Archives: Development

Vicky and I were chatting a little about Little Legends over lunch yesterday and it looks like I can say the following about further developments.

There’ll be a bit more of a lull (while I upgrade some back end things), but then fingers crossed there’ll be a bit of a spurt of activity.

We’ll be aiming at making the Browse section much more friendly. Perhaps through city/town focused metros. There’ll be more maps. There’ll be more of a sense of what’s happening on the site. There’ll be Open ID (a good thing). And there may even be a mini Facebook app, just to show we’re really ahead of the curve [ahem]

There have been a couple of instances like this recently, where people have spotted a mistake on Little Legends, and wanted to report it rather than sign in and correct it themselves.

To make that process easier, we’ve added a little page to help. On each item listing there’s now the option to report a mistake.

It’s overdue, but hopefully it’ll help keep things current. Likewise, do let us know if there’s anything functional that would help you that we haven’t added yet and we’ll get on to it.

Until now, to comment on any of the places people have listed on Little Legends, you had to log in. It’s a little later than expected [ahem, … I had reports to write], but I’ve changed things so that now anyone can comment on our main site, just as they can here on the blog.

As I said then

there are some obvious spam issues, but opening things up as much as possible is - we believe - good news for everyone. If it’s easier to share your views then it’s easier for others to benefit from reading them.

I’ve just added a little feature to help people plan their journeys to places people have recommended. If the place has a postcode you should see the following option on the right of the page

If you type in the postcode you’re leaving from, a new window will open you and TransportDirect.info will let you know how to get there by public transport or car.

Hope it helps!

Vicky and I have been chatting about ways to make Little Legends both more useful and easier to use. We’ve had some helpful suggestions from people to guide development, and I’m beginning to make some small, but hopefully worthwhile changes.

For the moment we’ve taken the groups feature down as we try to simplify things. Tags likewise we’ve moved to the Browse section. And so that people don’t keep on having to go to their account page to add a new place, we’ve put an “Add a place” button in the top bar. You still have to be logged in to add a place, though.

Ever wondered what people who leave comments on your blog look like?

We’ve just installed a little plugin that lets us shows a picture of you next to any of your comments here.

But it only shows you if you’ve got what’s called - ahem - a “gravatar”.

On a technical level,

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?

We’ve just made a little “widget” so that you can share some of comments on places at Little Legends via your own blog’s sidebar. We’re calling it “My Little Comments”

My Little Comments
To show the last 10 places you’ve commented on in Little Legends, you can put the following code in your side bar:

Login is the login for your Little Legends account. You can check your page at Little Legends to see what you should type. For example, Vicky’s page is at

http://www.littlelegends.biz/people/Vicky

so she would replace Login with Vicky

For those of you who have been concerned about making your details public, we have now added Privacy Settings to the User Page. These settings allow you to choose who sees:

a) your postcode

b) any photos you have on flickr.

To keep things simple you can either let everyone see these items or you can limit it your friends (who you have to invite). So, even if someone chooses you as a friend they will not be able to see your postcode or photos unless you have added them to your friends list.

For all those keen bloggers out there, you might be interested to know that you can now add your blog feed to your user page on Little Legends. So, not only can you get a free link to your blog but you can also have another outlet for all your creative work. The likelihood is that if someone likes the excerpts from your blog they will visit the real thing to read more.

Everything has not been as quiet here as it might have appeared. Piers has been busy working away on Groups and they are now ready to go. So, you can either join one of the existing groups which are:

Home - Feedback
LL - Discuss your ideas for the site, complaints etc
Looking for Recommendations- If you can’t find what you need, post a question here
New Faces - Why not introduce yourself or ask for help getting started
Nappy Valley Natter - A local group for Mums who live in Wandsworth

Or why not start your own?