Events by Category

I wanted to post a tweet saying that Salt Lake Sites had the most complete Halloween page for the Salt Lake Valley.

Unfortunately, the design listed Halloween web sites in the directory and Halloween events in the calendar. I did not have a page with complete information.

So, I jerry-rigged the directory to show events. The problem is that many events repeat. Odyssey Dance will perform Thriller a dozen times in October. To avoid repetition, I only show the first occurence of an event and created the page Category Events that shows all events for a category (even the completed events).

The directory page Denver Color - Football shows only the next Broncos home game. The catEvents page shows the full home season schedule. The events will disappear in a few months.

After this change, the first line in Salt Lake Sites - Halloween looks like:

Upcoming Events: Thriller (2011-10-12), Undead Race (2011-10-15), Spooka Palooza (2011-10-21), Spooky Symphonies (2011-10-25), Witch's Tea (2011-10-29) ... more

Here is the Halloween page for Denver. (Ahem, you can buy customes online at A Fountain of Bargains - Halloween).

I hope this change will make both the directory and calendar more compelling. Above all I now have more info on my Halloween Page than Scary Salt Lake.

Adding Mobi URLS

I added a slot in the community color add link program for a Mobi URL. A mobi site is version of a web page optimized for mobile phones. Mobile phones have really small screens ... usually about 300 pixels in width.

Mobi sites tend to show summarized information from the main site. Each community directory has a Mobi version with the subdomain m.. For example the Mobi version of ProvoUtah.US is m.ProvoUtah.US.

Anyway, after you define the primary URL for your site, you can add a Mobi URL. The field for the Mobi URL is the second to last line on the form. You have to be logged in to add a link.

NOTE: If your site is already listed in the web directory, just add the link to your mobi site as if it was the primary URL.

PS: I appreciate the few people who pay the listing fee as it is costly to maintain a directory. If you paid the listing fee for your primary site, just add the link and ignore the plea for payment on the last page.

Link Friendly Directory

Opening the Arizona sites is taking longer than I anticipated.

A primary reason for moving my web sites last month is that the new service will allow me greater freedom with subdomains and mod_rewrites. Using mod-rewrites allows me to create a link friendly directory structure.

In the original design, the link to the Salt Lake Art category had a category_id in it. AKA slsites.com/dir.html?category_id=233.

The new structure uses a mod rewrite. The shopping directory on Arizona Color will have the URL: arizonacolor.us/dir/shopping.

For the Phoenix directory, I am using both both a subdomain and mod rewrite. The link for shopping in Phoenix is phoenix.arizonacolor.us/dir/shopping. Search engines prefer strings to numbers. So, although the URL is super long, it re-inforces the key words "Phoenix", "Arizona" and "shopping."

Changing the link structure should make the directory more valuable to people who list in the directory.

The problem is that I don't want to change the existing directories to the new structure until it has proved through; So, I have to go about the conversion to the new structure in a systematic fashion.

Secure Login Page

I get a free Authenticated SSL certificate with my fancy new WestHost Cloud Server.

I only get to use the account on one domain. After a great deal of thinking, I used the certificate for the empty domain iRivers.com.

The two pieces of information I want to keep secure are email addresses and passwords.

So, I created a registration form.

I am now working on a secure Login Form. The secure login form.

The secure login is interesting. First, the page checks to see that the user accessed it through a secure port. The user then selects a destination web site and enters their user name and password. If the user name and password match the account on the server the system will create a secure single use token.

The login program redirects the user to the destination site with the token. The destination site queries iRivers.com with the token. If the token is valid, the destination site responds back with a packet containing user and session information.

This design allows me to use the same user base for any web site I create in the future.

The next step is to integrate this design with Oauth and Open ID ... but I will leave those challenges for another day.

Sharing Videos

I discovered a fun site called UtahBizTube.com which hosts YouTube style videos from Utah. The site allows videographers and production studios from the area to upload their work.

The site is focusing on creating business and product profiles for Utab businesses. They have a few personal videos in the mix.

UtahBizTube is the type of site that can truly ignite the local design community as it provides both an opportunity for the local design community to show their works and for businesses to introduce their wares. I am hoping that this business proves a success.

Needless to say, I will be taking full advantage of this site and have taken to posting their videos on the sites in the CommunityColor.com family. I made a page to index the videos as I embed them in my site.

Protophoto Blog

There is a small number of nice photos in the ProtoPhoto.com web site. The goal of ProtoPhoto was simply to create a browsable structure of photos of town. I was concentrating on showing what a town looked like ... opposed to the idea of showing what a deep and artistic person I am.

I decided to add a blog to the site. The blog would show pictures which I like. The goal is to show one photo a day. This way the site will have regularly changing quality content.

The photos will drive traffic into the Community Color directories. For that matter, it turns out that most of the traffic in the Community Color family of sites comes from the photo site.

The first picture is of the columbine pictured to the right.

My Account Update

I've updated the "My Account" page on the Community Color web sites. There is a myAccount.html page on each of the community directories, e.g. gjct.com/myAccount.html. The page is the same for all of the communities as the community sites are really nothing more than different entry points into the same program.

The my account page now lists all of the user's links on the many account page. I've also added some advanced features for super users.

I removed a few broken links from the myAccount page.

I apologize for leaving the broken links up for so long.

New Index Page

One problem with the current design of the community color directories is that they concentrate the traffic in the top tiers of the directoris. So, you will see more traffic on the music page than the bands page.

For this reason. I decided to experiment with a new index page that diverts more traffic to the third tiered categories in the directories. So the index page for missoula now lists randomly selected categories, while the dir.html page still just shows the top level of the directory.

The other advantage of this design is that it will allow me to develop the sites as something other than just a directory.

So far I've changed Missoula, provo and Denver.

Prev, Next ... Cool

time in paris © reynald michel

I spent the day adding Pevious / Next buttons to the cool site features of the CommunityColor.com directories. The buttons just use the characters <== and ==> in the title. Some one wanting to see all the reviews can easily click through the pages.

This review feature started as an afterthought. I wanted some way to give an extra link to notable sites. The reviews were an ugly block of text with a link. While reading all of the negative political blogs, I decided to morph the reviews into more of a blog about the local web community. So, I started putting stock photos on the reviews and what not.

The page for the Boulder Youth Symphony shows the direction I am currently headed. It has a picture of violin, a dark background and just looks a littler nicer. If you follow the arrows back in time, you will find the older reviews are just shabby text pages.

I also just figured out how to get CSS positioning to work. I had been putting the credit for Microstock photos under the picture. In other cases I made the whole picture hot with a link to the credit. With CSS positioning, I can put the credits in the lower left hand corner of the picture.

The picture on this post has a hot link going to the International links. There is a link on the lower part of the image that goes to the image credits.

The previous/next buttons make the site reviews a bit more blog-like as it is now possible to navigate through all of the reviews just by clicking the arrows.

Dex Now Knows More

This little project took about 12 hours.

I put a DexKnows.com ad at the bottom of the Community Color web sites. The goal of my site is to list all of the web sites from towns. DexKnows lists businesses.

There is a nice symbiotic relation here. If you can find a local web site, perhaps you can still find what you are looking for in the yellow pages.

DexKnows.com just did a major upgrade of their site, which required that I change all of the links on my site.

To add functionality, I spent the day matching all of my categories to the DexKnow keywords. The DexKnows.com box is now prepopulated with both the town name and the DexKnows search term that best matches my category name.

If you choose a page in the directory (say Moab Art). The DexKnows Box at the bottom of the page is populated with the keyword "artists" and the town name Moab. Simply clicking the DexKnows.com logo in the box will execute the search.

If you went to Boulder Cycling you will find the box prepoplated with the term "bicycling" and Boulder, Co for the town.

It took about 18 hours to match the category and keywords. Hopefully this little bit of functionality will improve the directory experience. If not, I killed two days for nothing.

Being a good programmer, I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning to roll out the change into production.

Widget Dex

In internet lingo, a widget is a small piece of code hosted by one web site made available for display on other web sites. YouTube videos are a great example of such a widget. Anyone can grab the object code for a video and paste on their blog.

My first experiment with widgets was a total disaster. The widgets were a bait and switch. I put the widgets on my site. One day I fould my web site was spewing forth popups and other internet nasties. Really evil people made fun widgets, then had them install browser helper objects or parasiteware.

Because of this, I wrote off widgets for a half decade.

This last year, I started playing with widgets again.

Yesterday, I was thinking about ways to improve my sites. I decided to dramatically increase the number of widgets on display. My hope is to create a index of widgets from the area served by Community Color (the mountain west).

To keep track of the widgets, I made a little widget index program. This will help me track down and remove widgets if the widget host turns to the dark side of the net. The summary report shows widgets by community. It will take me awhile to find them all.

Anyway, if you are from the Mountain West and have a youtube video or other widget that you would like me to list; please reply to this post or send me the link with my contact form.

Creating widget is a great way to build web traffic.

When building widgets, please don't become evil. There is enough evil in the world.

Re-inforcing Pages with Microstock

One interesting use of MicroStock is add images to older web pages that are central to your site or your site's message.

For example, the Community Color blog index is important to my work building community directories. So, today I spent a Microstock credit and slapped an image to the page. All of the different programs that crawl the web will note the addition of content.

After adding the image, I used the LinksAlive Microstock crediting program. The image on the page links to a page with the graphic design credit and back to the index.

With this trick of re-inforcing content, I am now tempted to go back through my blog and add relevant stock images to pages of import. Assuming, I can find some.

MicroStocking Up for a Graphic New Year

I will be adding tools to improve the profile features on CommunityColor.

I just added a feature for crediting Microstock Photograph. This very simple tool lets you record the information needed to credit the graphic designer of stock photos. You then link to a page with artist credits. The credit page has a link to the artist and one back to your project.

Crediting the source of Microstock images is good netiquette. I wrote more on the
y-intercept blog.

Note, I grabbed the following photo from fotolia. Clicking the image goes to a page crediting the photographer. The page has a link back here. So, by being good netizen, I end up with a link back to my blog post.

Contact System is Now Live

I guess it is time to come out of hiding.

So, I just added a contact system to the Community Color family of sites. I intend to use the same contact program for more than one site. For that matter, I am considering opening the program up to the community at large.

The program took a embarrassingly long time to write as I just haven't figured out what to do about spam. Spammers will hit any open form on web site with hundreds of thousands of fake hits.

Right now anonymous readers can leave message. If I get hit by spam, I will restrict it to registered users.

The program is in beta. Comments about the comments section are welcome.

Location, Location, Location

I've been working on the Location view. I think that I will make reports on venues a primary focus of the community directories. Here are a few of the changes:

The first change is that I show the location summary and event list side by side. You can view the page for Red Butte Gardens. This was somewhat of a fundamental change. I had designed all of the pages to be long and skinny. That way the directory could exist in a frame of other sites, or as a small box. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get a good scalable CSS design for the calendar. So, I've decided to go fixed width. Both the calendar and location pages will be 840 pixels wide.

I've also just started to play with Google Maps. That way I can include a handy link to a Location Map.

What I am doing at this point in time is just indexing events that take place at major venues in the community. My long term hope is that some venues actually decide to use this system as their event calendar.

Site of the Day

The site of the day program is now back on line. I made the Site of the Day program to highlight interesting sites. I would appreciate any comments on the program. Right now, I pretty much just take sites at random and call them a SoD. I thought about making the nomination process driven by the ratings engine. I also thought about allowing the public at large write the reviews, or adding comments to the review page.

Comments on the feature are appreciated.

Forum Function Disabled

In the upcoming days, I will remove the forum function from the Community Color family of sites. The basic idea was to put a forum up and see if people would use it. That did not happen. I am thinking of replacing the forum with either a local news feed or perhaps a blog/podcast indexer.

Feel free to drop comments on what you would like to see in a community directory