A new site for a new residential garbage company in Delaware.

It has been a pathetically long time since my last post, in which I actually scheduled a time when I would start this project up again, which went really well as you can see. I refuse to delete the last post since I'd like it to be a reminder to myself to think twice before hitting the publish button.

On to the new stuff. We technically launched www.OrbitBaby.com - Best Baby Gear Ever! as a freshly redone site this last Friday but its the perfect launch to start off the week and my reboot of this project. The site is built using Django and actually shares a lot of the product data with the Orbit Baby car seat and stroller shop we built previously. This removes duplication of data and eases management of the content on the site. There are still a few IE bugs that we're tackling (will that EVER not be the case?), but overall its a great site. Good work team!

It was painful to have to shelve this project for a while but I will be resurrecting the project on April 19th, 2010. So starting next Monday I'm going to give it a second try. It became obvious once I was a few days in that my processes for launching a new site just were not fast enough to keep up with the schedule. I've upgraded over the past few weeks and I'm excited to try what I've learned.

I'll be detailing what I've done to make development and deployment (of mostly Django sites) faster.

Way the heck behind

I'm so far behind on my sites that its a bit overwhelming. I'm going to do everything I can to catch up this week so I can stay on schedule in the future. I've still got quite a bit of server shuffling to do because it turns out that Webfaction's current control panel can't really handle 3 separate accounts with a single login once the number of sites starts to get up there. Don't get me wrong I still love Webfaction!

On to the site. This one is built using Django and Django-CMS. Customized with some custom plugins.

Here is a snapshot of one of the custom plugins I added for the personnel page.

Well, I feel like I'm a little behind from last week but I'm just going to move forward with this new week. If I get a chance I'll fill in an extra site this week. This one is just a simple Wordpress install for a quick blog about preparedness supplies. While Django is generally my preferred tool, I'm not hung up about using the best tool for the job. For "just a blog" Wordpress is a good fit, especially when speed is of the essence.

I was previously going by days, but that doesn't really make sense because I only add a site each weekday. So from now I will just be numbering the sites.

I'm running a little behind because this is crazy what I'm trying to do. But here is yesterdays site. I designed this one for my Dad, who is a great abstract artist (and a great guy). Thanks Dad for being so cool, and teaching me to work hard. I'm sure glad you and Mom are so close.

Love you both!

The site is built with Satchmo and includes tiny_mce integration so my Mom can easily add new paintings to the site.

Update: Unfortunately Z didn't have much time to blog, come on bro Chinese can't be that hard, and we no longer control this domain so he'll have to find a new home since I'm sure some lame domain squatter will be throwing some ads up on this old one. I really do dislike GoDaddy!

This one is a little late due to a very strange caching error that I was getting from memcache after installing multiple instances of django-mingus on the same server. I've got that worked out now and we now have a blog for my brother, Zenos. He is currently going to school in Shanghai, China. He's an amazing guy and I think you'll enjoy seeing some of the pictures and experiences from his travels. Go Z!

I'll be updating the styling of the site in the near future to be unique.

PS. He also happens to be a kick ass Django programmer.

Kauai Ho!

I love Kauai. Of the places I've been its my favorite. I've worked with some clients websites in this market. The site is embarrassingly light on content and all of the elements have not been fully flushed out yet, but its up. Normally I never would have launched this site, but that's the whole point of this exercise. We'll continue to add content and apps to the site in the coming days and weeks. So, it should be a lot more fun to visit in a couple of weeks.

PS. It also showcases my incredible design skills :) that I will be improving throughout this process.

1) MegaReady.com

The first site I actually launched yesterday, but I ran into complications getting this site set up and rolling, so it will have to do. Technically I guess you could call this site #1, but the site photo would sure look funny. So the journey begins with MegaReady.com

Megaready.com sells emergency supplies and food storage including MRE's (military rations) for disaster preparedness. We've all seen what nature can do time and again. Yet it always seems like we need a disaster like what has happened in Haiti to remind us that we need to be prepared for the worst. Go get some stuff and make sure you're Mega Ready!