IssueTrackerProduct IssueTrackerProduct

About my baby Open Source project

Kung Fu Kung Fu

Fujian White Crane Kung Fu

Zope Zope

What I have and am doing with Zope

Photos Photos

Photoalbum, both old and new.

Receptsamlingen Receptsamlingen

In Swedish only. About my "Collection of Recipes" website.

Contact me Contact me

My contact details and how to contact me.

  Mobile version of this page Mobile version of this page


 

About this little website

Engine parts

This website is my little pool for RnD (Research and Development). My job is web application development which also involves web design and database management. Much of the code employed on this site is also used in work code. This is where I test stuff out and when I'm happy with it I usually re-evaluate the security behind it and implement it in the work code. It's more often ideas rather than actual code snippets.

Here are some of the proud features of this site in no particular order:

  • Blogs
    • New! Blog items can have alises
    • New! Some output CSS or HTML is optimized
    • Text processing is effortlessly cached ad hoc for faster rendering
    • Sourcecode is properly highlighted with SilverCity
    • Spell checker when adding
    • Semiautomated keywords selection based on content
    • Multicategorial
    • Future posting (can set publish-date in future to create flow)
    • Recursive email-notifying comments
    • StructuredText support
    • Each view is logged for visit-statistics
  • Search
    • Most content cataloged with a ZCatalog
    • Timer on searches
    • Spelling suggestions
    • Summorized search results
    • Searchterm result highlight
  • MMS
    • Inbound POP3 interface
    • Automated thumbnail creation
    • Moderation on "alien phonenumbers"
  • MP3 Records
    • WinAmp on Windows computer reports to web server
    • Amazon SOAP lookups for album covers
    • "Most common" listing
  • Photos
    • Unique URLs for every photo
    • Thumbnail references without CGI parameters
    • Tree categorization
  • WAP
    • Still experimental
    • Alternative view of Blog items
  • ChangeLog (of content)
    • All major changes are logged/stored
    • Search and filtering interface
  • Relational database
    • PostgreSQL connected with PoPy
    • Google referers logged
  • Selected pages dynamically cached
  • RSS feed
  • Printer friendly version
  • PDF version (relies on printer friendly version)
  • Quick URLs
    • long URLs can be converted to short ones
Under the hood

The main piece of software that makes this possible is Zope which is a web application platform built with Python. Current version is Zope 2.7.0-beta3 and Python 2.3.3c1.
The Zope server is fronted by a Squid cache server that handles all virtual hosting thanks to pyredir. A PostgreSQL is installed for relational data.
All of this happens on an old Compaq Presario laptop with 192Mb RAM running Debian on the floor in my room. The connection is a simple broadband 256Kbit/s cable modem.

Last but not least is the actual code.
I've decided to write the whole site as a deployable Python product. It's a package containing several .py, .dtml and .zpt files and several images. Each major content part is written as a Python class on its own which makes it very easy to change and extend. The complete source code is not available for download yet because I have not had the time to do a complete security check. I.e. the source code might contain revealing ideas of how to break the site.
I'm confident that the whole source code is deployable for any other purpose and completely different web design. If you would be interested in having a site like this, I do welcome commercial consulting work.