The system is designed to be easy to navigate, not overwhelming or complex and visually pleasing.

The software is easy to customize, all the pages are built with templates that sysops can change. The entire site is managed with Frontier scripts, the pages and the ad info is stored in Frontier's object database. The scripts that render the pages run in a separate thread that's activated once per hour. Multiple forms can be submitted simultaneously because database access is protected via semaphores.

The pages are served statically, as normal HTML text files, but the pages are built using the most advanced website automation features in Frontier 4.1. I am serving the pages off a Macintosh running WebSTAR 2.0, at the end of an T1 line.

We are planning on releasing the software that manages this site, but will wait until the service is running smoothly. This may be the first software we charge for. I want to learn how this works before making any decisions about distribution.

For more information on Frontier, see http://www.scripting.com/frontier/.

Dave Winer
Wed, Feb 26, 1997