The RedBubble website contains primarily dynamic content, managed by a Content Management System (CMS). The home page has a transitioning image from a set that changes regularly - based on varying themes, focussing on specific styles of artwork or featured artists.
There are numerous blogs and articles being updated on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Collections of 'featured' artists and work based around different themes are changing on a regular basis.
The search options start within different base categories (t-shirts or artwork), flowing into subsequent categories based around defined 'tags' for each piece of work. The CMS can serve up narrowly defined search results, eg: t-shirts + for girls + funny + humour + cool + red = 2 results on date of posting.
The amount of work that gets uploaded every day means the CMS needs to be able to cope with large volumes of work. The ability for each user to update the artwork files and details for their account also requires the CMS to be able to keep up with overwriting existing information, as well as uploading new details.
Programming Languages
The site is based on XHTML with programming languages such as Ruby on Rails used to extend the basic functionality. The job description for potential programmers to work (http://www.redbubble.com/jobs) specifies Ruby on Rails, Java and C# as key languages used. The ad also specifies RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) and NoSQL (Not Only SQL) as database solutions.
Ruby on Rails is an open source programming framework, and is the basis for other dynamic websites/applications such as Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/), Backpack (http://www.backpackit.com/), JustinTV (http://www.justin.tv/), Urban Dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/) and Writeboard (http://www.writeboard.com/).
The transitioning images on the home page seem to be done using Java and CSS, making it accessible for people that don't have the Flash plugin. The Fancy Uploader for users adding work is created with Flash, but there is an alternative "old school uploader" available for those without the Flash plugin, which uses XHTML instead.
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