This site is very much an ongoing experiment in the various practices of web design. I hope to keep its design and platform changing regularly to give me a better understanding and experience of as many different technologies, tools and frameworks as possible.
Currently, the site is hosted on Google App Engine, where Google let you host your site or web application on their infrastructure. App Engine uses a "freemium" payment model where they offer a free plan with a fixed quota of space and bandwidth, and give you the option of setting up billing if you want to be able to go over that. Here are the resources that helped me with Google App Engine:
- Google App Engine documentation
- 24 Ways: Using Google App Engine as your own Content Delivery Network
- App Engine API's urlfetch function allows you to access data from other URLs, which I needed for the Flixter reviews widget on the homepage
- Using your own domain name for your App Engine site requires that you register your domain name with Google Apps
To begin with, I am using a whole load of JavaScript to perform the dynamic tasks of loading in content for the widgets on the homepage. jQuery is the framework of choice and I cannot recommend it enough! Here are the resources that helped me get jQuery doing everything I wanted it to:
- jQuery's excellent documentation
- CSS Tricks: Build your own social home tutorial, for Twitter and Flickr integration
- 5 JavaScript Tricks made easy with jQuery, for helping me to figure out how to integrate Flixter's XML output
- Simpletip - a simple jQuery tooltip plugin
I've also slotted in Microformats for my contact details and movie reviews. I found these pages really useful in getting to grips with all that:
- Microformats wiki, really useful pages on hCard and hReview
- Smashing Magazine: Microformats: What they are and how to use them
- Technorati: Contacts Feed Service, lets you link to a page that will allow the user to download your vCard based on the hCard in your URL
- Great microformats icons from Wolfgang Bartelme
Also used on the site are some icons from FamFamFam's Silk icon set.
