Overdue Catchup

Posted by Ross Poulton on Mon 11 February 2008 #djangosites #geeky #whispergifts #programming #django #openid

I've had a very busy few months in every way conceivable - everything from my Django projects, to my day job, to life as a whole has been running in fast-forward. Here's a quick summary of the

DjangoSites is coming along very well, with 1040 sites listed as of this evening. The quantity and quality is ever-increasing, and more and more sites are being claimed. There are still well over 300 unclaimed sites - is yours listed there? If so, drop an email with your DjangoSites username to djangosites@djangosites.org.

After a server move late last year my Django OpenID project went offline for a little while. After a handful of requests from the blogosphere I've put it back online - see my original blog posting on the topic for more details, although I'm guessing that Simon Willison has something up his sleeve that'll trump my hack-job soon enougy.

Over my Christmas holidays I launched Jutda, the 'corporate' face for my upcoming web projects built with Django. The word Jutda is from the Wagiman language, a dialect spoken by an ever-shrinking Aboriginal tribe in the Northern Territory of Australia. It means show the way, which is something I hope to do with my projects. This is by no means my day job, rather a single name with which to pull together a number of after-hours projects. Hopefully the name starts to mean something within the Django community after a little while :)

The first project to be released by Jutda is WhisperGifts, a service to allow you to publish your wedding gift registry online with minimum fuss. I used it for my wedding almost a year ago with no problems, and it's been used by others before and since with great praise from happily married couples and their guests alike. Of course, it's all built with Django, with a whole host of neat features. When I have a spare evening I'll write up a few more details, but in the mean time check it out and let me know what you think.

Last but not least, I thought I'd bring attention to a simple Django application I wrote a while ago but never 'released' per-se. Django-forum is a simple Forum application for Django, allowing you to leverage your existing templates and user accounts to add discussion-forum capability to your existing project. At least a few people are using it, with a few patches coming from the community to add new functionality. I don't currently have any public sites running it, but keep your eyes peeled.

That's all of my news for now - I've got plenty more to share, however just a little more time is needed to give a few projects some more polish before I go public. Let's just hope my next update isn't another three-months away!