A Project Log (plog)

In the course of these postings I intend to update readers on the progress of a project I am undertaking. The gist of my project is to create a web application to facilitate user creatable online courses. I intend it to become a synthesis of an online university, a blog and a social networking site. As such it will contain functionality for creating course materials in the form of blog-type postings, designing quizzes both multiple choice and free form and common social network features similar to those found on linkedin, twitter, etc. I think it's an ambitious project and I don't know where it will end up but it will at least be a good learning experience. I plan to release it under GPL and since I will be sharing my step by step design experiences it should be easily implementable by anybody who wishes to steal my idea (giving me deserved credit, no doubt).

Anyway I have already started on the project but I will in the course of posting about it back up and start from the beginning thereby giving the full design cycle. It will be a Java web application using Spring MVC as the framework and JPA for data access. I started the project on Struts 2, with which I'm already familiar, but decided to switch to Spring since I wanted to learn it. So far I haven't regretted it although there are things I like about Struts that I miss in Spring MVC (more later) and it has been a steep learning curve. But, hey, learning is what it's all about.

So, in subsequent posts I will lay out my basic design and then move through implementation details as I encounter (encountered) them. Hopefully it will be an interesting experience for the reader, as it has been for me.