Out There for Argyll









Development

WordPress as Business Directory#2

Wednesday, 23rd July, 2008 | Development, News | None

So I did it and we’re in beta-testing phase at business.forargyll.com. Really chuffed that I have the functionality up and running …
How did I manage it? As I indicated in my last post I decided that I had to control the data that users input so using the built-in profile was essential, but this [...]

Getting a Business Directory Together in Wordpress #1

Thursday, 10th July, 2008 | Development, News | None

Developing a business directory using WordPress and its user profiles functionality is a challenge – of this there is no doubt. Aside from the issues of why one would use WordPress in this way*, there are two main challenges:

Making the profiles searchable
Giving the profiles a meaningful and useable taxonomy — altho’ this might be sorted [...]

In the Calm After …

Monday, 7th July, 2008 | Bug Hunt, Development, News | None

We have found space to celebrate our newly minted top 100 ranking on the Googleplex for the word ‘Argyll’. At 80 we have halved our rank in just over a week. We like that. We also like the new google map we have implemented on the front page – well, it has been said that [...]

Outage Outrage

Saturday, 5th July, 2008 | Bug Hunt, Development, News | None

You go away, for a lovely lovely wedding in my case, and you come back and the hounds of hell have been unloosed upon all those things which need no maintenance nor input 110% of the time. They’ve riven and raved, slathered and shredded, howled and had a ball with around thirty per cent of [...]

New Communities, Life Stories & Improved Google Ranking

Thursday, 26th June, 2008 | Community News, Development, News | None

A busy fortnight has resulted in two new community blogs, Colglen and Jura, as well as the first entry in LifeStories, and a third community on the verge of joining our expanding network. One that site is up and running, we’re going to finish off the formatting of lifestories and then move onto the [...]

Collating Everyone’s News

Wednesday, 18th June, 2008 | Community News, Development, News | None

This week sees the launch of http://localnews.forargyll.com, another incremental step in the project’s ongoing collation of news stories and blog entries around and about Argyll.
This blog is entirely automated and collects stories from all the Argyll blogs to combine them in a 20 entry RSS feed for the OFTA front page which is refreshed [...]

Search Engine Optimisation

Wednesday, 18th June, 2008 | Development, News | None

One of the constant learning curves for any web developer is search engine optimisation. New techniques, new services and new search software all combine to make the art an ever-changing alchemy. We’re interacting with this element quite heavily at the moment, and this accounts for the changes to the main page, the links to the [...]

Forthcoming ForArgylls

Friday, 6th June, 2008 | Development, News | None

We’re now onto the next stage of developing this website and the buzz is that we have three (possibly four) complex blogs to implement:

broadband.forargyll.com – The challenge with the broadband is to measure the speed of individual’s connection, save the info, and then allow the individual to identify their position on a map of Argyll, [...]

Dashboard Gobbledegook

Wednesday, 4th June, 2008 | Community News, Development, Members, News | None

So some communities have been experiencing the following as a problem on their dashboard.

If you see this when you log in, please let Charles know and he’ll clean it out! charles [at] fyneside [dot] com

Twitpress

Wednesday, 28th May, 2008 | Community News, Development, News | Comments Off

I know, I know, this sounds odd, “TwitPress” – almost like “It’s blogging stoopid” or somesuch. No this is better.
The idea is that if any member of a community uses twitter.com, they can now post from their community blog to twitter. Why? To increase our readership. To improve our search engine ranking. To be fully [...]