EuroPython website sprint a success - many new features implemented

Last weekend the web team met in Berlin (and was supported by one member remotely) in the rooms of Veit Schiele Communications GmbH in order to bring the EuroPython 2014 website software forward. The team under the leadership of Markus Holtermann implemented the following new features:

• A short while ago we made some heavy changes to the main menu. Unfortunately the user experience wasn’t the way we expected it to be. Thus we got some comments on the EuroPython mailing list. It took us some time to decide how to change the way the menu should work. Eventually, a click on a main menu item only toggles the menu as of now (GitHub issue #103)
• We want to generate the badges (and other stuff for the conference) directly from the user data you provide on the website. This presented us with some kind of challenge as you will see in the next bullet point, too. We decided that the singe point of truth for the user data is the user profile. We therefore added a field where you can enter your interests. (GitHub issue #105)
• As said before, the single point of truth for the user data is and will be the user profile. Unfortunately, during the purchase process of a ticket, we only have information about the buyer, not any of the intended ticket users. Although we didn’t change this part in the update (and we won’t change it in the future), you are now able to assign a ticket to another user. This is incredible useful for those buyers ordering multiple tickets, eg. for their colleagues or friends. To assign the ticket to somebody else, ask him/her for the user name and assign the ticket to him/her from your purchase view. If the intended user doesn’t have a account yet, ask him to create one. All tickets that are not assigned to somebody will use the first and last name given during purchase. (GitHub issue #101)
• Since many attendees are not from Germany, we looked for a way to hand out SIM cards. Due to legal restrictions this is not that simple in Germany (you normally need to present a photo ID). Fortunately we found a reseller where we become some kind of reseller ourselves (it’s a bit more complicated than that ;) ). Hence we will offer SIM cards within the next days that you can buy beforehand and you can pick up during check-in (more details soon). (GitHub issue #100)
• When you modify your profile and try to upload a new avatar, but there are errors in some other fields, the avatar gets lost. We solve this by adding front-end validation to this and many other forms. (GitHub issue #47)
• If you are looking for a job (in your real live, not the one on the internet :D), or if you think about getting a new job for whatever reason, you can now opt-in (and later opt-out) of job offers by our sponsors. We will not hand over any of your data to the sponsors. The sponsors have to give us their offer and we will send it only to those users interested in job offers. (GitHub issue #78)
• The list of your purchases now shows canceled purchases too. (GitHub issue #102)

Apart from those changes interesting to you as an attendee, loads of other changes made it into production. If you are interested, have a look at our repository on GitHub: https://github.com/EuroPython/djep

All new features went into production today with an update of the portal software.

Thanks a lot to the web team and all other sprinters for their dedicated work on the EuroPython 2014 web software.

Source: blog.europython.eu, Mar 30, 2014, 20:30pm CEST