MattHeisig.com | Web Design and Development in Knoxville, TN

In the rush to finish this site within a week, compromises were inevitable. I managed to accomplish a large portion of what I set out to do but there are still a number features missing and a couple of bugs that cropped up unexpectedly. I’ve decided to detail everything I want to add in the near future but couldn’t within my time constraints as well as everything that broke along the way.

Stuff That’s Broken

Fortunately there’s not too much on this list. At least as far as I know…

1. Twitter feed.
   The most recent five statuses from Twitter on the homepage are brought in using the python-twitter API and are cached within a Django template tag. I’m using Jacob Kaplan-Moss’ CachedNode, ContextUpdatingNode and CachedContextUpdatingNode classes (Django Snippets: template + caching = delicious) and then a TwitterNode that subclasses CachedContextUpdatingNode. It works beautifully…most of the time. Occasionally I get a whole lot of nothing and the Twitter API returns an empty list. I haven’t had the time to really dig into what’s going on here yet but it’s definitely erratic and unreliable.

2. Portfolio Images Lightbox
   I think this just needs a little TLC or else a different Lightbox-style plugin altogether, but some of the interactions are a little bit awkward. Clicking seems to sometimes close the image when it should move to the next image

3. General Styling
   In the rush to get things done a few details invariably got dropped. I didn’t give too much attention to the archives and there’s some inconsistent styling here and there. A couple of style decisions are fine but I’m already planning on a way to make them a lot better (the comment form, for one). Nothing major and quite possibly only things that I would notice or care about, but either way I’ll circle back to them soon if only to satisfy my own tastes.

Stuff to Add

A few minor features got dropped, mostly backend stuff that I just haven’t figured out how to do yet or didn’t have the time to investigate thoroughly.

1. AJAX comment error handling and submission
   AJAX gets thrown around a lot, but if there’s one place I think it really shines it’s in form handling. There’s no reason that I should enter everything into a comment form, click “Post,” have a page load if there are errors, correct the errors, click “Post” again and then go to a page that thanks me for my comment, only to navigate back the the original page once again. That sucks, and it’s how comments currently work here. Ideally all error handling should be done on the fly and a clean comment should immediately be added to the list. I’ll assume nobody needs to be thanked so much that they want a superfluous two to three page loads.

2. Related blog entries I’m using the django-tagging app to tag blog entries right now and from reading the documentation it has a get_related style function baked right in - I just need to take a few minutes and implement it.

3. Contact form
   I’m just using an obfuscated email address right now which is simple and works, but a contact form can be nice in addition to that. I haven’t decided exactly how I want to do it or if a plain-Jane form will suit me.

I’m certain more will crop up as time goes on but that’s the initial list. Here’s hoping I have time to address everything relatively soon.