Introducing Fotofolio
Instead of reading programming.reddit, dreaming up topics and posting articles on my blog, I have instead opted to work on a CMS for my sweetheart Kristel, both to serve as her online portfolio and to be a fun small project for me to code.
Rationale
The reason why I decided to code a CMS from the ground up is obviously because there aren’t enough CMS’s in the world; who really cares about Joomla!, Drupal, Plone, Alfresco and Ion? Some even have the magic word “enterprise” thrown in there somewhere. CMS, ERP, CRM, MRP… for free?? Pffscht, let’s make another one of those 3 letter acronym software.
Kevin Barnes at Codecraft gives 3 reasons to reinvent the wheel. My personal favourite: reinventing the wheel causes reinventors to understand wheels. Additionally, having a custom made CRM out of love is unbeatable. For me, this application is an opportunity to learn a thing or two, have fun and do other things like working too hard at the office.
Fotofolio
Fotofolio is the name given to my CRM. The focus of this application is to provide designers with a simple solution to obtaining a online portfolio. As the name suggests, there is a heavy emphasis on displaying images and the application allows for much of that.
The interface and features are sparse, both to make it a straightforward and easy to use web application. A user has the ability to create and manage multiple worksets. Each workset can consist of multiple workpieces and each workpiece has an associated image. The published portion of the web application will allow the user to organize the layout according to these conceptual rules.
Technology
I decided to implement Fotofolio using Ruby On Rails. After flirting with the framework quite a bit, it was obvious that all that hype surrounding it is not unwarranted. Other candidates were Django, Turbogears and even Spring. In my opinion, for the scope of my application, only Django stood a chance. However, Rails still won out, whatever you may say, Pythonistas. Migrations rule!
Release
The first release is planned for soon, soon after Kristel’s portfolio is delivered. I do not plan to have features such as skin packs available right away. So far, the bare minimum of features is expected; i.e. putting some pictures in, displaying them on the other side. It is currently 65-70% complete.
It is expected to be an executable pile of source code rather than being an online service, and it will be open source. The license has yet to be determined.
Request
I admit that I’m a bit of a doosie with making up names. I need advice from you 3 people reading my blog about another name to give to this baby. Please let me know of any suggestions you may have.
Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 @ 11:14 pm 
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May 27th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
The name Fotofolio sounds fine to me – its not like Joomla! or the others make any sense (Drupal translates to Drop…I guess you might want to have a logo for your project?)
Its a shame that someone as uncreative as me is the first to comment on our project. Though from talking with you on it, I’ll just reiterate I’m glad you chose RoR not only for the features offered in the framework, but simply because I understand it as well, hehe 
I’ll also agree with you on reinventing the wheel (it certainly gave me a great appreciation for the work done on the CMS I primarily work with, Drupal). Let me know how the work is going on it and unlike the name, I might be able to offer you some suggestions on the code (or just tell you how great you are, hehe ^_^)
May 29th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
thanks for the offer. I will definitely come to you for code advice =)
I’ll go with fotofolio for now… subject to change! I plan to put out some screenshots very soon, as soon as the administration area is more presentable!
June 20th, 2007 at 10:28 am
I can tell you from experience that there is nothing like rolling your own. You learn, you gain appreciation for all the others that came before you, etc, yada yada yada.
I really just wanted to weigh in on the name. Fotofolio sounds too long. I’ve checked and what I would have recommended ‘fotolio’ seems to be taken. What you got to do is scan through a dictionary or favourite book and just choose a word at random. Or write an equation that will pick a word from a number of books. And then you’ll have another tidbit story to tell the audience at the Coder of the Year awards.
June 20th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Thank you for your comment Oneil. You are right, besides being taken, Fotofolio is too long.
I registered Kerfuffl.com, one letter and one syllable shorter. I also now own zompf.com due to our common friend’s suggestion
Still on the lookout for a name and wishing I’d get a coder of the year award!