Hi,

I imagine that as one of the leading web application frameworks
django is probably used by a number of institutions in the UK
Higher Education sector.

At the University of Bristol we are using it for bespoke application 
development against our central Oracle databases, to integrate into our core 
web systems such as the CMS, portal, and hopefully one day VLE.

Oxford are using it for mobile work, the Molly project,
Southampton for informatics I believe, etc.

It may be worth forming a HE community or perhaps at least a mail list to share 
experiences, if anyone is interested. I was involved in a community django 
event for the Bristol area last week, although that was more within the 
commercial sector...

http://pypi.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/events/django-lightning-talks-at-the-ilrt

Cheers,
Ed Crewe


> 
> ---------- Forwarded Message ----------
> Date: 02 November 2010 12:00 +0000
> From: "Mears K J (LCSS)" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Hosting websites for collaborative projects
> 
> 
> Here at Glamorgan we just create another instance of a django app we've
> developed.
> 
> 
> http://www.djangoproject.com/
> 
> 
> We create a subdomain with the name supplied to us by the research group.
> This gives the researchers a site where they can post news, events, pages,
> photos and documents. We can get them up and running in a few hours to
> satisfy the invariably urgent nature of the request, and then the
> researchers can neglect their content to their hearts' content. As a
> consequence we've got approx. 50+ research sites. ( at last count)
> 
> 
> The request comes from marketing into our bi-weekly planning meeting and
> then it'll get created. Marketing will then liaise with the researchers
> about how to actually use the site. The training department also runs a
> course on managing content in the site.
> 
> 
> In fact we probably need to have a bit of a cull of the less active sites...
> 
> 
> We don't have a system to recharge, though I often think we should since
> the researchers often have money allocated to create a site. The advantage
> for the university this way, is that we at least have some control over
> templates, making it possible to avoid some of the abominations that get
> created by researchers.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Regards
> 
> 
> Kevin
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 2 Nov 2010, at 10:01, Alison Kerwin wrote:
> 
> 
> Dear All,
> 
> At Bath we get a lot of requests from research groups asking us to create
> websites for collaborative projects. This includes hosting and often
> registration of different domain names. Requests are generally at short
> notice and require a huge investment of time to either investigate or
> develop.
> 
> Does anyone have a policy or system regarding these kinds of requests? We
> have one for domain names but not for hosting and I am keen to put
> something together.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Alison
> 
> - -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
> 
> Alison Kerwin
> Head of Web Services
> University of Bath
> 01225 385381
> 
> http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/webservices/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin Mears
> 
> 
> Senior Web Developer
> 
> University of Glamorgan / Prifysgol Morgannwg
> 
> Treforest, Pontypridd, CF37 1DL
> 
> Tel/Ff?n: 01443 482446
> 
> e-mail/e-bost: [log in to unmask]
> 
> ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
> 
> 
> 
> ----------------------
> Pete Walker, Assistant Director
> Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT)
> University of Bristol
> 8-10 Berkeley Square, Bristol, BS8 1HH
> Web: www.ilrt.bristol.ac.uk
> Tel: 0117 331 4395
> Fax: 0117 331 4396
>