Publishing a web site on Google App Engine
Google App Engine is a great way to host a small site. I moved my wife's site over to it (as a hosting service) and got to learn Python along the way. I've also built a Python-based webapp / publishing framework for App Engine - version 3 just uploaded.
After several years of hosting my wife's site at Network Solutions I decided to give Google App Engine a try and see how hard it would be to host a small site on their 'cloud' infrastructure.
Turns out that learning Python is the hardest part (and not very at that). The tools and API are simple, but powerful enough for my needs.
Along the way I built up a modest publishing framework to build the site on - also used for this site (www.homsteaddeveloper.com). I just uploaded a new version of the framework, which you can find hosted at Google Code:
http://code.google.com/p/gaepublisher/
(Ya, I know, my 15 year old is already teasing my about the name). Features so far include:
- Article publishing
- Document publishing
- Discussions - areas, topics, comments
- Registration/membership
- Newsletter support
- Automated RSS feed
- Configurable functionality
- Customizable page layout, style
- English / fluent URL style for articles (v3)
- Send email message to subscribers (v3)
More info can be found over at the google code site. I've enjoyed working with Google App Engine and I'm curious as to where they are going to take it in the future (Java anyone?).
