Special Report: YelloSoft Internals

What empowers us? What do our guts look like? Let's take a look at some of the technology behind YelloSoft.

Taking the bottom-up approach, we start with the Internet Service Provider. YelloSoft.us is a registered Gandi domain. Price, availability, documentation, and technical support are excellent. Our server runs on Ubuntu Linux, a strong and stable server OS. We also use Ubuntu as a test/development bed for new software.

Above that, we use Apache and PHP. If you cruise to www.yellosoft.us, you'll notice it points to the main website: yellosoft.us. The main website is organized as a blog. We're powered by a frog, Frog CMS to be exact. It is lightweight and easy to use. Frog is also minimalist, a trait YelloSoft regards highly. In the past, we've used Joomla!, MODx, Jaws, and Drupal.

Our XTHML, CSS, and RSS all validate. Each page is compliant with W3C-WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines. The browser shouldn't matter, the operating system shouldn't matter, the network speed shouldn't matter, but the user does matter. We've done everything we can to make this website viewable by a majority of web browsers, even text browsers. The World Wide Web isn't just for Explorer users or Firefox users. It's for everyone.

In order to serve pages faster, we use Google Page Speed, Web Page Analyzer, and certain Apache configurations and tools. As a result, we can pump content much faster (tested with Website Speed Test). The content itself is optimized using Smush.it and Online YUI Compressor. Our HTML is hand coded, so you won't see any spaceballs or other useless DreamWeaver artifacts. It is true that parts of this site were made with notepad, but most edits are made with TextPad, TextMate or Vim. (It's difficult to manage a website with a program that has only one undo operation.)

Other mini-sites like Timekeeper, Wordcount, and the lovable Slug are born of PHP and Ruby on Rails. Both frameworks are easy to pick up, learn, and deploy. We love experimenting with new technology! To see our latest project at any time, visit test.yellosoft.us.

Our multiplatform desktop software is made with appropriate tools: Visual Studio for Windows, Xcode for Mac, and Glade for Linux. IOS7Crypt is a good example. The program shares a common C++ codebase, builds with native tools, and bundles according to each OS install type (MSI/DMG/DEB). We do a lot of work in advance of our users. Usage is easy. Installation is easy. More importantly, uninstallation is easy. (Otherwise, it would be verging on malware.)

That's it for now. Over and out.