This InsideRIA podcast is a behind the scenes look at Protagonize, a newly launched "choose your own adventure" and colobarative writing community site. Nick Bouton the creator joins me to talk about his experiences. Download the podcast here and you can subscribe here.

I also have a screencast of the Nick walking me through parts of Protagonize.com:

[Sorry for the lack of editing this time around, it's hard to get it done while traveling;-)]

Nick's a "devigner", not only built the site but he also designed it. The site has an Ajax front end with .Net on the serverside. He's using .Net 2.0 with the Yahoo User Interface Library (YUI) which is an Ajax toolkit from Yahoo. He might look at switching to .Net 3.5 when the MVC framework comes out, but he's in no rush.

Nick chose to use YUI for couple different reasons: familiarity from a past project, lots of docs and examples ,Yahoo listens to the community, and finally releases are frequent enough (quarterly) to feel confident in it. YUI is not as integrated as Ajax for ASP.Net but that's not a big deal and has certain advantages. Nick also likes the YUI Javascript compressor.

Nick opted to use TinyMCE for rich text editing. Telerik has a nice commercial one but that wasn't in Nick's hobby budget:)

YUI license is BSD licensed and very open. The JS file size for Scrutinize is about 150-200k compressed, but ~500kb uncompressed. Nick suggests using on demand loading to improve performance.

Nick also uses YSlow and has implemented most of the YSlow suggestions, but some aren't practical for small sites and start ups. Nick also discusses the sprite technique for images and optimizations. Use GZip! Nick also suggests loading your scripts last where possible.

Nick has design and art school background too, so uses some simple rules to make sure his sites look good. Even though it takes longer it's worth it!

We wrap up with a little chat about building traffic and community for your new site. Nick's even experimented with Facebook social ads and the conversion rates were really high, good to know.

I'm looking for examples of RIAs no matter the size, the technology or the industry just leave me a comment and we'll consider it for the podcast! Feedback is always appreciated.