The Humble Gourmand

The Humble Gourmand Colophon

Some visitors may be interested to know how The Humble Gourmand was built, and what technologies it uses. Here's the low-down, from top-level to bottom level:

Photography

The vast majority of this site's photography was taken by Alison L. McConnell, editor of The Humble Gourmand. Several images on the site were taken either with permission or from the public domain. Alison's axe is a Nikon D40x.

Web Standards

The HG website strives to use web standards for the purposes of content, presentation, and scripting. These practices, codified and standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium along with other standards bodies, ensure open and simple standards designed to be able to function on all standards-compliant platforms and for all users, including those with disabilities.

Blueprint CSS

To get the basic layout finished in a hurry, we used Blueprint CSS to provide the grid framework for the site's layout. It definitely made it quick and easy, and helped avoid some of the common time-sucks involved in standards-based web development (read: hunting IE bugs). Check it out.

Django

Though perhaps a little overkill for the time being, we built out the site using the Django web framework, based on the Python programming language, much to the chagrin of Jackson's rails-loving co-workers. Django helped give us a custom-developed framework that we can easily extend later without too much of a headache, and it provided a great out-of-the-box CMS interface.

Webfaction

The Humble Gourmand's site is hosted on Webfaction, which provides Django-friendly web hosting for a great price. Check it out if you're looking for a great host, whether you're using Django, Rails, Drupal, Joomla, or just about anything else!

Other People's Work

Like all things based on open-source code, there is a lot in here that was done by other people — we just put all the blocks together in a nice little package. If you're curious about any other details, contact us.