Hello! I'm Julia. on Julia Solórzano

The Portfolio as Conversation

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I recently wrote about rebuilding my personal website from scratch — new framework, new design, bilingual content, accessibility-first architecture. Since then I have kept building. This is about an experiment: a chatbot that lets visitors explore my work through conversation instead of navigation.

Portfolio sites have always been information architecture problems. You organize your work into sections — experience, projects, writing, about — and you design navigation that helps people find what they need. You think about hierarchy, labeling, wayfinding. You test whether the thing you called “Work” should actually be called “Projects.” You optimize for the person who lands on your site and already knows what they are looking for.

Testing the Foundation: What 'Working' Actually Means

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

After rebuilding my personal site, translating it into two languages, adding accessibility features, and shipping a text-to-speech player, I realized I had no way of knowing if any of it still worked. This is about adding tests — and about a way of thinking that starts with the end in mind.

I have always been lazy about writing tests. Not philosophically opposed — just lazy. The site worked. I could see it working. I would make a change, refresh the browser, and move on. That is fine when a site is simple. It is less fine when a site has two languages, sixty translation keys, ARIA attributes on every interactive element, a text-to-speech player with screen reader semantics, a dark mode that swaps an entire color system, and a mobile menu with focus trapping. At some point the surface area gets wide enough that your eyes are not a reliable test suite anymore.

Adding Text-to-Speech (TTS) to my writings

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I recently wrote a five-part series about rebuilding my personal website — migrating from Jekyll to Hugo, redesigning the layout, translating everything into Spanish, optimizing for mobile, and shipping it all. This writing is about a feature I added afterward: a text-to-speech player that lets you listen to any writing on this site.

Text-to-speech is, first and foremost, an accessibility feature. It gives people who are blind or have low vision another way to consume written content. It helps people with dyslexia or reading difficulties. It supports anyone who processes information better by listening than by reading. When I decided to add it to my site, that was the starting point — making my writing available to more people in more ways.

Turn and Face the Strange

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In 1999, David Bowie sat across from Jeremy Paxman on BBC Newsnight and told him the internet was going to change everything. Paxman pushed back — it was just a tool, he said. Bowie shook his head. “No. It’s an alien life form.” He talked about the wall between artist and audience breaking down, about how the interplay between the user and the provider would crush our idea of what mediums are all about. Paxman was skeptical. Bowie was right.

Answer Engine Optimization

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For twenty years, the question was: how do I rank on Google?

That question is changing. It is not gone — search engines still matter. But a new layer has appeared on top of them. People are asking ChatGPT , Perplexity , Google AI Overviews , and Claude for answers instead of typing keywords into a search bar. Gartner estimates that traditional search engine volume will drop 25 percent by 2026 as users shift to AI-powered alternatives. And the way those tools find, evaluate, and cite your content is fundamentally different from how a search engine does it.

Accessibility is the Foundation

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Accessibility is not a feature you bolt on at the end. It is the foundation you build on from the start. This is how I approached it when I rebuilt my personal site.

Every interactive element on this site has a visible focus indicator . A 2-pixel solid outline in the accent color, offset by 2 pixels so it does not crowd the element. Buttons, links, navigation items, the language switcher, the dark mode toggle — all of them. If you navigate this site with a keyboard, you always know where you are. The WCAG 2.4.7 Focus Visible criterion calls this a Level AA requirement. I call it the bare minimum.

Part 5: Starman

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fifth and final entry in a series of writings about the updates I am making to my personal website. Part 1 covered the migration from Jekyll to Hugo. Part 2 covered the design overhaul. Part 3 covered translating the site into Spanish. Part 4 covered building for mobile. Part 5 is about deployment, performance, and getting the whole thing live.

There’s a starman waiting in the sky.

At some point you have to stop building and start shipping. The framework was migrated. The design was overhauled. The site was bilingual. The mobile experience felt native. Everything worked locally. But locally does not count. A personal site that only runs on your laptop is just a folder.

Part 4: Space Oddity

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fourth in a series of five writings about the updates I am making to my personal website. Part 1 covered the migration from Jekyll to Hugo. Part 2 covered the design overhaul. Part 3 covered translating the site into Spanish. Part 4 is about building a mobile experience that feels native.

Ground control to Major Tom.

Most personal sites treat mobile as a concession. You take the desktop layout, squeeze it into a narrower viewport, and call it responsive. I wanted something different. I wanted the mobile version of this site to feel like it was built for the phone first — not adapted from the desktop after the fact.

Part 3: "Heroes"

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is the third in a series of five writings about the updates I am making to my personal website. Part 1 covered the migration from Jekyll to Hugo. Part 2 covered the design overhaul. Part 3 is about translating the entire site into Spanish.

We can be heroes, just for one day.

When Bowie recorded “Heroes” in 1977, he did not stop at the English version. He recorded it again in German as “Helden” and again in French as “Héros.” Same song, same feeling, different words. That is what I wanted for this site — not a translated version that felt like an afterthought, but a Spanish version that felt like it belonged there from the beginning.

Part 2: Modern Love

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is the second in a series of five writings about the updates I am making to my personal website. Part 1 covered the migration from Jekyll to Hugo. Part 2 is about the design overhaul — the visual and interaction decisions that gave the site its current shape.

Modern love walks beside me. Modern love walks on by.

Once Hugo was in place, the code was clean, but the site still looked like its old self. The layout, the colors, the typography — all of it carried over from a design I had built years ago. It worked, but it did not feel like me anymore. I wanted something warmer. Something more intentional. Something that felt less like a tech portfolio and more like a home.

Part 1: Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first in a series of five writings about the updates I am making to my personal website — from migrating the framework, to redesigning the layout, to translating the entire site into Spanish, and more. I am working alongside Claude Code , running Anthropic’s Opus 4.6 locally, to make these changes. Part 1 covers the framework migration itself.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, turn and face the strange.

My site has run on Jekyll since March 2013. Thirteen years. Through job changes, redesigns, and dozens of writings, Jekyll was the quiet constant underneath it all. It worked. It was familiar.

Approaching language translations to provide a better user experience

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the Moment

Wed, 12 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It was early summer 2011 and the dog needed a walk. I got my things together, strapped on my walking shoes and headed out for the usual loop through the neighborhood.

I was about halfway through the loop when a young man coming from the opposite direction ran past me. I remember thinking to myself, “I really should start running again,” and continued on my stroll with the dog.

A few moments later, I heard a loud thump as if someone had tripped and fallen to the ground. I turned around and saw the jogger who had just passed me laying half on the sidewalk and half on the street.

Skating and Coding

Sat, 20 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I recently watched the film mid90s . And it got me thinking a lot about skating… and coding… and how the two relate to each other in my life.

Skating was how I spent part of my Kansas high school summers. My friends and I would spend all day (and sometimes night), heading to different spots around town to skate. We all seemed to have a lot of freedom, with little to no supervision or adults telling us what to do. But we all knew what we wanted to do. We wanted to skate.

Security is Everyone’s Responsibility: Delivering Secure, Usable Login for Government

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

On practicing Security Experience

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Image source: @SwiftOnSecurity

The practice of delivering online products and services is ever evolving. We are forced to move alongside the shifting tides of technology. In this changing of the tides, new features are created and implemented. How do these changes impact the security and privacy of users? This question brings up something I’d like to call “security experience”.

Creating A User Centered Information Architecture On VA's Developer Portal

Wed, 17 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing the Zapier Visual Identity: How a Remote Design Team Created a New Brand Site in Six Months

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Remote Design: How Zapier Is Building a Distributed Design Culture

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Leaving 18F

Thu, 23 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In March 2015, I went to New York City to co-work with my new colleagues at the then-budding 18F NYC location (also referred to as “the beige”). We went out for lunch and talked about all our ideas for transforming government digital services and planting the seeds of change.

I started my tenure at 18F by designing and building the infrastructure for two projects I’m incredibly proud of: the U.S. Web Design Standards and Pulse. Each of these projects helped make it more possible for U.S. government agencies to build usable, well-structured, and secure digital services They’ve ignited conversations about best practices for building web applications, and have become tools and guidelines for implementing impactful change far beyond 18F. Over 100 agencies have used the Standards on websites and applications. And since the launch of Pulse, HTTPS compliance has increased by 118 percent. I am so proud of this work and of the people I have had the privilege to work alongside on both these projects.

NASA’s journey with the U.S. Web Design Standards

Tue, 21 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Best practices for building an accessible website using the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards

Tue, 29 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Six months and counting

Fri, 14 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

While I am not a prolific writer on this site of mine, it’s been quite a while since I’ve written something. In fact, it’s been almost exactly six months since my last post and needless to say, I’ve been busy. So, I thought I’d write up what I’ve been up to in that time.

One of the many exciting things that has been going on was joining the wonderfully talented and dedicated team at 18F . It’s an amazing atmosphere to work in and contribute my skills and talents towards serving my country.

Taking the pulse of the federal government's web presence

Tue, 02 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The intersection of art and technology

Tue, 28 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

How to welcome new coders to a civic hackathon

Fri, 03 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Joining 18F

Thu, 12 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation.
— Jane Addams

As mentioned at the end of my last writing , I spent my time off speaking with several colleagues and employers about working with them. Today I am proud to finally announce that I have joined the team at 18F .

What is 18F?

18F is a digital service agency based within the United States General Service Administration . Our focus is user centered design, lean startup methods and open source. We work with agencies within the U.S. government to help solve problems and create a significant impact on the way we interact with government services.

Pressing play

Fri, 06 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

In my writing titled “pressing pause ”, I talked about taking some time off for myself. It’s been good to be able to take time for myself, my family and take into consideration what I want to do in my life.

While during my time off I’ve been pretty quiet, I have also been really busy. I thought I’d do one of those “What I’ve Been Up To” posts and list some of the things I did during my time off just in the Fall of 2014:

Your Django Story: Meet Julia Elman

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

What I've learned from teaching

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In my journey into teaching, I learned many things about the craft and its role in education, primarily in the programming realm. The challenges I encountered as a teacher are beyond many of the challenges I faced as even as a programmer. In the past year or so, I have been thinking of new ways to teach and bring new awareness to students. Here are a few things I have learned and would like to share.

Pressing pause

Tue, 26 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Mary Cassatt, Breakfast In Bed, 1897, oil on canvas

This week, my daughter starts her first week of Kindergarten. I cannot believe she is already heading off to school or how quickly the time has passed. It seems like yesterday I was nuzzling this little baby under my chin, doing the hokey pokey at story time and figuring out the secrets of potty training.

This week has also been a time of self reflection. The past twelve weeks of teaching at The Iron Yard have been filled with countless hours, days, nights and weekends of teaching, writing curriculum, lesson plans and classroom exercises. At the same time, Mark and I were busy finishing up the final chapters and technical edits of our book. As you can imagine, it would not be an understatement to say that these past three months have been overly intense. With the students now graduated and the book officially approved for the final draft (YAY!), the level of intensity is starting to wane and life is getting back to something more normal.

Graduation day

Mon, 25 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I had the honor of helping graduate the very first cohort of students from The Iron Yard in Durham, NC. The entire day was filled with gratitude, kind words, thoughts and a brilliant showcase of the amazing work the students created during their intensive twelve weeks of training.

During the after-party on Demo Day this past Friday, I kept getting told things like “You must feel like a proud parent!” in relation to my work with the students. After hearing that a few times, I really could not seem to relate to the notion that these talented individuals and their work was being attributed to me. Because the truth is is that I feel much more like a good guide on their journey. Each student in my class got to where they are by their own perseverance, strength and utter talent.

Joining the iron yard

Fri, 09 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This past March I had the privilege to be a mentor for Pearl Hacks , a hackathon for college and high-school aged women at UNC-CH. It was an inspiring event for me and I really enjoyed seeing all of the amazing things that the students came up with! I had the opportunity to teach some of the attendees about Django and the fundamentals of starting their first Django project. It was very nostalgic and it also made me realize one thing: I love teaching.

Simplifying Django

Sat, 12 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The original post is listed on the O’Reilly Radar blog: http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/04/simplifying-django.html

Despite Django’s popularity and maturity, some developers believe that it is an outdated web framework made primarily for “content-heavy” applications. Since the majority of modern web applications and services tend not to be rich in their content, this reputation leaves Django seeming like a less than optimal choice as a web framework.

Let’s take a moment to look at Django from the ground up and get a better idea of where the framework stands in today’s web development practices.

Malcolm

Mon, 17 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

It has been a year since Django core contributor Malcolm Tredinnick suddenly passed away. It was a shock and a major blow to the community to lose him, as described in multiple posts around the web. I never took a chance to contribute my own thoughts on his passing and want to take this occasion to share my own perspective and experiences with him.

I first met Malcolm while working at World Online in Lawrence, KS. He was doing some contract work for us at the time and was in town during the Django 1.0 Sprint event. Our local Django developer community all gathered together in a meeting room in Little Red to fix bugs, contribute to features and get the Django project up to speed for it’s anticipated 1.0 release.

Virtual volunteering

Mon, 24 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This past weekend I had the unique opportunity to speak at a first time conference PyTennessee 2014 in Nashville, TN. I gave a talk called “To the Moon and Back: Taking the Leap in Solving Big Problems.” It’s a talk I had given at SecondConf 2013 and am very happy to have been given the opportunity to bring this talk to the Python community.

During my talk, I touched on the past, present and future of solving big problems as technologists. I ran through a few scenarios outlined in the MIT Technology Review article titled: Why We Can’t Solve Big Problems, by Jason Pontin. Pontin points out a few conclusions about why we have failed to solve big problems and ends the article with this statement:

Creating trinket

Wed, 22 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

For the past four weeks, I have been helping to lead a rebranding effort for Coursefork . It has been an interesting journey for our team and I wanted to share how we came up with our new brand.

Coursefork wasn’t working

As an edtech startup, it is important for us to have a brand that resonates with educators. The name “Coursefork” was just not working, primarily because of the branding approach. While “forking” is a term that most programmers understand, it is not a concept most of the educators are familiar with. In my mind, we had to change the brand to put us in a better position to connect with educators and create a successful product.

And now for something completely different

Wed, 30 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I am my own worst critic. It helps you keep searching. Trying to expand. Trying to grow. And not settling into something that is familiar....[ ]

I want to keep moving and keep learning. And not know everything.
— Michael Stipe

Throughout my career I have always worked at places where I was passionate about what I was doing. Whether it was coming up with new designs or learning about some new technology, every path I have chosen has lead me into new and uncharted waters. And now I have decided to move on yet again.

2013 Mozilla Summit

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this month, I had the honor of being invited to attend the 2013 Mozilla Summit in Brussels, Belgium. It was an amazing experience and I wanted to share some of the highlights from my trip.

What is the Mozilla Summit?

Mozilla hosts triennial meetings in which Mozillians from all over the world come together. The 2013 Mozilla Summit was hosted in three cities: Brussels, Santa Clara and Toronto. Throughout the Summit, there were keynotes and breakout sessions that focused on varying parts of the organization and the cool things they are doing.

Teen Tech camp recap

Tue, 20 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

As some of you may already know , last week I had the honor and privilege to help organize the 2013 Teen Tech Camp in Durham, North Carolina. The event was extremely challenging, fun and one of the most rewarding things I have ever been a part of.

the idea

The idea for the camp came from my experience at the Teen Tech Camp in 2012. Refresh the Triangle , a community made up of area designers and developers, hosted the camp and focused it around web applications, websites and web design. The kids learned about HTML, CSS, web design and other web-related technologies from local professional technologists.

2013 Teen Tech camp press release

Wed, 31 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Local Teens Learn Computer Programming Using Raspberry Pi Microcomputers

Durham, NC – Refresh the Triangle is proud to announce Teen Tech Camp 2013, a one-day event to teach computer programming to area youth. The camp is the second to be hosted by Refresh the Triangle, in partnership with Durham County Library .

This year, students will learn basic Python computer programming concepts through the use of interactive curriculum with a Raspberry Pi , a pocket sized PC developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the intention of promoting the teaching of basic computer science in schools.

What I've been up to lately

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

So. It’s been a while since I wrote a post. Mostly because… well… I’ve been busy.

First off, I am proud to announce that I have joined Girl Develop It RDU as one of their new co-leader’s. It’s been a lot of fun organizing events, classes and engaging with other tech-minded women around the Triangle. I’ve already met some amazing women in my community and am proud to be part of such a diverse group. We have some really great classes lined up, one of which is an Introduction to Python class which started this week!

Razzytails

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past few months, my colleague Caleb and I had been developing a game using pygame . We had worked on it from time to time, figuring out the game mechanics, writing code, sketching out ideas and creating game assets.

Last week the company I work for, Caktus Consulting Group , hosted our second Ship It Day . It’s a wonderful perk of working there and a great opportunity to work on projects we’ve been thinking about doing. Caleb and I decided that the next Ship It Day would be a great stretch of time to work on the game we had been developing. We recruited a few other Caktus colleagues, David and Vinod , to help us out in creating this open source game.

Installing PyGame on OSX Mountain Lion

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Setting up local development environment is par for the course when programming. We’ve all had to do it at one time or another in our careers and shared in the pain points it brings with it.

My battle this week? Dun, dun, dun…installing pygame on OSX Mountain Lion.

Yes yes, I know. I just received this awesome Raspberry Pi which has the Raspian distribution of pygame already installed on it. Well friends, I have other plans for that little device at the moment. So it’s reserved for later. Stay tuned…

Because it works

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, I wrote a post about the awesome time I had at PyCon 2013 . What I failed to mention in that post, was what the community has been doing to ensure that there is awesomeness for all.

Let’s crunch some numbers!

20% of the attendees at PyCon were women
40+ kids, ages 13 to 16 years old, attended the Young Coders tutorials
Over 2500 attendees came to this years event, making it the largest Python gathering to date

But what contributed to this diverse and welcoming conference? There are many reasons, but I’d like to point out the top three I feel helped the most.

Thoughts after attending my second PyCon

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Here I am again, sitting in an airport waiting to board my flight away from PyCon. And what a conference it has been! Where do I even begin…

The experience this year was one of inspiration for me. After arriving at SFO, I headed straight to Santa Clara to help out with the Young Coders tutorials, a free Python tutorial geared towards kids. It was amazing. I walked into a room with a sea of faces beaming with the new knowledge they were acquiring. (It was referred to as “coder face.”)

Empowering women by teaching

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Many folks have been asking the following question: how to get more women involved in various programming communities? This questioning has led to great discussions about subsidized childcare at tech conferences and more focus on diversity in programming.

My answer: Teach women to program.

Last night, I had the pleasure of teaching my first class for Girl Develop It Raleigh/Durham. It’s an affordable opportunity for women who want to learn the basics about HTML and CSS. We had about 9 students and it was… well, awesome! By the end of the class, we were laughing and learning together. The students left with smiles on their faces and telling me how much fun they had programming.

An or a Django template filter

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I find that most projects are created out of need. You either look for something that does what you need, come up with an idea, find something that almost does what you want or both. That is how I created a new filter: anora.

I started out by looking for a template tag or filter that would determine whether or not to us “an” or “a” based on the contextual value of a given word. Django snippets returned a tag that Chris Beaven (aka SmileyChris) created that does this based on two regular expressions: https://djangosnippets.org/snippets/1519/

A post post

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been fairly silent over the past few weeks. Some of that has been personal time and some for work. Working on something that I hope will be helpful to those of us who are at a loss about the issue of sexual harassment in the tech community. What can we really do and where do we start?

Paul Smith contacted me shortly after my post with an idea his wife, Michelle, had. Why don’t we create a pledge where people from the Django community can state that they will no longer attend conferences and events without a code of conduct in place? A simple form where members of the community can sign and pledge their support?

Lets get a little louder

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A month ago, I attended a design/front end development conference. I was so excited to attend. My employer even sponsored the conference to show their support.

I saw that a fellow Django colleague was speaking at the conference. Having attended DjangoCon and PyCon, where I knew lots of the attendees, this would be a conference in which I knew no one. It was cool to see someone from my community attending and I decided to connect with him. We caught up at the conference and talked in between sessions.

Reflections on imagine how creativity works by jonah lehrer

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This past April, I had the pleasure of attending Switchpoint in Saxapahaw, North Carolina. The conference brought together people from all walks of life. American beat poets, global health workers, an African midwife and a Kenyan tech advocate all came together in one space for one day to see what would happen. It was pretty awesome.

One of the speakers of the day was Jonathan Opp . He spoke of branding and his experience at Red Hat and the Road Tour he helped develop. I got the chance to talk with him during the conference and how I was starting to try to draw more often. He mentioned a good book that he had recently read called, “Imagine: How Creativity Works” by Jonah Lehrer and highly recommend I read it. I tend to listen when smart good folks tell me to do something, and most of the time they are right.

Review of the Cosmonaut stylus

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been looking for a way to create quick sketches digitally. Just an easy way to share, create and mock-up ideas without having touch Photoshop. After going to Idan Gazit’s talk on sketching at PyCon a few weeks ago, I was really impressed with the pen he used. He said it was the Cosmonaut created by Studio Neat . I decided to order it to give it a try and here is my first impression.

Thoughts after attending my first PyCon

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A few months ago, I was waiting outside of the Free State Brewery to meet my friend Adam for lunch. It was going to be one of the last times I got to eat there before my move to the East Coast. While burrowing into my phone while I waited, I heard a “Hey Julia” and looked up to see Jacob , Frank and Jeff . We caught up for a bit and then the subject of attending PyCon came up.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is walk away

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It’s late. Way too late for anyone who consistently wakes up somewhere between 5-6am regardless of what day of the week it is.

Why the heck am I up so late you ask? I’ve got some coding problems I am trying to solve and can’t go to sleep till they are completed! Dag nabbit and harumph.

But do I really need to sit here, loosing sleep and scratching my head trying to find/Google the answer? Lately, I am finding the best thing to do when you are heading down the coding rabbit hole is to walk away. That’s right. Get out of your seat, take a walk and away from your computer. I find whenever I do this, I come back to my seat feeling refreshed and get my work done faster.

A simple set-up of your django project files

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I like organization. Keeping things clean, simple and easy to find make for a seamless work flow and helps to keep everyone in sync when working on a team.

I am constantly working on improving the way I set-up my projects file structure. Here is how I try to keep things clean:

myproject/
  apps/
    django-showcase/
  dev/
    __init__.py
    admin.py
    manage.py
    settings.py
  assets/
   images/
   stylesheets/
   scripts/
  templates/
  urls.py

First up, is the top level folder name of your Django project. I’m calling this one myproject.

django-showcase

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been meaning for a while now to get this app up and running on Github. It’s a pretty simple, light weight app whose primary purpose is to serve as a base skeletal structure for a showcase of the users work. It can be used for writing samples, photos or almost anything else you’d like to showcase!

django-showcase

I plan on building this out more and making the templates more robust. There are a few ideas that I have, but suggestions are welcome!

And away we go...

Fri, 20 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a long time in the making, but it’s finally here. My website re-design! (insert trumpets blaring here)

After about 2 design rounds, I finally decided to go with simple and clean. Over my many years of design I find that is always the way to go.

Another part of this whole get-up that I am completely proud of, is the fact that I built out a few things completely by scratch:

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