Lost film site update
For the second week in a row I’ve not had a lot of time to add posts to this site because I’ve been busy developing the new Found Film site I’m hoping to launch after Christmas, so I thought I’d give another update on how it’s going.
The main concentration this week had been to get the site stable and to improve the way the data in displayed.
One of the things I want to do is keep the relationship between photos when they were obviously taken at the same time. For a roll of film found in a camera this is obvious, but there are also instances where I may have picked up a box of colour slides (my latest collecting passion) and I want to link them. I’ve done this by assigning the individual pictures to a ‘series’ taxonomy and then making that series available whenever one of the pictures is viewed. You can see that in the picture above where the series tab is selected in the picture data panel and thumbnails and titles are displayed which link to those pictures. Also shown is the addition of social media sharing buttons which got included this week as well.
Another improvement I’ve made is with the search results. Out of the box, WordPress only provides search of titles and the main post content (as you would expect) and orders by post date rather than relevancy. To change this I installed a plugin called ‘Search Everything’ which allow the search to be configured to cover taxonomies etc and then I added some new styling to the search result page.
I set up the Editor entry page last week with the additional fields necessary to store the data I want against each picture but it was really quite messy with edit boxes all over the screen (a bit like the conventional WordPress post entry screen which has tags and categories in individual panels). I found that the plugin I’m using to add the additional fields has extra functions to move all the individual fields into tabs and move the unused WordPress fields into a hidden form element, so I could tidy up the entry form nicely as shown it the picture to the right.
Other than adding the code to git (a revision control system) so I can easily roll changes back that don’t work the other big time sink this week has been adding content to the site. By the time I add it to google search and publicize it, I’d like to have a few hundred pictures up, so I’m aiming to add ten or twenty every day over the next few weeks.
However, the site is getting close to being ready, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to link to it from this blog soon.
I had no idea you were creating a sites like this, I LOVE things like this, found film and pictures are awesome they give such a brilliant glimpse into the everyday life of the past. Really looking forward to seeing your finds.
This is a brilliant idea Simon. There’s a site called Make Me An Offer which has cameras the author bought at car boot sales and the film he found inside them. Fascinating stuff. It’s here – http://cargocollective.com/brendancorrigan
That site looks interesting. I’m hoping if the site I’m developing takes off other people would add their pictures found in old cameras as well
This part of your site captures the essence of film photography, whose pictures have a physical existence that truly preserves moments in time. Digital is easy, low-cost, and forgiving of shoddy camera-work, but often it was those imperfect, un-delete-able, badly executed shots that made memories. Well done – I enjoyed looking at the new pages.