Two new websites, one new blog

Hey, long time no write!

I've been busy working at developing www.olympian.mx and the recently-launched www.sharemybytes.com. Both are great examples of coding.

Olympian.mx was created using Django. Although it was my first time using the framework, I found it extremely easy and fast to use. Backend integration is seamless, although you do have to get used to working with versioned migrations and how to mange them in a production environment. One of the coolest things that 'came in the box' with Django was the admin site. This site contains an already built UI for people in the backoffice to work with and generate their analysis. No need to give them direct permission on the actual database.
The only letdown from Django was the frontend templates and lack of support or consideration for AJAX calls. although the DRY mentality is kept with the frontend, and there are ways to avoid writing every field in each form, I find that the templates are way too coupled with the backend. This is a problem because having a separate UI designer and frontend engineer working to develop the website, it creates a need for the FE to learn the templating system, which can slow down the development of the website.

Sharemybytes.com on the other hand was created solely by me. I used a plain old LAMP server to serve the website using PHP. After having developed websites in Django and Java it felt weird to use the same language to develop the backend code as well as the frontend one. It's like creating a website using JSPs for the backend too. The fun part about www.sharemybytes.com is the idea of creating a web file host with an unlimited capacity. The whole idea relies on living the storage to the user and using the server only as a bridge between the host and the client. Using AJAX leases I was able to pull and push files on demand without any user interaction. Very interesting project.

Finally I have been also writing on www.aboutworld.com. I still have only 6 posts which is frequency of about 1 post per month. However it has some 500 monthly views which is pretty good.