So continuing on from my earlier post about Backpacking Queensland (which you can read here) going live and “that’ email from Simon Gehert, I quote:

“Rarely have we seen something more obviously shoehorned into existing technology where it shouldn’t be. Take an open source CMS you didn’t develop complete with tag clouds, social network site links, unrelated blog headline feeds, google maps etc ,which was never intended for this purpose, add some crap interface design, a link to your site in the footer which says “Well made in New Zealand by Xebidy … and you have all the makings for a car crash of epic proportions.”

In my earlier post about the site I discussed the Silver Stripe content management system. One of things I said was that in the whole scheme of things Silver Stripe is not a very large Open Source project, which means that unfortunately at this stage a lot of the functionality such as tags, social bookmarks, RSS feeds, maps etc we have had to develop ourselves - plus there is not enough people using the Bootstrap interface yet. So I thought I would use this post to introduce you to some of this functionality and explain what it means and why we have chosen to use it in the Backpacking Queensland site:

Tags: I posted last month on the tags in Backpacking Queensland (read that post here) and my belief that in fact the tag system we have used in this site are more meaningful that many of the tags I have seen on other sites. The way they work is that users can add their own keywords to pages throughout the site as they travel the site to use to remind them of the pages. When an internal page is tagged this tag helps to build up the tag cloud which appears on the home page. The larger the font of the tags on the home page, then the more pages within the site that have been tagged with those tags. Tags, subsequently, provide an informal navigation structure created by the users. We added a little twist to the whole tagging concept by also then providing the user with links to You Tube for videos, Flickr for photos, Wikipedia for definitions, and del.icio.us for other pages across the Internet tagged the same. That means, if a user tags a page Cairns and then wants to see videos and images of Cairns from where they are on the Backpacking Queensland site the functionality is there.

Social network links: The social bookmarks facilitate users saving the Backpacking Queensland pages in popular bookmarking websites. Sites such as Digg and Del.icio.us are where users save their favourite web pages instead of saving them in their browsers. This is very pertinent for travellers who are never in the same Internet Cafe, or on the same computer, and so use these social bookmarking sites save pages they might want to go back to for booking or more information. By providing these links we think we are making it easier for the users, one less impediment to use, and therefore hopefully increasing users likelihood of returning to the Backpacking Queensland site. We included the ability to save a page to Facebook as well, because lets’ face it, everyone in this market uses Facebook.

Blog feeds: I have written and presented so many times before about the importance of user generated content. In the new Internet users are seeking information from their peers about the products they are consuming, whether they be travel products or otherwise. Reviews and ratings sites, forums, and blogs provide a user with a great deal of independent content to help them evaluate their options. In the same way as a traveller will talk to other travellers in the hostel common space so too do they use the Internet to research their travels. On the Backpacking Queensland website we have introduced links directly to blogs about the member products. Like the concept of linking the users to You Tube and Flickr for same tag images and videos, we believe that by providing this information on the Backpacking Queensland users will be able to get the independent feedback they require about the products without necessarily needing to go searching elsewhere. The travel stories are all received through our Xebidy Xefeed product where the feeds can be checked for relevancy and then fed back to the Backpacking Queensland website. It means that “unrelated” feeds do not appear. We have handed this completely over to the girls at Gate 7 to manage on a daily basis - although we do offer a complete Internet and social media monitoring service in house here, which you can find out more about here.

Google maps: I think the functionality is pretty intuitive here and don’t quite know what Mr Gehert is referring to when he says “… which was never intended for this purpose”. The maps show you where the member being shown on that page is, and an aggregating map shows where all the members in the area are. Rather than using stylised maps which are meaningless to a user who has not been to, say, Toowoomba, a Google map can be traversed and can show different views from street levels to satellite. On the Backpacking Queensland site we default to satellite maps for the aggregating views because they are fun and make the site look cool, and then use hybrid maps which combine the satellite map with streets for more purpose (unless the satellite view is not high enough density and we just use street view). The user can easily change these views. As many know mapping is something we take quite seriously at Xebidy and unfortunately it becomes a function of time and cost as to how much mapping functionality to include to a client. We are currently undertaking a very extensive development with another client that would see the maps being able to change the content on the page around them and also have a lot of information around the main focus of the map, for example, a hostel can show where supermarkets, ATM’s things to do etc are relative to them. Hopefully, we can extend Backpacking Queensland mapping in this direction at some point in the future.

There is lots more cool functionality in this site, and lots more to Mr Geherts’ email and I will introduce all this tomorrow - need to get on with some work now. As I am sure you can all see, loving the new Backpacking Queensland site though, well done guys.