content/projects/stevelosh-com.html @ 4ac1bf2cbaa2

{% extends "_post.html" %}

{% hyde
    title: "stevelosh.com"
    snip: "This website."
    created: 2009-01-11 15:40:26
%}

{% block article %}

For a long time I used [Squarespace][] to create and host my personal website.
It's a great service, and I highly recommend it to anyone that needs a simple,
easy, beautiful site.

Recently, however, I've started learning more and more about web design and I
decided to completely revamp my website and build it myself from the ground
up. This is the result.

Design
------

I like simplicity. In all areas of my life (music, dancing, photography,
programming, design, etc) I'm striving to make everything I do as simple,
clean, and elegant as possible. That's why I went with such a minimal design
for the site.

I haven't used any graphics in the layout for a few reasons. First, I'm not
very good at making them. Second, I want the site to load quickly, even on
phones, and scale gracefully for accessibility. Third, I wanted the interface
to be as uncluttered as possible so the content of the site would be front and
center.

I also stuck to a minimum of color. The only items that have any color on the
site are any photographs that I post and the links. I did this because I'm not
a graphic designer and so I haven't studied color enough to know how to use it
well.

One last thing I tried to keep in mind was sticking to a baseline rhythm for
some elements of the site. The home page, blog entry list, and project list
all line up with the links in the right sidebar. I think it gives the layout a
more stable feel.

Implementation
------------

This website was written in [Python][] using the [Django][] framework. Django
makes it really easy to write useful web apps quickly and cleanly. I love it.

[Blueprint][] kept me sane while writing the CSS. Grid layouts are no longer a
nightmare!

I rely pretty heavily on [Markdown][] throughout the site. The blog entries
and static pages are all written in Markdown and parsed to XHTML later. This
might not be the fastest way to do things but processor time is cheap and my
time isn't.

The Markdown-based editor and preview for commenting is the wonderful [WMD][].
It's clean, simple, and does exactly what I want it to do. Most of the other
Javascript magic comes from [jQuery][]. I use the [jQuery form validation
plugin][form validation] in a couple of places to make checking input easier.

For site statistics I'm relying on the fantastic [Mint][]. It's got a gorgeous
interface and is absurdly simple to install. Plus it's hosted on my own host
so I have control. It's also just a one time fee, unlike some other site stat
packages that charge monthly.

My development process is pretty simple. I use [TextMate][] to edit the code
and a [Mercurial][] repository to store it and protect against accidents. To
deploy, I push my local changes to a private repository on [Bitbucket.org][],
and then use [Fabric][] to pull those changes down to the server and restart
if necessary.

The site is hosted by [WebFaction][]. If you're looking for a web host for
Django or Rails sites (or any other kind, really) you should definitely
consider them. Not only do they make installing Django or Rails very easy,
they're absurdly cheap: 10gb disk space and 600gb/month bandwidth is less than
$10 a month. I'd recommend them to anyone.

It's Open Source, Too!
----------------------

Want to see what makes this site tick? Want to make it tick more smoothly?
Feel free to head over to <http://bitbucket.org/sjl/stevelosh> and take a look
at the code.

[Squarespace]: http://www.squarespace.com/
[Python]: http://python.org
[Django]: http://djangoproject.com
[Blueprint]: http://www.blueprintcss.org/
[Markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
[WMD]: http://wmd-editor.com/
[jQuery]: http://jquery.com
[form validation]: http://bassistance.de/jquery-plugins/jquery-plugin-validation/
[TextMate]: http://macromates.com/
[Mercurial]: http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/
[Bitbucket.org]: http://www.bitbucket.org/
[Fabric]: http://www.nongnu.org/fab/
[Mint]: http://haveamint.com/
[WebFaction]: http://www.webfaction.com/signup?affiliate=sjl

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