I've created the Windward Guide for sailing and yacht cruising.
I've been interested in doing something like is for a while and have tried to revive this group a while back. I know that Michelle was interested in building a directory. @Michelle I would share my code for the map but it's quite hackish and there has been some productive development of the OpenLayers Proximity filter which would serve you much better. Mine is all the different parts of different modules put together in a geolocation / proximity / addressfield fraken-module.
The problem I have is that most of the locations I would use on a website for boat people are not geocoded and Google Map Services has enormously poor support for the Caribbean with quite a few islands completely covered in clouds or blurry when zoomed in with a satellite. I serious believe that if all the people who do have a business in the Caribbean put their information into my website Google would love me for days and days and them too. But, reaching them is hard to do.
I use the RDFx module to mark up all the information to Google's specifications for a review website however I will really need to demonstrate to Google that it is a serious website before they will include phone numbers and star ratings in search results. Here is an example of testing a pages RDF microformat with Google's testing tool.
I have a destinations page with some fancy photography I did with my old camera while visiting places like Marsh Harbour, Bahamas. What I really want the website to be is a crowd sourced cruising guide and the best example I have of that is on a map annotation page such as for The Lighthouse at Peggy's Cove. But for that to happen it really needs to be well put together.
Let me know what you think.
Comments
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I've given up on my business directory. Crowdsourcing only works if the crowd is interested in helping and, in my case, they weren't. I hope you have better luck. You have a very nice looking site.
Michelle
I'll let you know if I figure
I'll let you know if I figure anything out as it is a problem with me too. Creating a community in this day and age is a difficult thing to do. How do you compete with Yelp? There is no way.
Marine job board with Drupal 7 at http://windwardjobs.com
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Yelp isn't even the biggest problem. Google Places is. How do you compete with a directory baked into the biggest search engine? I don't think anyone actually uses directory sites directly anymore. If you're looking for something, you type it into Google. Used to be that directory sites at least had a chance of doing well in the results but, now, Places is right there front and center and people have no need to look down the list.
When I do my site redesign, I'm going to focus on a smaller niche, targeting the tiny little shops and such that are unique rather than trying to be a phone book. My goal is to make a directory that's interesting enough that people will want to actually browse it rather than relying on it pulling people in from Google.
Michelle
@ Michelle I think that
@ Michelle I think that successful things on the internet are reflections of things in the real world. The problem I've encountered with my directory website is not being able to give any business a bad review for several reasons therefore disabling the feature putting further development and use on hold. Perhaps, instead, give an opportunity for people to recommend the business not unlike Google +1 but far more targeted. In the case of a business people can use a button created by the flag module to flag a recommendation. At the bottom of the listing have a grid of username and profile image showing all the people who recommend the business.
In my town there is a entertainment zone with about 100 clubs, bars, restaurants, coffee shops, boutiques and museums. It's a real social scene with lots of people knowing each other and lots of tourists on vacation. Is it possible to create a profile directory for each of the businesses and leverage twitter and facebook? Neither twitter nor facebook really focuses on this location in that way. It's really just five blocks long but create a reflection of the social interaction on the internet.
Any ideas?
Marine job board with Drupal 7 at http://windwardjobs.com
the social internet
Adam, I think you might be onto something in your last paragraph there. If you noodle on it for a bit you might come up with something that wasn't quite a directory, and not Facebook either, but that had some of Facebook's openness. It could catch on. I think it would work best for a neighborhood that drew from far away than it would for a small town where most of the traffic was people already living or working there.
John
John Hopkins, executive director
Green Mobility Network
www.greenmobilitynetwork.org
305-347-6333