I’ve gone through part of the Django tutorial. I installed the latest copy of Django, Python, and MySQL on my desktop (windows environment) and followed the tutorial through the first three sections. I’ve started to become familiar with the data models and the admin interface.

At the moment I am liking Django’s admin interface that is created by default a little bit more than the scaffolding that can be used with Ruby on Rails. As far as comparing Ruby and Python I still don’t know enough about either language to make a decision.

Update 7/24/8

Going outside of the tutorial, I created a few views and templates to get the basic idea. Using the Django Authentication module’s User model, I displayed a few things and plowed through a few of my own mistakes. I’m enjoying learning this.

Update 7/30/8

Finished the tutorial and moved on to create my own interface for Django’s Authentication. The app can create users, log them in and out, and list them. Simple enough, but I got the hang of the templates and form helpers.

More in this later post.

The Cyberia Template Engine is a project that was developed after Thomas Welfley and I wanted to expand upon the basic template engine used in Valhalla. We expanded on the idea of content slots to instead use keys which could return content as well as additional keys. This would allow the site to be broken into small reusable pieces and reduce the amount of duplicated code. There is also a post handler aspect that will help with error checking and collecting form data.

For this project I have created the database abstraction layer, the authorization system, and added the ability to package modules easily for future developers that may use the platform.

I have used this template engine on a few sites and in the process I have gathered an abundant repository of useful functions that will be packed with the release.