About Hyrum's Hiking
In addition to spending time in the mountains, I also dabble in software development. This site, in part, is an opportunity for me to experiment with different technologies. I've nicknamed the backend software HikeHy. All the code was written by me, with a few exceptions which are noted in the source. I have also borrowed concepts and ideas from various Open Source projects.
Hyrum's Hiking is currently running HikeHy version 3.0.5. It is written in Python, using Cheetah as a templating mechanism. The data for the site is kept in a relational database, currently MySQL. Trip report pages are dynamically generated from the database text, cached using Cheetah and then sent to the client. The cache is updated at least hourly.
The photo gallery is a custom system modeled after Simple PHP Gallery. The gallery integrates well with the other parts of the site, and supports caching of thumbnails and image pages. The books page is generated dynamically using information from Amazon Web Services based upon ISBNs from each of the books.
My current development platform is a laptop running Ubuntu Linux. I manage my source code using a Subversion repository, and I generally work on several different patches at any given time. I try to write standards-compliant code, and use Firefox, on Windows and Linux, as my primary testing platform. As a result some features may not work in Internet Explorer.
If you would like more information about HikeHy or other aspects of this site, please contact me.
Many thanks to Bruce Christensen for his help in bug finding and design vetting the site.