Yesterday, I started working on a blog for an aquaintance in Italy. Basically, I said to her that I could create a website to support her ‘business’ selling and renting properties in the Abruzzo region of Italy. It’s not really an official business and she’s not an agent - she acts more as middleperson/translator and the site was meant to simply present the properties on a dedicated online platform. I asked her a while ago to send me a CD-Rom with some images and information etc. as I had some spare time just after I had submitted my thesis. Well, I submitted over a month ago, and the CD only arrived last week! I don’t really have time for it now. When I said to her that I had a bit of spare time I really meant there and then, and not 4 weeks later!
Anyway, I’m stuck with it now and it’s not all bad, as it gives me a good opportunity to waste all my evenings in front of the computer screen and not have any spare time at all for myself get stuck into the WordPress platform even more and learn much more about it, also to use Flickr and WordPress together and really make the most of it. Which is what I did last night.
I’ve come across a number of problems - I’ll start from the beginning:
- What I want ideally, is for the blog to be on this domain: www.abruzzohouse.net. This is because we own the domain and some webspace on there, and eventually want to use it for ourselves (holiday home in Abruzzo - don’t ask :S ). While we’re not using it for ourselves, I thought I’d offer it to the aquaintance for her ‘business’. I DLed the WordPress kit to install it independently (i.e. the publishing platform) but then found out from my BF that he doesn’t have the logon details for abruzzohouse.net. They are on his laptop HDD which is corrupt, so it’ll take a while to get the details back. Hence, in the meantime, I simply put it up on WordPress. Obviously, I’d need to find out whether or not this can easily be exported to the publishing platform-format and then used independently on abruzzohouse.net, once we’ve got our logon details back! The alternative may be to just cloak it, so that the URL is abruzzohouse.net, but it’s simply a cloaked WordPress-hosted page. I don’t know whether or not they’d mind
- Problems with Flickr: I’ve finally started using Flickr properly, i.e. for this particular project, and have come up with some annoying limitations and problems which stem from my need to use some Web 1.0 elements on a Web 2.0 platform. Namely: The free version of Flickr only allows 3 different sets, i.e. as means to organise your photos. The CD-Rom was full of photos from a number of different categories, including categories for individual towns and provinces, coastal towns, tourist attractions, properties for sale in different areas, etc. etc. So, I’ve got loads of different categories that ideally need to organise as such. But on Flickr, I’ve only got three bloody sets! So I’ve had to make do with these headings for sets: (a) Abruzzo: Landscape and Places (b) Abruzzo: Holiday Rentals and (c) Abruzzo: Property for Sale. I haven’t created set (c) yet, as she sent me a huge amount of pics in different sizes and of different quality, so you can imagine how long it took to get them all into an acceptable format :S
- Related to that: I’ve studied the WordPress sidebar widgets in more detail as I wanted to have the Flickr RSS of the abruzzohouse pics on the blog. the problem is that I cannot seem to control _which_ photos are being displayed on the sidebar widgets. i.e. since it’s a live bookmark kind of thing, it displays whatever pics I uploaded last. At the moment, that’s unfortunately not the photos htat i want to be displayed. That’s web 2.0 for you :S - I need to have some more control please! I think whta I’ll have to do is simply ensure that the last three pics that I upload will be those that I want displayed on the sidebar
- Generally, I do have a problem with putting all the content onto the blog. For example, I need ideally a naviagtional structure that I can fully control, so, for instance, I use categories as navigational links (Web 1.0) rather than as networking, tagged, categories (Web 2.0). To that end, I’ve created an individual category for each rental property. So far, I haven’t touched the properties for sale yet, as it’s a huge amount of work! I’ll slave away for free tonight, and do some more. I’m actually a bit taken aback because when I suggested to do it for the acquaintance, I was under the impression I’d simply have to upload a little bit of content and then swiftly give over control to her. The reality is though that the project is pretty massive. A huge amount of pictures and of written ifnormation, and she hasn’t even translated most of it into English. I’m not going to do that for her though. She can translate the content herself and then I’ll just correct it (her English isn’t that good so even proofreading will be enough work)
- Overall, this project is interesting though as I’m assessing the suitability of blogging for a more ‘commercial’ purpose and I’m also attempting to create a blog with Web 1.0 elements, i.e. make it resemble a traditional homepage. The good thing with the blog is that it’ll allow visitors to ask questions about the properties etc. on the site and overall, I think it’s better to use this platform than a traditional homepage. It remains to be seen how successful the finished product is. NB it’s meant to be relatively static once it’s finished and not dynamic and blog-like! Ideally I would like to give control over to the acquaintance once I’m done but I don’t think it’s realistically going to work. She won’t know what to do.
- Lastly, I hope that WordPress don’t mind my use of their space for this blog! I don’t want to commercialise or give bad press to what has been a wonderful platform for me
- if they do object, I’m happy to move it elsewhere. There again, it’s only meant to be hosted on WP temporarily while I wait for my BF to access the logon info to the domain.
- And here is the result so far (unfinished, so please be kind. I haven’t started on the actual properties for sale yet, neitehr on the blog nor on Flickr, and the properties are going to be the main thing!!):
Abruzzohouse (WordPress) — Abruzzohouse (Flickr)
PS: I’m going to change my lenina widgets :p - also I still need to continue reducing the bloody categories even more…
