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The Software
Each MacZealots author has a different method when it comes to writing an article. The common denominator? Mac OS X Tiger. Apple's latest and greatest operating system lets each of the authors create articles that push your Mac to its limits. Because of Tiger's power, each author can focus on their speciality using the same set of tools. For instance, Ryan can focus on Web technologies, Justin on software development and Matt on general applications. It's never been easier.
Aside from Mac OS X Tiger, all articles are planned using OmniOutliner 3. OmniOutliner allows us to create a generic template to outline each section of an article, set a status for it (Writing, Editing, Finished). Once mapped in Outliner, each author uses their text editor of choice. Justin takes advantage of the speed and macros of TextMate, Ryan harnesses the power of BBEdit and Matt enjoys the collaboration abilities offered by SubEthaEdit.
Graphics are created and edited using Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is the de facto standard when it comes to graphic manipulation. All screen shots are manually taken using Apple's Screen Grab utility and John Haney's Backdrop. Backdrop creates a full size white window that works as a great background for screen shots.
The Backend
The MacZealots.com site is built-upon the popular Movable Type software package, developed by Six Apart.
While Movable Type is often thought of as a pure "weblogging engine" it excels nicely as a solid, robust and extensible Content Management System. Granted, we have gone to some pretty impressive means to stretch Movable Type to do things it really wasn't designed for, but it has scaled well, and has handled everything we've thrown at it.
The Hosting
Behind all of the "heavy lifting" is a rock- solid hosting platform at (mt) Media Temple. Our site is hosted on a powerful Linux box running Apache, PHP, MySQL, Perl - all of the top-notch tools of an enterprise hosting environment. If you're interested in finding out more about them, you can visit their website at:
The Code
On top of everything is a custom set of XHTML templates that maintain the structure of the site, while the style is taken care of by lean, standards-compliant CSS file.
Truly separating content from presentation allows our site to be equally enjoyed in traditional desktop browsers, on PDAs, cell phones and even accessible to other devices such as screen readers and RSS Aggregators - something many popular sites still suffer from.
The Fuel
This Web site could not be created without the soups, salads, sandwiches, pastries, and drinks offered by the West Lafayette Panera Bread. Many a weekend has been spent there with three laptops churning away on site content while munching on Cobblestones and sipping Latte's and Diet Pepsi. When the doors locked at Panera, the MacZealots crew would migrate to Village Coffeeshop for late night work. Sadly, the owner of Village abruptly shut its doors forever on April 09, 2005. The MacZealots crew is now looking for a new late night home.
