E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

About Me

PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

Book Project

I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

Colophon

This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive.

Pile o'Tags

ajax apple blogs browsers business design django ebay fp fun google hardware haskell intellectual property iphone javascript linux media mobile open source os x oscon oscon2007 palm php programming python rails rants reading risks ruby site spam textmate the well tips vcs web development web frameworks webservers wmassdevs

Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

A Django site.
(Finally!)

Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media

Soft launch

I quietly launched my first production Django site today, a replacement for a mess of legacy third-party PHP code. Unfortunately, it's a members-only service related to my job and so I don't have a public URL to share.

A couple interesting points: the new site was developed alongside the still-live legacy PHP apps, using some of the same data -- including a user table that's used for authentication. django-admin.py inspectdb made model creation fairly easy. I also found Scott Hurring's PHPSerialize module indispensible for working with the highly crufty legacy data.

This seems like a good time to thank all the authors and contributors to Django, as well as the folks who have answered my questions on IRC and the people who have taken the time to write up their experiences in technical detail.

It was a lot of work, and frankly I could have knocked out a PHP version in much less time. But I wanted to set the stage for cleaner, saner development in the future. I only expect to get faster.

More to come -- some of it open to the public, even.

Thursday, January 19th, 2006
+ +
2 comments

Some related posts: Moving the blog to Django • Django: less (magic) is more • Let's play a game: BASIC vs. Ruby vs. Python vs. PHP • YAPWF: Aaron Swartz's web.py released • Django Docs in Plucker format • Python question: a better urlparse? • A minimal wiki in Django • Controller freaks • Django, Rails, and PHP • Python web framework mania
• Comment from radek, later that day

Willing to share some experience with the transition?

• Comment from Paul, later that day

Do you mean details on using the legacy data, or more general comments?

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