This is a colophon — a description about the production and details of this site. (Meta-minutiæ, if you will.)

Design

Pages are 500px wide, in a one-column setup.

Main header fonts are generally Helvetica Neue Light, or if that’s not available, Arial (or another system sans-serif) is used instead.

The body (and small header) font is Gentium Basic.

Custom fonts (including Gentium Basic) are loaded via the CSS3 @font-face tag, rather than SIFR or Cufón. You can read about that here or here.

This design is open source. You can find the design-specific files here and here within the repository.

Backend

The meat-and-potatoes of the site consist of a custom-built blogging app (among other tools) programmed in Python and powered by the Django framework.

Unlike most Django sites, this is compiled into static HTML pages by django-medusa, a Django app I'm currently building.

Source Code

The current refactor of this site was started in October 2011 and hasn't been open-sourced yet.

The previous version of this site is open source: Django backend code, templates, CSS design files, and server configuration examples — check them out on github. (Most of the view/URL code and template/design bits are the same as what you see here, the primary difference being the django-medusa static HTML compilation bits.)

Hosting

Since the site is statically compiled, hosting is fairly straightforward: files are stored in Amazon S3 (with static website configuration: [1], [2]) and actually served via Amazon CloudFront or the EdgeCast CDN — I'm still experimenting with front-facing options so it's subject to change rather regularly.

Oh, and I register most of my domains through Dynadot (referral code: 7l18x7D6i7Gep) and the tig.as domain is registered directly at the .AS Domain Registry.

License

All content on this site is © 2001–2012 Mike Tigas. all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted:

  • Text content:
    • You’re free to quote and otherwise reuse text content within the bounds of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. This means that I explicitly give you the ability to quote me, but you must give me credit and you cannot use any content for commercial purposes without my written consent. (And I do give permission — just ask!)
  • Photos:
    • Some of my Flickr images have Creative Commons licensing — click the image and check the original photo page for details. If you can’t find license information, don’t use it without asking.
  • Design and backend source code:

Questions?

Questions about any of this? Seek out my contact information and ask me — I’d be glad to tell you more.