My man Eric Holscher drops some Django and Python knowledge on your asses. A lot of good stuff, here. Check it out. Visit site »
Kevin Fricovsky released this reusable FAQ application for Django. Perhaps even more interesting than a useful FAQ application, it’s a great example of an app that has been built to be as reusable as possible. I’m wanting to refactor Savoy to be as reusable as possible, so this is a terrific example. Good stuff, Kevin! Visit site »
James Tauber’s talk about Pinax at DjangoCon is a really great look at Django’s killer feature: reusable apps. Pinax is basically a collection of reusable apps — some of which were built for Pinax, and others which are independent of it — that allow one to put together a site very quickly (especially if your site is centered around social networking, as that’s much of what Pinax provides at this point). The basic concept is to separate bits of functionality (friend relationships, commenting, tagging, voting, registration, etc.) from what James calls the “domain object.” The domain object is what makes your site unique. For flickr, it’s photos. For Newsvine, it’s news stories. For Cork’d, it’s wine. If Pinax can provide all the non-domain object bits, all you have to do it build your domain object, and you’re set. Even if you’ve no interest in writing Django apps, it’s a good discussion of modularity and how this stuff works when it’s done right.
I was also surprised and excited to see that the approach I’ve taken with Savoy. While Savoy is more content management oriented (and Pinax is more focused on social networking), the basic structure of the two projects is very similar. Savoy has a set of third party apps it pulls in, as well as a set of “core” apps that are required. On top of that are “contrib” apps that are all optional. So, you simply install the core apps, then pick and choose which contrib apps are appropriate for your project, and you’re off to the races. I’m working to make all of these apps as reusable as possible. This is an ongiong process, and chances are the first will release won’t be as reusable as I’d like. But, pluggability will always be a primary goal. Finally, you can of course run your own apps alongside Savoy’s apps. Some apps even have hooks to integrate your own apps where appropriate (for example, the aggregator app, which runs my tumblelog, will aggregate content from any model of your choice, not just those that Savoy itself provides).
If you’re interested in building a social sort of site, or how best-of-breed reusable Django apps are built, definitely check out Pinax, and James’ talk about it. Visit site »
Glen Stansberry writes on Django for NETTUTS. Nice. Django is really getting a lot of run lately! Visit site »
The latest episode of TWiD has a great interview with Leah and Mike of Pownce. If you’re interested in scaling and how a high-traffic, high-profile site run on Django, do check it out. Visit site »
Uses fancy-schmancy algorithms to figure out recommendations for things based on votes (from django-voting) and tags (from django-tagging). Looks interesting. Visit site »
One of the most useful third-party Django apps yet! Visit site »
Now that 1.0 is out the door, the Django team has put together a release process document. Looks good to me. Visit site »
Impressive-looking skin for the Django admin interface. Visit site »
Michael McCorry came to my Web Directions workshop and was kind enough to write up a mini-review on his blog. Awesome. Thanks, Michael — was great meeting you! Visit site »
E-Flo is at it again with a pair of really, really good screencasts that take you through setting up a Django project from the very beginning. He is building a real live site (a sort of Twitter clone with a twist), walking you through it from step one (you can also download then entire source of the site). The first two episodes cover getting your source control environment set up, getting Django’s settings.py file all configured, and then creating the models. Really, really good stuff here, if you’re looking to learn Django. Visit site »
A Django custom field type which, in the background, stores and revisions its content in SVN or BRZ (more backends on the way). Haven’t tried it, but the code looks clean and the API is nice and Djangonic (new word? I like it.). Very cool stuff. I’d love to be able to store website content in version control on the fly. Visit site »
The good news about this post is that all of the reasons mentioned are either a distaste for bits you can swap out for your favorite (ORM, template language), or things that are planned for Django 1.1 (aggregate support). Well, except for the guy who complained that Django doesn’t allow him to make very much money, since he charges by the hour. :)
Moderated by Adrian Holovaty, panelists Matt Waite (St. Petersberg Times), Maura Chace (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), Matt Croydon (Lawrence Journal-World), and Ben Welsh (Los Angeles Times) discuss Django and journalism at DjangoCon. Really good stuff here. The discussion ranges from what’s great and not-so-great about Django in a newsroom to the general decline of the newspaper industry to how to get the “pointy-haired bosses” at traditional media organizations to buy into something other than the “pageviews equals dollars” worldview that is helping to destroy serious journalism in favor of photos of Lindsey Lohan. Really good talk. Visit site »
I’ve recently had the pleasure of hanging out with Eric a few times, and I’ve gotta say: he one cool dude. Super nice, super chill, and super smart. Here, he talks with Kevin Fricovsky about several things Django, including his awesome work in Django testing and debugging and his new day job at World Online in Lawrence (for the sake of disclosure, Eric was not at World Online when I was). Good stuff. Visit site »
Probably the single most relevant DjangoCon talk for most Djano developers, this fireside chat with Adrian and Jacob really covers the bases on where the framework will go in the future. As a sidenote, it also is a nice showcase of Jacob and Adrian’s personalities: they’re both really, genuine nice guys who are bright as hell but not at all opposed to criticism or other views (traits, which, in my view, have permeated the entire Django community). I’ve had my arguments with both dudes, but in the end, I love ‘em both. Great guys. Visit site »
Cal’s well-received talk from DjangoCon is very funny while making some great points. Most of his “serious” complaints about Django revolve around massive scaling, which he deals with on a daily basis at Flickr (which has both a huge data set and huge traffic). The reality is that none of the hot shit frameworks right now (Django, Rails, Cake, etc.) offer a lot of built in niceties for this level of scaling, and this is why (or at least part of the reason) we have a few notable sites built on them that haven’t managed to scale well at all as they’ve gotten more popular (coughTWITTERcough). The big question, of course, is: should a general-purpose framework like Django or Rails cater to the top 100 websites in the world, or should they focus on the needs of the other 99.9%? I don’t know the answer (and Cal says he doesn’t, either), but it’s an interesting topic. Plus, did I mention Cal is funny? Visit site »
Why The Lucky Stiff chimes in on the Django Pony, and is hilarious as per usual. Awesome. Visit site »
A pluggable Django app that adds batch deleting functionality to the admin (there are also hooks to add your own batch actions), thus solving one of my longest-standing complaints about Django. I understand this functionality will eventually be in Django itself, but quite frankly, the Django head honchos have been saying that for over two years now, and it’s still not there. This project, by Brian Beck, is really well put together. It’s subclases ModelAdmin, so that no changes are required to Django itself and minimal changes are required in the code of he app you want to take advantage of it (just change ModelAdmin to BathModelAdmin). Awesome. Visit site »
Yashh is helping me out by beat testing Savoy, and he’s posted some initial thoughts on his blog. He includes a diagram of the database structure (or, most of it, anyway), which will give you a good idea of the kinds of apps Savoy has in place, and explains a bit about how it’s all put together.
One note: Yashh talks about the savoy.contrib.comments app, which I write before the new django.contrib.comments app was released. I’ve debated back and forth about whether to ditch savoy.contrib.comments. It includes some functionality that django.contrib.comments doesn’t (blacklists, whitelists, akismet, etc.), but I’m not sure I really want to maintain it, now that django.contrib.comments doesn’t suck. Obviously, you can always simple choose to use django.contrib.comments instead of savoy.contrib.comments, even if both are in place (in fact, I’m doing that on a client site we’re working on now). What do you think? Is a more advanced comments app worth maintaining now that django.contrib.comments is 100 time less sucky? Visit site »