bit with the tutorials … So, I hoping to be doing the same thing in the near future with Django with my new site.

I’ve not only been impressed with what Jeff Croft did, but also Nathan Borror’s Django powered site and design too (due to a link on Jeff’s site).

Posted on June 26, 2006 01:57 PM | #

6. Sally Carson said:

Awesome! Can’t wait to see the new site when it’s ready!

Posted on June 26, 2006 02:24 PM | #

7. Gabe said:

This is exactly what I did for my own site except with Rails. I’ve tried MovableType, TextPattern, WordPress and even Typo, but ultimately decided that the blog format is too limiting for me. I want a personal site that can contain any kind of content I want, and isn’t limited by the structure of whatever tool I’m using. Since I’m a programmer it’s also a great place to try stuff out in Rails without the budget and time constraints of client work. If I wasn’t interested in the programming aspect I would probably go with something like Drupal that’s a little more general purpose.

So far I’ve only put a few hours into the programming, but it feels good to know I can take it any direction I want. The best part is the ‘agility’. For instance, I just put up my site with no archives, initially it just shows all the posts in a sidebar. However the list is starting to get a little long, but it will probably only take an hour or two to go in and replace it with a traditional date-based archive. Because I’m just working on my own site instead of a general purpose tool, nothing needs to be more complex than my immediate needs. This is what a good framework does for you: it allows the code to be concise and dynamic. The framework offloads all the heavy-lifting and the remaining code is more expressive of the specific site. Combined with good tests, it gives the developer confidence to go in and edit the code just as he would go in and tweak the HTML or CSS.

Posted on June 26, 2006 02:36 PM | #

8. James Bennett said:

Seconding Jeff’s offer of help; if you need anything, just drop me a line.

Posted on June 26, 2006 07:51 PM | #

9. Keith said:

James – Thanks a bunch, I think I may have some questions at some point.

So, today I was able to set up my blog (with help from both your and Jeff’s examples) and it seems to be working great! It’s amazing to me that after a few hours I’ve basically got the equivalent to a basic blog install and semi-functional templates.

I did run into a bit of a road block witht the templates (I can’t seem to get them to display anything outside of my main application directory, among other things), but I’ve not read a lick of documentation on them so it’s not a surprise.

Not too shabby regardless. I can’t wait to get a better handle so I can try some more unique features!

Posted on June 26, 2006 09:29 PM | #

10. Tony said:

I’m looking forward to your contribution to the Django landscape.

Posted on June 27, 2006 06:31 AM | #

11. Ian Holsman said:

Looking forward to seeing it.

just remember there is a vibrant user community on
django-users _at_ googlegroups.com who willing to help out.

If your willing to trade your design skills for my dev skills we might be able to help each other out as well ;-)

regards
Ian

Posted on June 28, 2006 09:53 PM | #

12. Wilson Miner said:

Congratulations on the progress. Can’t wait to see what you come up with. Add me to the list of offers to help with anything Django-related.

Posted on July 2, 2006 09:39 AM | #

13. Jeremy Dunck said:

You’ve probably already worked through the templating issue, but if not, you’ll want to have a look at the settings documentation for template (about 1 page) and, if that’s not enough, this section covering template loading in Templates for Programmers.

Posted on July 11, 2006 05:04 PM | #