Hi. The blog you’re reading, and all of its user and content-creation functionality, is entirely written using Google App Engine (Python), with Django. In this post I write about why I decided to write my own web applications to replace every web service I use, and why I decided to do this using Google App Engine.

One of the nastiest things about Google App Engine is its limited functionality in certain areas. Now, I’m a huge fan of the service, but I often tell friends that I don’t think it’s feasible for very large applications to the use it (not that it isn’t brilliantly scalable, but I’m talking about an ‘application’ like twitter, or a huge site like Amazon.) An example of an area with such lack of functionality, although remarkable in its own right, is the App Engine datastore.

The internet’s simplest introduction to writing a facebook application with Google App Engine, in Python, with Django. So let’s start with an easy introduction to writing a facebook app with app engine. First of all, you need to sign up for an application with Facebook. You can do this here, just click “set up new application” once you’ve added the facebook developer application, and give them your preferences. You should then come to a page full of settings, with titles like “Essential Information”, and “Basic…