blog

Winna's!

Posted: 14-08-07

The New Zealand Computer World Magazine ICT Awards were announced very recently and not only had the GeoNet project been entered as finalist in this prestigious competition, but we only went and won the darned thing too!

We won for the project's website, the one I've been working on since I started at GNS Science here in Wellington in January 2006. My part as Web Developer was to assess, install and modify an off–the–shelf, Open Source content management system (We settled on Plone). I redesigned PLone's default 'skin' using GeoNet imagery and a fresh, easily navigable layout allowing the user to see at a glance, what the Project covers - and of that - what you're able to see online, via the horizontal navigation.

I also selected a Plone add–on (Known as a 'Product') which takes the databased content and deploys it as static–HTML pages, over the firewall and out onto the public–facing web–servers (of which there are three).

As always with these things, it's not just me. There's a team of us involved in the website upgrade and it comprised a whole lot more than just a CMS install. We also upgraded our public–facing webservers and re–engineered the failover/routing methods to allow for the extremely high load the site receives after a seismic event (read: DoS conditions).

The team comprises a mapping–guy versed in the use of open source mapping technologies, an area which has only really taken off outside of Google Maps this year. We have also have two software engineers versed in Java/Tapestry and our boss who has spent considerable time redesigning the network and selecting appropriate hardware and service providers to fit the job in hand.

Please take a look at the scanned–image taken from the Computer World Magazine article itself here.

Cheers,
Russ