About Our Site

This is one of the first sites we've developed using the web framework Django. I think the set of tools we used to build out this site could be interesting to some readers, so I took a few minutes to list them out.

Django is a web framework written in Python, so it took a little getting used to, but Python is a very legible language so the little bit of Python you see in most Django operations is understandable. Django is written to be a modular set of components assembled with a configuration file into a larger site. This does lead to a pretty involved config process but it gives you access to a wide array of well made modules to build on. Here is a brief list of the modules we used:

• Akismet: Python interface for the Akismet spam filter.
• Comment Utilities: Builds on Django's default comment system
• Django Evolution: Database migrations, my #1 favorite most useful utility
• File Browser: Builds on the default admin interface for managing files generating thumbnails
• MarkDown: Python version of John Gruber's text markup syntax MarkDown
• Smarty Pants: Text filter for smart quotes, em dashes and ellipsis from Gruber's Smarty Pants
• Title Case: Text filter for title casing
• Typogrify: Conveniently wraps up all the Gruber inspired text filters for easy application
• Contact Form: We're using a stripped down form for our "Subscribe to Email List"

On the Flash and display side we made use of PaperVision for 3D and SWF Object for embedding.