Updates on Travellerbook.com

I cracked open the code for travellerbook.com this summer, while I wasn't in school, and found out home much work there is to do there. It's pretty daunting, since above and beyond the technology upgrades I'd like to make, there's the issue of updating the look so it doesn't look like it's a 5 year old website.

Since I'm back in school and will likely be traveling during the winter break, I don't expect to be able to work on anything until next summer, and by then I'll probably have plenty of projects to work on that may have a higher priority than an old website that I'm pretty sure no one uses. I have some ideas to change that, but decisions on how far to take that will only be made when I'm not in school or in crunch time at work.

Thinking about version 3

I've been thinking recently about dusting off the TravellerBook.com code and updating it to the modern era. I haven't looked at either the code or the actual site in a while, but oh man, it's in need of some love. There are broken images everywhere, and let's face it, the site is ugly. It's in need of a new color scheme, and a new layout.

I switched my old subversion repositories over to git last night, and took a quick look at my TravellerBook.com history. The initial import was way back in 2006, and it's currently still running rails 2.2.2. It's definitely showing its age, and I've been thinking of using it as a practice app for upgrading to rails 3, since a lot of apps at work may need the treatment soon. It's also a good place to finally start using some the BDD tools and techniques I've been reading about, namely cucumber and RSpec.

The real reason I'd like to update though is because it's embarrassing to look at. I've used this site as a learning project all along, and I was clearly still learning the nuances of CSS and javascript. I've since learned CSS3, jQuery, and a number of other tools and frameworks. The original layout was inspired by friendster, and was started before I really learned how to design more usable websites. I'm still learning that part, but there's not better time than now to update the site and make it more functional. Adding in a BSS test suite will also help me sleep better knowing I'm not breaking everything all over the place as I do it. Well, that's the idea anyway.

Anyway, this being a busy time with work and school going at the same time, I don't expect to see much progress here, but I think this might be a good summer project (along with catching up on reading that I haven't had time to do with school and taking a vacation!)