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First steps for the Tech

Londoners!

So here’s the deal: I love this city and who doesn’t love secrets… so when I got the chance to help out, I was like “Hell yes!”. I’ve got a couple of years experience building this sort of thing – however if we’re going to make secretlondon amazing – I’m going to need some help. So I’d welcome all the feedback and technical know-how you can muster.

Technical info for the geeks out there: For starters I’m going to be cracking this out using django. I’ll throw the project up on github asap, so you can all have a look and a play. Then it’ll be coupled with the usual – Apache & wsgi for serving the app and nginx for serving static files & cached pages.
Where I’m really worried though is scalability and speed of getting this bad boy to market. So, I’m going to be using our old friend amazon. I’ve got a decent AMI kicking about with most of this already pre-configured. But I have no idea what kind of loads we’ll be getting. So, for a db server I’m toying with the idea of using RDS to try and reduce the management hassle (we can always pull it back from here at a later point). Then just for kicks use ELB as a Load Balancer. I realize this is all a bit Amazon-tastic, but the aim here is go quickly (and I love it).

I know this update is vague so I’m looking forward to hearing what people think.
Tim

Categories: Tech
  1. Tom
    3 February, 2010 at 5:18 pm | #1

    Hi Tim, would love to get involved; been looking for a worthwhile project. Drop me an email…

  2. 3 February, 2010 at 5:48 pm | #2

    Thanks Tom! fantastic to have you on board. I’m starting with setting up the servers etc. Then once the community has had a nice amount of time to discuss the features – we should sit down and hammer it out!

  3. Alex
    3 February, 2010 at 9:47 pm | #3

    Hi Tim, I’m also interested in getting involved. I have quite a bit of experience with this sort of thing – though in different programming languages admittedly (I’m mostly C#/ASP.net)!

    Send me an email when things are ready to go on the technical side of things. Also – I have quite a few hosting servers etc dotted around the place – if you can get a domain I’ll happily host it for you (it’s cloud hosting just like amazon but in my experience a nicer product to run – still very scalable however!). Could you let me know the specs you’d need? Linux based I suppose?

    Will be looking out for your email.

  4. 3 February, 2010 at 11:43 pm | #4

    Thanks for the offer Alex, good work. I’ll hit you up now for some more details.

  5. Tara
    4 February, 2010 at 12:16 pm | #5

    Definitely want to help as well- let me know when you are ready to list works required. Can do little bits of everything, – design, coding, content and specialise in SEO.

  6. 4 February, 2010 at 1:05 pm | #6

    This was the idea behind our site except we operate operate within the area of music and clubbing. I think we could collaborate – feed you content etc. Contact me

  7. 4 February, 2010 at 2:22 pm | #7

    @Tara great news. SEO and design we’re in heavy need… Welcome to the team!

  8. 4 February, 2010 at 4:47 pm | #8

    @Ryan will do!

  9. 5 February, 2010 at 12:28 am | #9

    I would love to help out too. I am good at the css side of things and at my current job I work with the Django templates.

  10. 5 February, 2010 at 8:35 am | #10

    Hey, sounds like fun. I’m a back end dev in php but also can help with JavaScript side of things. Also quite handy with the google maps api. Bravo for spending a min thunking architecture. This could get big!

  11. 5 February, 2010 at 10:15 am | #11

    @Julie css is exactly what we need.

    @Joe google maps will be quite a big part I can imagine, someone with serious skills is going to be very handy.

    Sweet guys I’ll be in touch

  12. 7 February, 2010 at 12:43 am | #12

    currently working with asp.net/c# but if you need any help with php, js, css or general db stuff lemme know

  13. Lisa
    8 February, 2010 at 10:36 am | #13

    I didnt understand any of this but think the collaboration to get this off the ground is brilliant. Would be nice if this spirit could be kept up and Londoners keep supporting each other in their ventures. Thumbs up and fingers crossed!

  14. 8 February, 2010 at 4:47 pm | #14

    Hi – I run a web design & development studio called Despark – check us out on http://www.despark.com . We’d be able to help out with design, xhtml/css, php, js etc. Give me a shout if you’re interested in collaborating/partnering with us!

  15. 8 February, 2010 at 4:49 pm | #15

    Thanks Lisa! Simon and Adel I’ll be in touch…

  16. Miguel
    17 February, 2010 at 12:43 am | #16

    Willing to help, drop me a line if you still need a hand on the design side of things

  17. jgcooper
    17 February, 2010 at 6:09 pm | #17

    Tim – the site rocks. Respect. Awesome.

    Can you tell us how/where you’re getting the business listings database back? Works superquick – slick.

    Thanks!

    Jason

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