[wikiblog] Climbing up the rankings...

[Tom Allen]

I'm not entirely sure how this just happened, but WikiBlog is now on the first page if you search for it on Google! And a post I wrote about it on Quora is number three... :-S

Mainly because I wish to learn a different and more flexible web framework, but also because it was built on a base I didn't fully comprehend, I'm strongly considering rewriting the entire site using Tornado (http://www.tornadoweb.org/). I don't suppose anyone will have any issues with this, since it was 99% me anyway, but it's possible I'll be unable to port existing posts properly if I do this. I intent to a) try to port them properly, b) back them up in plain text anyway, and c) consider doing it manually if I fail, since there's only ten or so. It's also entirely possible that I won't get around to rewriting the site at all...

If people are curious why I've chosen Tornado, given that it's aimed at huge sites like Facebook that need many thousands of open connections simultaneously, I have a few reasons. Firstly, I like the documentation - it looks like it was written by sensible people, and I can follow their train of design thought. Secondly, I have some other ideas in my head that could scale to Facebook size if magic happens, and I'd like to learn a tool that's at least capable of this, even if it's the most unlikely thing in the world. Thirdly, I like that the front and backend are all in the same framework, which is nice if I'm going to do solo projects. Finally, I was recently interested in joining a small startup who were using Tornado, and their recommendation and reasons persuaded me somewhat.

Cheers,

Tom

[Matthew Fernandez]

Nice, although it seems to have taken a bit of a tumble since then.
Actually, I don't think Google results are canonical these days (c.f.
http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/02/why-google-search-results-can-be-different/,
https://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=165228&topic=1678513).

I've never heard of Tornado before, but sounds like something many of
us would be interested in. Tom, did you just volunteer to do another
tools bit about it? :P

We don't have anyone lined up for next month's tools, so this is also
a call for volunteers. If there's something cool you use for work or
play that you think would be interesting for the group, please let me
know. You don't have to be an expert on the tool and feel free to talk
about something that you know a bit about and would like to learn more
from others. Some ideas: IDEs, bug trackers, web platforms, networking
tools/services (in the career or LAN sense).