Wainuiomata.com

Directory ... continued

Posted on November 21, 2023 by: Rob van der Linde
Filed under: Announcements, Developments
Tags: wainuiomata, directory, clubs, website, locations, schools

We've expanded the idea of the business and clubs directory a lot by adding public places, locations and landmarks, as well as schools. It's going to take a while to fill this in with original information and photos especially since this is being done by volunteers in their spare time, however I think the end result is going to be really awesome and help show Wainuiomata to the world.

The website has almost hit 800 pages (790 to be exact) and this number is going to grow if we add every location, school, club so we've started to experiment with adding more people to the website with the "editor" role and setting up review workflows.

Editors are able to upload photos and make edits to pages, even preview them but not able to publish for everyone else to see until approved by a moderator or an admin. Having people with the moderator role as is a new thing, so this is something that will need to be earned over time.

We have mostly been adding empty pages for now with just the place name, and sometimes a link to the Facebook page and website if we can find any. But a lot more is going to need to be done, this is just to scope the thing out for now. Every single place is going need photos taken for example and they can't be copied from other websites, we have to have unique content.

We're thinking of integrating with OpenStreetMap, as we are thinking of showing a map on most one of these pages, so Google probably won't allow us to keep using the free tier anymore (we only have a single map page right now).

And finally, everything is indexed as well, so all these new locations we've been entering area already discoverable through search, even though there isn't currently a way to navigate to them (yet).

https://wainuiomata.com/search/?query=park
https://wainuiomata.com/search/?query=track
https://wainuiomata.com/search/?query=hill
https://wainuiomata.com/search/?query=bridge

You will find places like https://wainuiomata.com/places/pukeatua-bridge/ and https://wainuiomata.com/places/wainuiomata-lookout/ and there is a lot more to go yet.

We're also looking at using open data troves like https://www.gw.govt.nz/your-council/open-data/

Business and clubs directory

Posted on November 19, 2023 by: Rob van der Linde
Filed under: Announcements, Developments
Tags: business, wainuiomata, directory, clubs, website

You may have noticed an increased presence on our wainuiomata.com Facebook page, but that doesn't mean we stop on the website, far from it. Apart from the redesign planned over the next few months, I've been thinking about bringing the Business Directory we used to have on the old site back (rebuild), but also a separate Clubs area. Hopefully I won't be burning the candle too much from both ends but the design can be put off a few more months probably.

We realise that times have changed a lot since we last had a business directory. Back then we manually entered everything from a physical copy into the system, but these days there are a lot of different ways to get this data. Even Google has information about a business if you search for it by name.

Just about every club in Wainuiomata seems to have a Facebook page, some even only have a Facebook page or a broken website. So linking to their Facebook page is crucial.

We're using Wagtail and we can develop this sort of stuff pretty fast now. We want images and an image gallery possibility under clubs. It also should help with some smaller businesses who may not have budget to put up a good side of their own. In the past we've offered clubs their own website but we realise that this is taking on a lot of work, so offering a page on wainuiomata.com is the next best thing and it all becomes searchable too, as every page, post and comment is indexed on our site and refreshed every 5 minutes.

For now we will probably pre-seed all the data ourselves first, but in the future, I'm thinking businesses should be able to update their own page. There is no cost planned for this, we always want this to be free. The only requirement, must be a business or organisation or club in Wainuiomata only. So not Lower Hutt or Petone, Wainuiomata only.