Digg Comment System is Broken

When they rolled out the latest update to the comment system a month ago, I did my part by upvoting the 'Fix The Comment System' thread.

They addressed some of the show stopping bugs pretty quickly, but it has been 36 days and if you ask me the damn thing is still broken.

The latency for populating threads, as well as the excessive styling, whitespace, borders, and form controls for threads is laughable. How a site with a presumably large budget could conceive such a poor design is beyond me.

But the biggest problem is that I can't open a Digg page with comments on my 1.33 GHz G4 Powerbook. Well, it's not that I can't, it's that I sorely regret it if I do. The fan starts whirring, the beachball kicks in, and my browser is tied up for close to 30 seconds on any well commented page. Seriously, what is going on here?

I've been meaning to sell this laptop for a long time, but maybe I should keep it around for testing my sites and make sure they don't suck as much as Digg.

And to be honest, I'd love the ability to just turn all Digg comments off completely. I do not read Digg for the comments.

KISS

Quick follow up to the new Risotto website.

I really like the idea of a simple one-page portfolio. I figure this is kind of like a resume, where longer is not better.

So when building such a simple site, it is advantageous to really think about what you need, or don't need.

Do I need Django for this? No. This is not a dynamic website. But I used Django anyway. I have my dev environment set up where the overhead of starting a new Django project is essentially free, giving me a project structure I am incredibly familiar with, and a few simple features that prove useful even for a site this simple (namely template inheritance). This also allows growth, as I eventually want to write my own blog app and stop using Blogger.

Do I need a CMS for this? No. This is not a multi-page website and I am more than capable editing HTML.

Do I need a Django deployment? No. Configuring a new vhost on one of my mod_python servers, as well as updating the DNS didn't seem smart when the old placeholder page was sitting in a perfectly fine Dreamhost folder. So I opted for a simple deployment:

wget -m http://xx.xx.xxx.xxx:8000/

Where the x's represent the IP of my local Django development server. Wget's `-m` mirrors the dynamic local site and saves the output as static files perfect for hosting on any old shared host.

I think I've managed to do a good job of keeping things simple for this project...

Company Website

I finally put a simple website up for Risotto:

http://risot.to/

I just wanted something clean, simple and to the point. Hopefully this single page meets those requirements.

Build a website in...

Rails started the craze of the 'build a blog in 15 minutes' example and since then there have been many 'me-too' screencasts, tutorials and blog posts.

This is not one of those super-exaggerated demos. This is an actual real-world example of 'build an X in Y minutes':

UntoldGood

Timed, from start to finish, this website took 2.5 hours.

2.5 hours for:

• A simple CMS (set page name, and textile content)


• A simple Links application (set link URL, text, and category)


• HTML templates


• CSS


• Deployment

This isn't the most flashy website, but it is exactly to Seth's design spec (he actually came over with legal paper and cut outs and post-its taped to it). It is simple but this is all he needs. It isn't complete. The blog is missing, though we could fake it with the CMS. We talked about a lot of features he wanted, but he gladly accepted my rejection of all but the essential functions for the first cut.

Still, Seth was really happy. His ideas for the site started a mere 12 hours earlier, he called and asked 'what are you doing this afternoon?' a few hours earlier, and here he was with his website up on the Internet. He was making links to his friends' websites when he doesn't know a lick of HTML. He was already honing in on the next set of work for version 2 now that he got his hands on version 1.

I was really happy. I opened a beer and watched Seth fill in the links and tweak the copy through the admin interface. "This is really easy" he actually said out loud. I drank another beer and watched some TV. There were a couple of small tweaks that I made during commercials.

This one was under budget, and more importantly done. "Is that really when you came over?"

3 hours is a magic number in consulting. Nothing happens in less than 3 hours. Even on the easiest projects.

You forget about the overhead of starting anew, or you get sidetracked on a meaningless but tricky and fun challenge programming wise, or you just can't locate those certain docs, or track down that weird javascript bug, or can't remember how to do vertical centering, or scratch your head over an indentation bug, or can't decypher what this old code is actually doing (dang I should rewrite this), etc.

Then ADD kicks in. Reddit calls. I need a drink. New email.

Then damn apache is just not honoring my virtual host directives. Then WTF mod_php breaks mod_python and I can't log into the admin?! Then what is that Postgres password again?

I could go on.

But this one wasn't like that at all.

Conclusions to draw from all of this?

1. Django kicks ass; apps are highly reusable and the admin interface provides an amazing shortcut for CRUD, and the clients love it.


2. Sitting down next to the client to work is both a great motivator and and easy way to prioritize (what can we do while you are here?).


3. Getting your tools, your workflow, and your deployment server as frictionless as possible is incredibly important -- you will know when this has happened and it will feel great.