Friday in Class

You know what I did in class today-- Soon, I will have my very own Plone to play with on yhspatriot. I've also been reading through tutorials and sketching things to implement when I do have something to work with.

I'll be ordering a book on Plone soon.

Friday Morning

I've updated my first quarter plan to reflect my new goals. You can find it here.

Thursday

Guess what? Another platform change. Plone. Woo.

Okay, it's installed, and I'm beginning to think that it, like all of the other options, are excessive for my needs. Essentially, the DogBlog project has been forcibly shoved to second place in the list of objectives-- Priority A is to learn Plone.

Okay, it's up and running-- The mission is to get DogBlog running AS PART OF A SITE. With content. Also: get on the zpug list.

Wednesday, September 26

I installed Pylons and I LOVE it. It gives sensible, pretty error messages, and makes things simple. There are still things to work through, but I could have DogBlog UP ON A SERVER (finally) by the end of the week.

Tuesday

"[#python.web] READ THIS FIRST: Can't get into #python? Read < http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#nicksetup >. Got a web programming question? Ask it, and stick around for the answer; usual wait time is up to an hour. If your question is about mod_python, our advice is: Don't use mod_python, use Pylons."

dogblog.py is wonderful. It does exactly what it needs to. Progress today. CSS tightened up a bit. Will start implementing layout and other listed features as soon as I have Pylons running. How hard can it be, right?

Monday-- Progress so far + Plans

The current status of DogBlog is still at the level of the tech demo I showed you: It takes input, makes a file, and reads that file, putting the header and posts on the page in the correct order. They're all in divs, so it's easily skinnable (though currently ugly as all hell). This is the basic framework, and it's working perfectly.

Due to mandatory meeting and illness, I've been held up getting Apache running. Today, (knock on wood) it will be up, with mod_python handing publishing of posts. When it's functional, the next steps are:

- Combining all the Python into one dogblog.py and interlinking all of the functions so that it works automatically whenever a new post is added or settings are changed. Comment thoroughly.

- Making config.txt do something. It can just be a switch as to where the header is found or something, but what's important is that it can contain variables that the main program can use.

- Make the XHTML output pretty and nested, not just valid.

- Adding login, archive, and RSS support, not necessarily in that order.

- Add a sidebar!!! This can contain the rss.xml link, the archive list, and so on.

- Multi-page main page, with user-changable cutoff.

- Web-editable EVERYTHING-- posts, settings, header, format, CSS.

- Comments?

Wednesday and Thursday (and Friday)

Wednesday was spent fighting with a broken Apache install and then installing Dapper on the local machine so that I have a server for testing. I'll avoid being optimistic, though-- it went downhill last time I did that.

Thursday was a senior meeting, so I wasn't in class.

Out sick Friday. Made devious plans about config.txt in between over-the-counter drugs and feverish naps. Plans turned out to be sound.

Tuesday, September 18

Kept working on apache conf, getting dogblog linked to and set up with mod_python. Yelled at obnoxious classmated who kept UNPLUGGING MY KEYBOARD and making LOUD NOISES.

Monday, September 17

Got apache up and configured on the local machine-- tomorrow, it will be properly running DogBlog!

Friday, September 14

IT WORKS. Display.py iterates and displays in the right order and everything! All that's left is the gravy, like usability and RSS and so on. IT WORKS!

Thursday, September 13

Thursday was very productive: post.py now can accept and create post and time data, and output it to a file. Display.py can now add to main.html. You saw, it's cool.

Friday, today, I will be getting it to iterate through alh the posts (and header.txt) and display them properly, or at lest in order.

Wednesday

Damn, was this unproductive. I spent my time getting an account on the local machine, getting Apache set up, and transferring files to the new instance.

New goal: working demo by the end of the week that does this:

newpost.html should send data to post.py, which should output the XHTML to [timestamp].txt in posts/. Next week, maybe I'll have display.py displaying posts in main.html.

Week after, archives, which, ideally, would be a list of titles and timestamps in the right order in archive.txt that can be displayed in main.html on the sidebar.

Then, in no particular order: configuration, possibly editable from the web GUI. Multiple stylesheet support, definitely from web GUI. Actual secure login. Multiple user support. Comments?

Also, in the foggy and distant future, Zope.

Tuesday, September 11

Senior meeting today, so I've pretty much only got time for this. My apologies. Progress tomorrow.

Monday, September 10

Today, I got post.py accepting test input, but not writing to the file yet. It's five minutes away, but I ran out of class time. Will update this evening. When that's working, I will have a post file for display.py to read.

UPDATE 7PM: Takes input, makes output, writes output to file. This is good. Tomorrow: Take file, display it. Also: Take text, make input, give to post.py. When this cycle is complete, so will be my base. Ideally, by the end of the week. (Knock on wood.)

Our Story So Far

Well, the first week of school is over. So far, my progress in Advanced topics has been:

• Choosing a topic and getting it approved


• Creating a Launchpad account for my project (DogBlog)


• Adding blueprints to that account summarizing my goals for the project


• Starting work on the posting mechanism for the blog platform


• Starting work on the display mechanism for the platform


• Creating a journal for documentation of my progress

Links:
My AT Homepage
Launchpad Project