The new site is out!

Several months ago I decided that this website needed a revamping.

The work since that thought is finally being released today. The work on the site is still slowly in progress, but I feel that enough of the site is done to be better than the last site.

Some stats on the new site:

• Was developed on my mac
• Was written using vi for all editing
• Was built using Django 1.1
• Is running with Python 2.6
• Is served through IIS with PyISAPIe. (PyISAPIe is a great project created by Phillip Sitbon which brings Django to IIS.)
• JQuery was used for a couple of post page served alterations
• The database is built using SQLite
• The blog posts with code samples are made with Google’s code prettify
• All blog posts are rendered using Django Markdown (which makes for easy posting of great content)

Markdown is a hassle free, easy to use markup language that allows you to easily post links, post images, and format great blog posts with little work.

The old site was built in ASP .NET beta, and slowly upgraded over time to newer versions. Overall for me, coding in Django is a much better and funner experience than coding in ASP .NET ever was.

Before deciding on Django for the new site, I also had an attempt at Ruby on Rails. I wasn’t a fan from the start, the language was simply too different from what I am used to and know.

I like the new design a lot better than the old one. I hired Bradd Bezaire to do this design over 2 years ago in August of 2007. This design sat in my inbox since then because I’ve been extremely busy, but I’m glad his work didn’t go to waste after all.