Bret Taylor's blog: Experimenting with Google App Engine - Bret Taylor's blog
Aviv Shaham
· 1 year ago
I wish all blogs were like this one in terms of presentation. Widget-less, perfect font size, to-the-point. Someone should come up with a bare-bones Blogger.
slippylane
· 1 year ago
Aviv - fair point, but most bloggers put the extra stuff on their site as a way to drive traffic there, or to promote other things the blogger is in support of, although I concur your point that there is something about the trend towards minimalist layouts that appeals. I predict we'll see more of this trend as more ex-Googlers launch their own startups! :-)
Aviv Shaham
· 1 year ago
For example, Fred Wilson's blog - a real gem, with amazing content, but man.. all those widgets make me fidget.
Dennis
· 1 year ago
You should check out Tumblr, it's kinda like minimalistic blogging.
Andy C
· 1 year ago
Aviv - What on earth do you mean ? The header is needlessly cluttered with an RSS icon (most readers know how to subscribe) and a search bar that will never be used. The footer is cluttered with licensing and copyright info.
Seriously though, I do like the simplicitly and presentation of this blog :-)
If you're not already aware, you might also like Scott Wallick's themes for WP - 'minimalist' style themes which are quite stunning IMHO.
I saw a great article that said most blogs are contaminated by widgets, noise, badges etc purely for the authors satisfaction rather than the most important audience - the reader.
Mike Bru
· 1 year ago
I think Bret has forgotten this blog.
Alex
· 1 year ago
Perhaps things have changed since you wrote this, but now you don't need the decorator. You can specify in your appconfig file that a handler requires login or is admin-only.
Great product. I am going to use very soon ( as soon as I get invitation :) ).
Louis Gray
· 1 year ago
I like all the references to "totally easy" and "equally easy". Makes those of who are Liberal Arts majors look the other way and go back to arguing over punctuation.
kaz
· 1 year ago
I'm with Louis, it's a bit intimidating to read all this "totally easy" talk as a non-coder....wondering if Bret and his readership have any advice with regard to the questions here:
Nice job! I think FriendFeed Stats might make the switch over to Google App Engine; it's small enough that it shouldn't take long. I'm going to play around with it tonight after work I hope.
Benjamin Golub
· 1 year ago
FriendFeed Stats is now running on App Engine....unfortunately I didn't realize that they limited count queries to only 1000 results. Which makes the global pages kind of useless :(
n8k99
· 1 year ago
oh well, that`s a little disappointing I guess, but nice to find the limits. :-)
Voyagerfan5761
· 1 year ago
So when does Blogger get ported to App Engine? :D Oh wait, App Engine is basically what Blogger, Gmail, and all the other Google services already run on isn't it?
bjtitus
· 1 year ago
What's the web framework you used?
simen
· 1 year ago
Looks like the webapp framework that comes with Google App Engine.
rob
· 1 year ago
As Bret said in his post, it's a custom one they use at FriendFeed that looks a lot like the webapp framework that comes with App Engine.
simen
· 1 year ago
That's what you get for not reading properly :) Although that also applies to bjtitus's original comment.
bjtitus
· 1 year ago
He only says "I used a web framework we use at FriendFeed" so I thought it might be publicly available.
Congratulations on the start of your blog. I have seen Scoble's (very fine) and other interviews of you, and you, in addition to Friendfeed, are amazing. You are not only someone who "gets it" in terms of putting the pieces together (product, personnel, marketing, background, etc.) but you're in the right space and are evidencing superior execution. If Google is the next Microsoft and Facebook is the next Google, Friendfeed (watch out Facebook) is the next Facebook. You'll be as rich as Zuckerberg will be (and maybe Page and Brin), and as much in a leadership industry position.
bootload
· 1 year ago
"... I don't think this blog will ever get millions of page views, but it is pretty cool that it could in theory :) I didn't have to configure anything. I didn't need to make an account system to make an administrative section of the site. And the entire blog is less than 100 lines of code. ..."
Any chance of showing the template or portions of the templates?
Bret Taylor
· 1 year ago
Sure. I will post the entire code base to Google Code in the next few weeks when I get a few moments.
defcon
· 1 year ago
Bret, thanks for being so passionate in what you do, your a genius and an inspiration to many, where can I learn to code webapps for app engine?
"... Your best bet is the App Engine Getting Started Guide ..."
Lame. It gives a "hello world" app and uses all but the simplest of techniques. All cgi and none of the django GAE capabilities. Hackernews has a (buggy) example of a django howto. But having looked at it and the copious amounts of code it requires maybe the "getting started" guide is a good idea, for now.
Great write up Bret. I can't wait to see some much more significant examples of what people are capable of delivering over app engine.
Vasudev Ram
· 1 year ago
Thanks for this post - useful.
- Vasudev
alaskareport
· 1 year ago
Fantastic primer on GAE..
Thanks
sebi
· 1 year ago
Cool, can't wait for an account to fiddle with it! :)
marcio
· 1 year ago
Seems cool but john doe`s like me and most of us are going to need to wait lined up. The 10.000 beta invites seem to be gone before the whole thing went on!
However, good job on your side.
kredi
· 1 year ago
Very nice article. I really liked it a lot and it gave me a few good pointers. Thanks!
Jared
· 1 year ago
any chance you can post the full tarball?
Pradeep
· 1 year ago
I've put together the working code for a simple blog app using examples above as a starting point.
I have some questions about the framework you use at FrienFeed:
- Is this framework publicly available? - Is this framework open-source?
Best Regards
Bret Taylor
· 1 year ago
It is not open source yet, but we have already started decoupling it from the rest of our code base to open source it soon. I will post about it on this blog when we do.
Vinicius Cavalcante
· 1 year ago
Bret,
It will be great for Python community because, despite the huge quantity of web application frameworks, the quality of many is low. I'm really excited. Especially because, according to your post, it looks like web.py and webapp.
Thanks!
btbytes
· 1 year ago
Hi Bret, I've put together the working code for a simple blog app using your examples above as a starting point.
Does anyone know how to effectively leverage the CategoryProperty property class (see http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/datastore...). I like the minimilist approach, but the first thing I would add is the ability to group posts into categories. This can be done by modelling relationships of course, something like a list of keys on one side; but I'm wondering if CategoryProperty provides a more elegant solution.
Tom
· 1 year ago
Bret,
Nice post. Since your webpage is written using Python, it looks like most of your webpages like FriendFeed uses the slash "/" so that it can be indexed by web search engine. Do you know how to do this in ASP.NET. All I've got is the query string which google cannot index like "Search.aspx?q=hello". How can I make it like so it is like a directory Search/Hello. Any clues. Thanks.
Stephan Branczyk
· 10 months ago
Tom, According to Matt Cutts (one of the Google Search Engine guys), most search engines are now able to spider links like "Search.aspx?q=hello". As long as you don't have too many url arguments, it should be ok.
That being said, links like those are still not easy to remember, or to navigate, so if you want something like mod_rewrite but for IIS, you'll need something like isapi_rewrite by Helicon. If you web app is basic, the free version of their isapi filter should work for you. That being said, if you'd be willing to switch platform, note that most other platforms usually have no problem using pretty urls (almost out of the box).
John Santiago
· 1 year ago
Hey Bret,
When will you release the Python web framework used in FrienFeed?
Any chance we can get a code download to deploy our own blog to App Engine?
123123
· 8 months ago
3123123123
gray - pythoughts
· 5 months ago
I wrote my own blogging system - well, I guess the point is that it's in continuous development, so technically, I'm writing my own blogging system - as well to document my progress as I dive into python and django. I learned a few things from this post so thanks!
All Comments
Seriously though, I do like the simplicitly and presentation of this blog :-)
If you're not already aware, you might also like Scott Wallick's themes for WP - 'minimalist' style themes which are quite stunning IMHO.
I saw a great article that said most blogs are contaminated by widgets, noise, badges etc purely for the authors satisfaction rather than the most important audience - the reader.
http://now-what.tumblr.com/post/31172670
vample
Congratulations on the start of your blog. I have seen Scoble's (very fine) and other interviews of you, and you, in addition to Friendfeed, are amazing. You are not only someone who "gets it" in terms of putting the pieces together (product, personnel, marketing, background, etc.) but you're in the right space and are evidencing superior execution. If Google is the next Microsoft and Facebook is the next Google, Friendfeed (watch out Facebook) is the next Facebook. You'll be as rich as Zuckerberg will be (and maybe Page and Brin), and as much in a leadership industry position.
Any chance of showing the template or portions of the templates?
Lame. It gives a "hello world" app and uses all but the simplest of techniques. All cgi and none of the django GAE capabilities. Hackernews has a (buggy) example of a django howto. But having looked at it and the copious amounts of code it requires maybe the "getting started" guide is a good idea, for now.
- http://www.42topics.com/dumps/django/docs.html
- http://groups.google.com/group/django-users/bro...
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=160219
- Vasudev
Thanks
However, good job on your side.
Its available at: http://github.com/btbytes/teh/tree/master
I have some questions about the framework you use at FrienFeed:
- Is this framework publicly available?
- Is this framework open-source?
Best Regards
It will be great for Python community because, despite the huge quantity of web application frameworks, the quality of many is low.
I'm really excited. Especially because, according to your post, it looks like web.py and webapp.
Thanks!
I've put together the working code for a simple blog app using your examples above as a starting point.
Its available at: http://github.com/btbytes/teh/tree/master
and the live site: http://teh.appspot.com/
Nice post. Since your webpage is written using Python, it looks like most of your webpages like FriendFeed uses the slash "/" so that it can be indexed by web search engine. Do you know how to do this in ASP.NET. All I've got is the query string which google cannot index like "Search.aspx?q=hello". How can I make it like so it is like a directory Search/Hello. Any clues. Thanks.
According to Matt Cutts (one of the Google Search Engine guys), most search engines are now able to spider links like "Search.aspx?q=hello". As long as you don't have too many url arguments, it should be ok.
That being said, links like those are still not easy to remember, or to navigate, so if you want something like mod_rewrite but for IIS, you'll need something like isapi_rewrite by Helicon. If you web app is basic, the free version of their isapi filter should work for you. That being said, if you'd be willing to switch platform, note that most other platforms usually have no problem using pretty urls (almost out of the box).
When will you release the Python web framework used in FrienFeed?
regards
Gis@SBL
Photogrammetry & Lidar Mapping