Taking Flickr to
Gamma
Some things we should
have learned by now
Cal Henderson

Cal Henderson
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 2

No scaling stuff
(Today)
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 3

Book!
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 4

Buy my book
(Or Theo’s)
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 5

Construction workers Socially
& PE teachers acceptable
The nerd scale
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 6

We’ve come a long way
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 7

Lots of new stuff
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 8

Not many examples
(Hello LJ)
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New ground
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 10

Things we Things we
already knew needed to know
Something about HTML
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 11

What we learned,
Wasn’t unique
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 12

So how are we
different?
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 13

It takes outsiders to see
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 14

Some ideas, then?
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 15

Lesson 1 - ?
Plan for maintenance
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 16

Advance notice
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Disable by component
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Tell your users
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 19

Clear escalation paths
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 20

Who do I call?
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 21

In-process alerts
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 22

Communication!
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 23

Stats tracking is hard
(and important)
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 24

So many stats
So little time
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 25

More graphs
Much more graphs
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 26

Cacti
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 27

Ganglia
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 28

Web stats – usually bad
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 29

Create dashboards
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 30

Familiar?
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 31

http://visualcomplexity.com/vc/
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 32

APIs = cool
Who knew?
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 33

Forces clean interfaces
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 34

Regression testing
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 35

Beware abuse
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 36

Track usage carefully
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 37

I heart (clean) URLs
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 38

Never break me
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 39

Careful of middle tiers
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 40

Don’t navigate by URL
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 41

Don’t expose auto-incs
Maybe
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 42

/noun/verb/ !
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 43

Hiring people is tough
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 44

Good people have jobs
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 45

Giving notice
Moving house
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 46

Older the product,
Longer the induction
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 47

Documents saved my life
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 48

Release early
Release often
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 49

Under construction!
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 50

Perpetual beta
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 51

Small increments
Visible progress
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 52

Less moving parts
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 53

Lightweight QA
No safety net
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 54

Own the process
Not the feature
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 55

Avoid branches
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 56

Shared development
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 57

No developer
Is an island
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 58

Have good tools
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 59

One touch deploy
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 60

Automate everything
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Many tools
Componentize!
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 62

Always deployable
agile
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 63

Pragmatic
Make it work
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 64

Beautiful code
Not a priority
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 65

Disclaimers
• This stuff wont work everywhere
• Takes the right people and process
• Like XP, it doesn’t start working until you
do it all
• But then it pays off
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 66

Photo credits
flickr.com/photos/fliegender/8941214/ flickr.com/photos/lichtundschatten/110813652/
flickr.com/photos/katastrophik/12650255/ flickr.com/photos/thelastminute/193918703/
flickr.com/photos/sus/32901004/ flickr.com/photos/pbo31/78184337/ flickr.com/photos/maisonbisson/109211670/
flickr.com/photos/philipbroadway/22025971/ flickr.com/photos/malcubed/41022703/
flickr.com/photos/photomonkey/12746989/ flickr.com/photos/alexander_johmann/213426525/
flickr.com/photos/redjar/123408018/ flickr.com/photos/qtr/149754419/
flickr.com/photos/sneedleflipsock/102011111/ flickr.com/photos/kevincollins/115305184/
flickr.com/photos/beeep/131604119/ flickr.com/photos/eyefruit/217393789/
flickr.com/photos/nictalopen/114705846/ flickr.com/photos/soutra/83357167/ flickr.com/photos/neil_b/106927604/
flickr.com/photos/cumisky/13166157/ flickr.com/photos/teo/5318814/ flickr.com/photos/myflickrbox/130136944/
flickr.com/photos/kk/5057390/ flickr.com/photos/colloidfarl/129252301/ flickr.com/photos/tellumo/163206518/
flickr.com/photos/andyarmstrong/48981211/ flickr.com/photos/holgalomaniac/132990249/
flickr.com/photos/junjan/37419367/ flickr.com/photos/piper/193387683/ flickr.com/photos/yogi/203336705/
flickr.com/photos/colloidfarl/36417034/ flickr.com/photos/pulpolux/11187139/ flickr.com/photos/peyri/10207629/
flickr.com/photos/paseodelsur/217105599/ flickr.com/photos/simpologist/42391997/
flickr.com/photos/mg7een/174664442/ flickr.com/photos/akash_k/125489887/ flickr.com/photos/syldavia/6289438/
flickr.com/photos/antitezo/138660912/ flickr.com/photos/jazzmasterson/3038597/
flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/109584042/ flickr.com/photos/b-tal/103294687/
flickr.com/photos/candiedwomanire/1651870/ flickr.com/photos/faberitius/200493526/
flickr.com/photos/timdorr/242424387/ flickr.com/photos/joao/59663452/ flickr.com/photos/ratanx/99851908/
flickr.com/photos/kimberlyann/180343167/ flickr.com/photos/ennor/102259868/
flickr.com/photos/agaylon/184531423/ flickr.com/photos/ricardo_ferreira/193858876/
flickr.com/photos/elsie/5135230/ flickr.com/photos/piper/5468699/ flickr.com/photos/bigtallguy/177275929/
flickr.com/photos/roblee/106905099/ flickr.com/photos/arkangel/134456927/
flickr.com/photos/drewcipher/98083527/ flickr.com/photos/kevinsteele/103641665/
flickr.com/photos/stewart/100711553/ flickr.com/photos/bibi/146402478/ flickr.com/photos/takamp/36749900/
flickr.com/photos/skyshanghai/150177941/ flickr.com/photos/tysonneil/189721713/
flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/44950329/
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 67

I work for Yahoo
Yahoo is hiring
Talk to me about it
Web Apps Summit, 13-14th September 2006 68