Server upgrade and code rethink
22 December 2008
New Server
In the same city as me is a small business called the Linux Emporium [1]. I got to know the guys there because I enjoy helping to run conferences, and this small business puts a lot of time and money into helping local and national free software/open source conferences and events. Anyhow, a few years ago I was having problems with hosting and the Linux Emporium kindly let this site squat on one of their servers (of course, the views of this blog are mine alone). They have never asked to be credited, but since it is relevant to the next paragraph, it was about time that I said thanks, so thanks!
So anyway, the Linux Emporium team did some server upgrades, and this site got moved into a newer, even faster server. The Python code for this site runs on a framework called Django, and I was using a slightly older version. The new server had the recently released Django 1.0, and a few things did not work with Django 1.0.
Site Code
So I decided that the time was overdue to look again at the code for this site. There are some things I could have done more simply and Django has more batteries included these days.
There are hundreds or thousands of open source blog applications out there, but a lot of them are quite fully featured like Wordpress or Blogger, which is nice as far as it goes. However, being complete makes it difficult to put your own stamp on the code, and makes it difficult to integrate a blog with an existing site. Providing libraries for web development is a difficult compromise between making the library flexible enough to be useful, but making it easy enough to use it without a week of reading manuals.
I stripped down the code to the basics and made it work with Django 1.0. It is not live on this site yet, but I am going to be releasing this code as an open source project. It is very much on the simple, non-featured end of things. The idea is not to replicate WordPress, the idea is that if you know the basics of Django or Python then you can figure out how the code works in about five minutes. Wordpress is 5.4 MB, my blog is 34K. I am not sure where it will go, but it might be useful for someone who uses similar tools than me. More on this in the next post.
| [1] | The Linux Emporium provides services and training around Linux/Unix and they also sell hardware that has been tested to work with Linux such as peripherals, but also people in the UK, Europe or elsewhere who want a laptop that has had Linux installed and fully configured and hand tested go to them. It is like buying a tailor fitted suit rather than a suit off the rack, or kind of the Open Source equivalent of the Apple shop, except the Apple shop staff do not have computer science degrees, or beards. |
