After a long hiatus, we’re finally making an effort to bring this site back from the virtual graveyard. We’re going to post more, expand our use of social media, and hopefully drive both business and pleasure to the neighborhood. Any contributions of articles, news, photos, or other leads would be greatly appreciated.
Tag: site
Even more Site Updates
- A ‘Link to Us‘ page has been created. This allows folks to make a link back to LowerDecatur.com without any knowledge of web publishing. If you have a business on Lower Decatur with a web presence linking is strongly suggested.
- The ‘Lower Decatur Links’ page was created. It uses the same database that generates the links on the sidebar. This most likely will be replaced in the future.
- The EzStatic plugin has been disabled and removed, as it was discoverd that embedding the map into a page is possible without this plugin. Several links to the map on the site were updated to reflect the change.
- The word press Searchall plugin was installed to improve results when using the search form on the site. For some unknown reason neither the current ‘Lower Decatur Links’ or the sidebar links are searched, but they are still indexed by search engines.
- Installed an RSS feed plugin that currently grabs information from the Lower Decatur group on LiveJournal. It’s located in the right sidevar. Ideally each venue with events in the neighborhood would have a simple blog account somewhere that produces an easy to integrate RSS feed. There is also the posibility of using WWOZ’s data with a google/ical calendar.
- A search engine landing feature is in the works that hopefully makes it easier for visitors from search engines (a lot of our traffic) find relevant information on the site.
Site updates happen.
Ok people, while there haven’t been many posts lately, the site has been getting some TLC. Most of it is behind the scenes stuff that I’d like to share with you now.
- Header images now use the rotator script to display a random image with each page. There are several new header images to rotate. Photo submissions are welcome.
- We have a fancy new favorites/shortcut icon
. It’s from a photo of the Decatur Street sign.
- Smart Update pinger plugin installed, so only new articles will ping the blogosphere.
- There is a fancy Google Map embedded in an iframe using the EzStatic plugin. WiFi, Streetcar stops, and nearby Points of Interest are listed.
- Mobile users can get their fix here via the WordPress Mobile plugin.
- Fixed a bug with PHP5 and the wp-cache plugin. Pages should load much faster.
- Edited some templates so that the author’s name is shown. More authors coming soon.
- Installed and configured the wpPHPMailer plugin, so that people actually get the password when they register. Our webhost has disabled the php mail() function so this is a good plugin.
- Uploaded the Obfuscate E-mail plugin, which makes it almost impossible for bots to grab our email addresses and leaves them human readable and with working mailto: links.
- There is a shiny new “Contact Us” page with scrambled email addresses.
- Added the FeedBurner plugin so that nifty RSS feed stats are generated. Loving the stats.
Hello Lower Decatur Street!
Welcome to Lower Decatur Street’s new home on the internet. Built upon the WordPress blogging platform it has some pretty amazing features. Out of the box it supports posting of articles by many authors (even at a specific point in the future), an RSS feed, and loads of themes for customization. Hopefully it will attract authors, content, and finally visitors.
Today we’ve set up the basic site, added links to some merchants on Lower Decatur Street (look to the right), categorized the links, and fleshed out most of the about page.
Next up will be the addition of more authors, photographers, and editors.
Together we can promote our neighborhood to the city as well as the rest of the world.