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Just wanted to say that I helped build this site. It's 2009/2010-era Django site built on feincms with a PostgreSQL backend. Originally it was a Plone site but

by pydanny 13y ago

Just wanted to say that I helped build this site. It's 2009/2010-era Django site built on feincms with a PostgreSQL backend. Originally it was a Plone site but after a year we realized it was too hard to meet the deadlines of NASA VIPs. So we moved it to Django. Also, myself and the other developers have NEVER been happy with the flash on the front page. :P

rev087 13y ago
To some this might come off as simple bragging, but I can relate to the sense of accomplishment (and appreciate the little insight into the tech stack).
- pydanny 13y ago
  Well, to be honest, acdha did most of the work for this project. At the time I was stuck being yanked back and forth between several projects per day.
japhyr 13y ago
This doesn't strike me as bragging at all. I always appreciate the chance to connect people with projects. I have learned from some of your posts about developing with Django, so I took a second look at the site after realizing you had helped build it.
tnorthcutt 13y ago
Why not replace the flash banner with an animated .gif?
- pydanny 13y ago
  Because the designer who insisted on the flash banner wanted to use flash. :P
acdha 13y ago
I would be remiss in not thanking the Varnish cache developers, too: it's using CloudFront now but Varnish came in quite handy when we suddenly jumped from mostly images to some large videos like http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/21apr_firstlight/ http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/21... shortly after launch. The scariest bit of code was probably the scraper + html5lib normalizer I used to migrate something like 15 years of legacy static HTML content from two separate into the CMS using a large pile of selectors and cleanup heuristics. http://chris.improbable.org/2009/10/16/deploying-django-sites/ http://chris.improbable.org/2009/10/16/deploying-django-site... describes how the site was packaged using RPM so we could fit within the more traditional IT model used by the production sysadmins. One open-source tool which came out of this was https://github.com/shentonfreude/webcompare https://github.com/shentonfreude/webcompare which we used to bulk-compare the old and new sites to confirm that all of our legacy URLs either redirected or were intentionally 404/410ed.
- pydanny 13y ago
  Thanks for speaking up! FWIW, you did most of the work for the migration and rebuild. I apologize for not naming you when most of this was your work. :-)
  - acdha 13y ago
    No apology necessary - I find it feels weird to name people unless they're already part of the conversation.

by pydanny 13y ago

rev087 13y ago

To some this might come off as simple bragging, but I can relate to the sense of accomplishment (and appreciate the little insight into the tech stack).

pydanny 13y ago
Well, to be honest, acdha did most of the work for this project. At the time I was stuck being yanked back and forth between several projects per day.

japhyr 13y ago

This doesn't strike me as bragging at all. I always appreciate the chance to connect people with projects. I have learned from some of your posts about developing with Django, so I took a second look at the site after realizing you had helped build it.

tnorthcutt 13y ago

Why not replace the flash banner with an animated .gif?

pydanny 13y ago
Because the designer who insisted on the flash banner wanted to use flash. :P

acdha 13y ago

I would be remiss in not thanking the Varnish cache developers, too: it's using CloudFront now but Varnish came in quite handy when we suddenly jumped from mostly images to some large videos like http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/21apr_firstlight/ http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/21... shortly after launch. The scariest bit of code was probably the scraper + html5lib normalizer I used to migrate something like 15 years of legacy static HTML content from two separate into the CMS using a large pile of selectors and cleanup heuristics. http://chris.improbable.org/2009/10/16/deploying-django-sites/ http://chris.improbable.org/2009/10/16/deploying-django-site... describes how the site was packaged using RPM so we could fit within the more traditional IT model used by the production sysadmins. One open-source tool which came out of this was https://github.com/shentonfreude/webcompare https://github.com/shentonfreude/webcompare which we used to bulk-compare the old and new sites to confirm that all of our legacy URLs either redirected or were intentionally 404/410ed.

pydanny 13y ago
Thanks for speaking up! FWIW, you did most of the work for the migration and rebuild. I apologize for not naming you when most of this was your work. :-)
- acdha 13y ago
  No apology necessary - I find it feels weird to name people unless they're already part of the conversation.