Trakr Update: 22nd April 2008
Two weeks ago, I invited 10 friends and family to register on the web site and begin to use it. The web site was not in as polished state as would have been expected by normal users, so I decided not to open it up to everyone. The main feedback I received is that people didn't know what to do, so I added several context sensitive info and tips boxes to helps user's get started and help them accomplish things such as completing their profile, adding sources and uploading an avatar.
During this time, I have also achieved:
- Google Analytics has been added to all pages - If I am logged in as a user, the code is not put on the page so my visists will not skew the statistics.
- Search Engine Optimization
- Registered for Google Webmaster Tools - This will help identify problems with indexing and set indexing preferences.
- Added a META description tag
- Friendly URLs - Clean looking addresses which are better for search engines and easier to remember for users. E.g. view-user.php?id=1 became users/Jason
- Redirect non-www to www - This is to avoid duplicate content being listed on search engines which should help with rankings.
- Favouties System - The favourites system is now fully working and utilises AJAX so a user can add and remove an item without having to refresh the page. All items a user adds are available to view on a separate page also.
- Mobile Integration
- The following types of content via mobile are now accepted:
- SMS - Text messages.
- MMS
- Picture messages.
- Text
- Images
- Video - This is automatically converted to Flash Video in near real time so a user can view it on the web site without having to have a plug-in installed which will play mobile content natively.
- Flash - Work has been continuing on the Flash view of data. This has involved a partial rewrite of the XML handling code to make it more efficient. Users can now view larger images from Flickr and mobile within the application itself now. Video is next on the list.
- Home Page - Work has started on making the home page more friendly.
- Lot's of other small bugs fixed and user interface tweaks
After completing the Home Page in the next day or so, I plan to open the site to everybody in order to get more users and more feedback in order to improve the service and test it's stability under a more heavy load.
Posted: 22nd April 2008 02:55