Launch Site Restored

All you folks holding your breath waiting for me to post another feature to the FuzzMeasure Pro 2 launch site can now breathe a sigh of relief. I just added another feature to the list, and plan to add more shortly. </p> <p> This fiasco started with me trying to work on a TurboGears project that would evolve into a back-end for my entire site. I decided to start out with the launch site, and then spread the TurboGears love around the site slowly. </p> <p> This didn't happen. Not even in the slightest bit. </p> <p> You see, I tested my system out a lot when I first built it. Basically, the site I built let me add/edit entries from any browser, anywhere. I added two 'finished' features, and then launched the site. A few weeks later, I tried to add a feature to the list, and got all sorts of exceptions that I hadn't seen during my testing. I tried it on my local box, and on the server, to no avail. </p> <p> The “genius” behind this plan was that I'd simply use svn to manage the local and live copies of the site. I'd edit and test the site on my own box, and then use svn to sync the changes to the live site. This part was a fantastic idea, but it didn't work so well in conjunction with TurboGears. </p> <p> Both sides would behave in completely different ways. On my machine, TurboGears would fire exceptions after saving an edit, and on the server it'd fire the exception after trying to view the new feature. Also, when I thought I had the edits working, adding an image to my feature listing caused the page to be completely inaccessible. What the heck? </p> <p> Life got hectic, and I only took a few more half-baked attempts at fixing this over the past few months (I have a release to work on, remember?). Finally, yesterday I got frustrated enough to port all the design/content of my TurboGears project to the layout system I developed myself for the FuzzMeasure 1.3 site. </p> <p> That took way less time than I expected, and I actually pulled off a reasonable approach to adding feature information. Also, I got that image embedded in the latest feature listing, just like I wanted. </p> <p> So, in the end, I now have my system working on both my MacBook Pro and my web server. I can test all the content locally, pretty it up, and then check the changes into my subversion repository. After I'm happy with the result, I refresh my server's copy of the site, and it's live. </p> <p> I also ended up with a totally useless Gentoo box that I set up to host the TurboGears projects. Thankfully, it was just some spare hardware sitting in my basement. At least I got to get a little taste of what I'm missing by sticking with Debian — lots and lots of compiling! :P </p>