Technical details

Web server

We are using Apache 2 as our web server, running under Linux (distribution is Debian).

Since the web pages are created dynamically by a program written im Perl 5 we are able to employ the mod_perl module for Apache.

Database

Parts of the information needed to create the pages are stored in a database. We use PostgreSQL for this purpose.

Framework

The program for creating the web pages is written using the Catalyst framework, implementing the MVC Design Pattern. For the View element of the framework the Template Toolkit is used. In the Model element the DBIx::Class module is used for the communication with the database.

Search Engine

The search function of our pages is based on the open source (UNIX) version of the mnoGoSearch Search Engine.

JavaScript Editor

Users which have enabled JavaScript in their browsers can edit texts using the CKEditor (formerly FCKEditor).

Video Player

For displaying video content flowplayer is used.

Hosting

The server runs on a virtual server of the Department of Physics of the Freie Universität Berlin. Thus its primary name is vs30.physik.fu-berlin.de. It also can be contacted under the names www.sonnentaler.net and www.sonnentaler.org. These domains are being administrated by the Computer center ZEDAT of the Freie Universität Berlin. Finally, visitors of www.lamap.de also get redirected to our site.

Browser compatibility

It is our aim to make all pages valid XHTML 1.0 strict and we hope that we have achieved this aim as far as possible. Of course, we also try to use only valid CSS. Unfortunately, not all browsers implement the CSS standard correctly which makes it rather hard (and sometimes impossible) to achieve that all pages look the same (and avoid visual "kinks") when viewed with different browsers. While testing we have concentrated on making sure that the pages get displayed correctly when using Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer (with the older version 6 of the Internet Explorer some problems remain, and we strongly recommend to upgrade to a newer version than IE6 already for security reasons).

Contact

For questions concerning the technical details please contact Jens Thoms Törring. The source code for the program used for the web site is available on request (not including the contents!).

While writing the program for "Sonnentaler" I encountered a number of problems. A description of a more or less random selection with solutions I finally used can be found here.

Letzte Aktualisierung: 14.10.2024