So, Chris Pirillo & Friends has got you hooked, and now you want more. You want more information, more secrets, more juicy details than you could ever get by watching a guy type at his computer? Well, here’s some information I’ll bet you didn’t know:

The entire page is composed of nothing but Javascript and PHP … and it’s mostly Javascript that keeps the site running.

We have an administrative “back end” (if you want to call it that). It allows us to preview video before posting it to the main site. Officially, this isn’t being developed anymore (although I’m still maintaining it because the ops like it) because we have …

Wicket, the bot. Wicket is our bot, programmed by bear in Python (I believe). Wicket changes the topic and status, answers the most common questions (”what are those flashing lights?”), and makes Chris coffee in the morning (ok, that feature hasn’t been programmed yet, but it’s coming.

There is no actual API behind the scenes, and there’s nothing pretty about what we’re doing: this is one big hack, and I am absolutely amazed it has worked thus far. I guess you could call our PHP files a collective API, but that would still be a slap in the face to every decent programmer out there ;)

You can get your stream added to the community list. Just ask bear or LordKaT (that’s me) in the channel.

The channel is maintained by (at the time of this writing) 20 Ops and 15 half-ops. You may think that is a little excessive, but consider this: Chris is usually live during nighttime hours, and the channel can regularly reach well over 100 participants.

Alright, so maybe that wasn’t the dirt and drama that you were expecting. The truth is that there isn’t much drama behind the scenes: everyone involved in this community project is pretty darn cool. We sing, we dance, we have a good time, and I occasionally light people on fire.

So, feel free to stop by Chris Pirillo & Friends!

[tags]chris pirillo, streaming media[/tags]