Technology Blog

In Part 1 of this article, we discussed our choice of typical server stack and the general packages that we find useful upon an initial installation. Part 2 will focus on setting up the site environment and configuring the system services. As mentioned before, at Imaginary, this setup process is normally automated...

A core challenge of setting up a Django project is creating a production-worthy server environment and project setup.  At Imaginary Landscape, we've put a lot of thought into how to accomplish this task in an intuitive and flexible way.   The goal of this article is to detail the default setup...

The IPython Notebook is a really cool application, and I've always wanted to use it during Django development and debugging.  The only problem is that it requires a lot of dependencies and I feel no need to encumber my production projects with those dependencies for a feature that I only...

The Django Debug Toolbar is a powerful and useful tool for identifying potential trouble spots in your Django application.  Hopefully, this post will serve as a starting point for understanding the information presented by the toolbar.  Also, we will cover a couple of plugins for the toolbar, cache panel, and...

It has been a week since our production team returned from the 2013 DjangoCon US. Though technically we didn't return since it was in Chicago where we are located! Nevertheless, it was, wholeheartedly, an uplifting and enlightening experience. Russell Keith-Magee's keynote really demonstrated just how far the Django Project and its...

Below is a PDF of the slides for today's DjangoCon US presentation, "Trial By Fire: Real World Performance Optimization" by Joe Jasinski and Dan Johnson (Tuesday, September 3, 2013 - Track 2). Presentation Slides

This week, The Onion arrived at the Imaginary Landscape office to film a short segment for their website, "CEO Has Special Knack For Recognizing Great Ideas and Ruining Them."  Featured in the film was Imaginary Landscape's own Jenn Sedik (Tara Callies), Dustin Lacewell (Jason Rutherford) and Joe Jasinski (Tim Williams)....

The de facto solution for job queues with background workers is Celery and RabbitMQ, but it is not the right fit for every project. RQ is an alternative to Celery, and while not as featureful, does provide a lightweight solution that makes it easy to set up and use. RQ...

Because the development site is also on the web, it needs its own web address (e.g. dev.yourcompany.com).  There are many adjustments needed in the configuration file to accommodate the development URL, especially when testing third-party connections.  For example, ecommerce gateways don't like when credit card information is coming from a...

Sometimes we are faced with the challenge of upgrading old Django-based projects.  The task can be daunting, as a lot has happened in Django within the last few years.  Since Django 1.1.1, Django has been through 15 micro releases and 4 minor releases. The term "minor" seems deceptive as a...

A few weeks ago I gave a talk at the Chicago Djangonauts meeting on Django Internationalization. Apparently this isn't a task that a lot of people need to do frequently, as the crowd was not too familiar with the content of the talk. Luckily, internationalization isn't too complicated a concept and...

As part of our new appreciation for start-up organizations and their love of Django, we thought we’d share how we approach the concept of rapid UI prototyping. Early stage start-up companies often need a proof of concept to help convey the vision of the new business model. Yes, there is...

We love Rackspace at Imaginary Landscape.  Recently, we needed to store a number of large files securely, and for logistical reasons, we chose to store them via Rackspace’s Cloud Files.  Rackspace provides the ability to create temporary URLs for files stored via their service.  This allows temporary access to privately...

At the last Chicago Djangonauts meeting, which we host in our office, I gave my first Python/Django talk. I spoke regarding unit-testing your code in general, but, also how unit-testing works within the context of web-applications. The talk went smoothly and it seemed to be well recieved. Python's standard library...

I'm happy to report that the DjangoCon schedule has been announced and we have two presentations that made the cut. Joe Jasinski will be making the solo presentation, "So You Want to Make a Payment: Comparing and contrasting Django payment options" which will introduce and compare some common payment gateway options,...

Here is a quick example of how to add a multiple file form to your Django application.  Most multiple-upload front-ends were created without Django in mind, so interfacing with tools is not always straightforward as it might be with a different language.  Thankfully, there are a couple of Django libraries...

All types of Django auth do basically the same thing: They associate a browser session ID with a Django user if the user logs-in successfully.  I found a neat technique to bypass a Django login by modifying with a Django session, which can be useful for testing purposes. Why is...

Here at Imaginary we maintain our own git repositories internally with the help of the invaluable utility, Gitolite. This works well for us. However, in some cases, our clients have their own repositories that we must interact with. The problem arises when the client repositories reside on a third-party service, usually Github. As you likely know,...

As a Web developer with a specialty in creating and maintaining hospital websites, it is important that we fully understand where these things intersect with HIPAA.  In fact, any agency that is charged with the creation, care and maintenance of a hospital website must fully understand these things. One of...

People feel strongly about these bills and are jumping on any bully pulpit to instill fear in the hearts of the non-supporters (or supporters, depending on the pulpit).  As with most impassioned controversy, most of the coverage is limited to the polar extremes.  Each side focusing on the most liberal...

Imaginary Landscape was highlighted in a recent blog post as one of only two Corporate Members of the Django Software Foundation. The post appears on the Django Project website and was written by DSF President Russell Keith-Magee.

I wanted to share a quick practical example of how Fabric, can make your development life easier. If you're unfamiliar with Fabric I recommend checking out its tutorial which describes Fabric thusly; Fabric is a Python (2.5 or higher) library and command-line tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment...

Many thanks to Joe Jasinski and Eric van Zanten for their presentations on GeoDjango at November's Chicago Djangonauts meetup. Joe kicked off the evening with his presentation, Introduction to GeoDjango.  The presentation was based on his recent blog post GeoDjango Quickstart.  Joe has also provided his presentation slides. After a...

GeoDjango is a very powerful tool for storing and manipulating geographic data using the Django ORM.  It provides a simple API to determine distances between two points on a map, find areas of polygons, locate the points within a polygon, and much more.   GeoDjango is fairly well documented on...

At its minimum, the Django Admin is an effective tool for viewing and manipulating data within a Django database.  At its max, it can be a robust application allowing clients and administrators to better manage their web applications.   This article aims to highlight some of the admin customizations that...