Finally seem to have gotten my head 1/3 of the way around the Python framework called “Django”, creating a site for birdwatchers within the county of Herford here:

http://birders-hf.gplrank.de/ranking/

I used Django 1.1.x for the site, and while some issues with mod_python seem to persist, everything is working generally well (using mysql as a db backend).

thanks Django folks, this is really cool stuff! The irc channel #django on irc.freenode.org has been of great help, too.