About the New Skateboard Graphics Site

This is a write up about our process in developing NewSkateboardGraphics.com. It partly exists to inform other developers/designers or students and it partly exists as a way for me to give credit where it's due for all the excellent open source projects we utilize in our work.

Front End

The front end design and execution for the site was relatively straight forward. Namdev had a design framework set-up with the book and we looked to that for cues. The headline font is Locator (just like the book) while body copy is Arial (not like the book). Matt was delighted to find an appropriate use of woodgrain, so we used the hell out of it. I think we've used up our life-time allotment of woodgrain though, so don't look for it in any future projects. Unless Matt opens an office Portland and then it will seem appropriate all over again.

Javascript

We decided to give this site a shot without any Flash. All the animation and complex interaction is achieved using JQuery Javascript Library. Sliders on the top of the site are a modified version of the MopSlider. I'm thinking about making a cleaned up version of a draggable tabbed slider but haven't had the time or interest, if anyone needs something like that leave me a comment I can post some cleaner demos.

Django

We've been very happy with our last few Django deployments so it looks like we'll continue with it. This leans heavily on a few of our favorite modules.
Django Evolution
I find this an essential tool during the development process
Django FileBrowser
This manages all the media files
Django TinyMCE
Provides the text editor for our admin. The integration with Django FileBrowser is amazing in this version.

Everything else including the blog are made out of a few custom modules using Generic views.

Deployment

This site is the first time I've used Subversion as a deployment system. I'm using Versions to monitor local files and make commits from my working files. If you've been scared away from using version control in the past, then give it a look. I can't recommend the combination of Versions and BeanStalk enough when your starting out. Subversion works pretty well for deployment, not perfect but worlds above copying files over FTP and hoping you remembered what changed.

My inspiration for moving to Subversion was this great post about Subversion on the Athletics blog.

Subversion was causing me pain with the PYC files Django generated until I found this trick for ignoring them with the Subversion config.

Of course I don't use emacs so my work flow for the fix is more like this
Terminal$ mate ~/.subversion/config
Add PYC to the end of this line
global-ignores = *.o *.lo *.la #*# .*.rej *.rej .*~ *~ .#* .DS_Store *.pyc
Save and close the file.