Jason Hasselkus

I was recently asked to create a site that focused on the sleazy side of a particular subject matter. Ok, it’s all about the young and wannabe rich of Orange County California, but none the less I took the project because it was interesting and at the same time pocket book enhancing. So here are the requirements that I’m dealing with.

• The site should be like a blog, chronological in nature
• Posts can have one main image with multiple images to follow, or no images at all
• The style should be simple, yet very Web 2.0 ish
• Visitors should be able to leave comments
• RSS is mandatory
• All content should be grouped by keywords (I call them Tags)
• Multiple authors can contribute
• Optimized for ads
• Must have a search component

So those were the big ones, and I know what your thinking.. The obvious choice here is Wordpress or MovableType. Which in most cases I would agree with you, except now that I’ve been using Django, I see a lot of power in using a framework.
After looking at the requirements and taking a glance at my calendar, I knew that providing them with everything that they wanted was going to be a challenge, however I was up to the challenge and have been itching to use Django on a real world client. So I’m off to the races with a site design in mind and 4 weeks and counting to get this site released.
Basically I’m looking at a simple blog with the ability to upload pictures, that’s a no brainer. Add in a few tags, categories, an archive page, an about us page, contact page and some legal crap, and we have ourselves a full blown website. Did I mention the fact that this all needs to be done in four weeks and we are in the middle of Holiday season. Ok, as long as you understand what I’m up against, and I welcome the challenge.
I was given this opportunity for this gig because of what the owner read here on my blog, so I asked if it would be appropriate if my journey could be chronicled on my personal blog. They agreed, so here we are talking about it. I’ll keep out the obvious stuff like passwords and stuff like that, and probably won’t go over the how to setup Django, but I will go through the design and coding phases here. Maybe along the way, someone might find my information useful, but if nothing else I hope to create a solid foundation is Django. It also wouldn’t hurt that if someone out there sees a way of doing something better that you make me aware of it. I PROMISE to give credit where credit is due.
Day one begins now.