Daniel Felice

Taking the Show on the Road

// July 14th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // General, Projects

In a few days time I will leaving Ireland, making my way through Europe and ending up in Australia 6 weeks later. All up my girlfriend and I will be spending 40 days travelling through Europe, visiting about 15 countries.

As most of you know, we run a travel website called “Explore With Me“. For those of you who don’t know, “Explore With Me” is a travel blog, social community and gives other travellers the chance to create their own travel blog.

Leading by example, we are planning on blogging about our travels while on the road. We will be travelling with a few cameras, video cameras, laptops and hopefully will be able to find an internet connection to provide daily updates, posting photos, videos, reviews and reports. Along with that, our Twitter followers will also get updates every few hours.

Keeping our promise of daily updates is going to be a fairly big task. Due to the large amount of countries we are going to be visiting, we will be either travelling, sleeping or sightseeing. Finding the time to write post, edit and upload photos and record video blogs will take at least 2 hours a day. However I think finding an internet connection is going to be a task in itself. I am thinking of using a mobile broadband device just in case there are no wifi hotspots around, however the roaming costs are going to be huge!

The reason behind our little challenge is to promote “Explore With Me”. I am hoping that we receive some exposure and encourage new members to join and kick start our social network. Aside from that we will be able to look back on our blog in years ahead and remember the times we spent in Europe. Most people take a bunch of photos and unedited video which sits in a box for the next 50 years. Our trip will live a long life on the internet!

If you would like to follow our trip, check out the “Explore With Me – Europe in 40 Days” blog!

When Does a Project End?

// April 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Projects

I am currently running 3 websites, all are WordPress based and all of them require effort and a few hours a week of work. I just finished v2 of Explore With Me and am very happy with it, but now it is time to give Free BuddyPress Themes a makeover.

I was already thinking about Free BuddyPress Themes while I was working on Explore With Me, and now I am already looking towards Explore With Me v3. Once Free BuddyPress Themes v2 is ready and rolled out, I also want to find some time to give this blog a makeover. I have been using this same theme for about 9 months now and need something fresh.

Once I finshed all these updates, I will probably go through the process again and again. I am never happy with my sites, there is always something I know needs doing, and with technology changing so fast, especially with WordPress MU and BuddyPress, I need to stay on top of things.

Once I get the idea in my head that I am going to make an upgrade, I need to do it sooner rather than later. I just cannot let things go – once I tell myself it is going to be done then I have to do it or the exisiting site will just drive me crazy.

But with 3 projects at the moment and possible another coming on soon – when does it end? Long gone are the days of having a website setup and letting it sit for 3 years before you upgrade it.

Google PageRank

// April 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // General, Projects

I decided to check the PageRank of my websites today and was suprised to see that Explore With Me now has a PageRank of 3. We have been working hard in the past few weeks to gain a little bit more exposure with the site, trying to encourage travellers to join the social networking site.

Last week we went live with a modified layout and have had some positive feedback. The next big update will be WordPress MU 2.7.1 and BuddyPress v1 which will hopefully be released within the next few weeks.

The PageRank for this blog has dropped to 0 for some reason. I cannot understand why we have lost the PageRank 3 ranking which the blog held for a few months. We have had more traffic over the past few months so it does not really make sense and I cannot find an explaination as to why it would have been taken away.

It is still early days for Free BuddyPress Themes so there is no PageRank yet, but with the contest and a bit of publicity within the WPMU/BuddyPress community it won’t be long hopefully.

Explore With Me v2 Launched

// April 9th, 2009 // No Comments » // Projects

Today we went live with the new version of Explore With Me. The site has been redesigned in order to give it more of a social feeling rather than it being a blog with a few members. While the site’s own blog is still a key part of Explore With Me, we are trying to encourage people to join, create their own blog and socialise with other members.

The changes from the previous version of the site aren’t that major, keeping the original template and just modifying the content areas. It still looks similar – just better!

The new site is being hosted on my new VPS, running WordPress MU 2.7 and BuddyPress. Hopefully within the next week or so WPMU 2.7.1 will be released and then BuddyPress v1 should follow shortly after that, which will require another small upgrade – and hopefully the last for the next few months!

The next area we are going to focus on developing are member features. As BuddyPress becomes more popular, the community will start to create plugins and other components that we will be able to implement and offer to our members.

Now the site is the way we want it, we are going to have to put a bit more effort in to keep it growing. We are aiming to blog a few times a week to keep the content fresh, and try to spread the word among young travellers, letting them know that we exist and are open for business.

Take a look at the new site – feedback is welcomed!

Sites Down Again!

// March 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // General, Projects

For the third weekend in a row my sites are down – and this time it will be the last time! I have lost countless hours over the past month to server problems which is hampering my efforts of running the BuddyPress Theme Contest, as well as increase traffic to Explore With Me.

I planned to work on Explore With Me v2 this weekend, as I did last weekend and the one before that. It seems that each Friday night the sites go down for the weekend. It has probably cost me over 2000 hits this month and some revenue.

I have decided to setup VPS hosting at FutureHosting. I figure this is the best solution as I can host unlimited domains. Initially I will start with 4 domain names which would be about $200 a year if I got individual hosting packages for each domain.

The VPS is costing me US$39.95 a month, however I can host unlimited domain names so it will work out cheaper once I setup a few more sites. I am using the base package to start with which gives me 10GB of space, 300GB bandwidth and 256MB which I think should be enough to start with.

Hopefully the sites are all up and running by Monday or Tuesday. This site may be down for a few hours as I migrate it to the new server.

Explore With Me v2

// March 25th, 2009 // No Comments » // Projects

Explore With Me has been up and running since November last year, although the site was in testing until January this year. Most of the functionality is complete, however like any web designer – the job is never finished and now it is time to concentrate on version 2.

Originally the idea of the site was a travel blog, however as it evolved it has become more of a social network allowing fellow travellers to create their own blog, socialise with other travellers and read our create content. However we now feel that we need to encourage the users to start joining the community and interacting with other users.

To do this we are going to redesign the main page of the site, making it more “social” as opposed to “blog”. We will probably stick with the same basic layout and colours, but change the guts of it to make the site look more like a social network.

BuddyPress v1 is nearly ready to be released, so ideally we would like to go live with the new site and BuddyPress v1 so we can stop breaking the site in between. Each week I find something new I want to add, so instead of testing it and doing it the right way, I just jump right in and just end up breaking things until I figure out to fix the problems.

Once the new site goes down I really want to concentrate on building it up to the goal I set at the beginning of the year – 1000 users by the end of 2009.

Keep an eye out for the changes over the next few weeks!

Wednesday Ramblings

// March 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // Buddypress, Contests, General, Projects

• I have extended the BuddyPress Theme Contest by a month. Submissions now must be in by May 7 instead of April 7. This gives everyone extra time to develop a nice looking theme! Checkout the first ever Free BuddyPress Themes Contest!
• My PageRank for danielfelice.com is back down to 0 for some reason. It was up to 3 last week but I have noticed in the last few days it has dropped to 0. I am not sure why but I will be investigating!
• I have added the BuddyPress Facebook Connect plugin to ExploreWithMe. This will allow users of Facebook to sign into the site which will then automatically create them an account based on their Facebook profile details.
• Traffic on all my sites this month are through the roof! Hopefully a sign of things to come!

Projects Update

// February 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // Projects

Explore With Me

Project Explore With Mewas launched in October 2008. Since then we have been testing and adding features to the site such as WordPress MU, BuddyPress, forums, various plugins, new themes and a whole lot more. The site is about 95% complete and we want to launch as soon as possible.

I had originally set my launch date for early January but then decided to wait for the final release of BuddyPress and WordPress MU 2.7. I updated the site to WPMU 2.7 two weeks ago and now we are also running BuddyPress Beta 2.

BP v1.0 was due to be launched yesterday however they have decided to release it as a “Release Candidate” due to pending changes to WordPress MU.

The site is fairly bug free at the moment and everything is ready to go. We do get very good traffic and also are finding that users are joining which is a good sign.

I think we will hold off the “official” launch date until BP v1 and WPMU 2.7(.1?). That is when we will start pushing for advertising and concentrate on bringing the traffic in.

Free BuddyPress Themes

Project Free BuddyPress Themes went live in early January. It was an idea that turned into reality in about 2 hours so there wasn’t much planning involved. The good thing is that I have had time to work on small updates to the blog as BuddyPress is yet to be in final release so the uptake has been a bit slow.

I am happy with the blog in its present form, it is effective and gets the job done. Small updates here and then are always something I’ll do.

At the moment we have 6 themes available for users to download, with 2 of them being the default BP theme. We got three new ones this week so I am hoping that once the word spreads about BuddyPress designers will start designing custom themes and upload them to the site so other users can download them.

I am thinking of putting together a BuddyPress Theme contest to try to encourage users to start designing. I am just trying to put some prizes together. Once I get a few responses I will launch the contest. It is still in its very early planning stages but hopefully we can run the contest sometime in March if all works out well.

Projects Update

// January 15th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Projects, Wordpress

As many of you know I have a few projects that I am currently working on. Here is a quick update…

• Explore With Me: The site has been completed, BuddyPress Beta 1 is up and running, and members are joining at a steady rate. I am still saying that the site is not yet officially launched as I am waiting for the new version of WordPress MU 2.7 and BuddyPress version 1. There is no word yet on WPMU as to when it will be released, however rumours suggest it might be at the end of the month. BuddyPress v1 is set be released February 9, so once testing is complete the site will be officially launched and I’ll start the task of promoting it.

  Hits are very steady and encouraging at this early stage. I am getting a lot of traffic from the BuddyPress website, but that also means I am getting a lot of people looking at the site to check out BuddyPress rather than interested in the site. Though at this early stage anything that spreads the word is a good thing.

  As for revenue, I am making a bit of money from Google Adsense. The affiliate links have not made any money yet, but people are clicking on them so it is just a matter of time.

• Free BuddyPress Themes: This venture is very new and still pretty raw…oh and the blog is pretty empty. The site relies on users submitting their themes for others to download, but as BuddyPress is new, I don’t think many people have got past the point of installing and testing it. Once version 1 is released I think the site will begin to grow.

  Traffic is been fantastic in the past week. I have had more traffic to the site than this site got in the past two months. There is plenty of interest, but there are no themes to download as yet. I am getting the majority of traffic from the BuddyPress forums and Google searches.

Vote for Explore With Me!

// January 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // Projects

The nominations for the first ever Lonely Planet Travel Blogger Awards are open and I have decided to nominate Explore With Me. There are a few different categories in which sites can be submitted to and 5 sites that receive the most nominations in each category will go into the public voting round.

The categories are:

• Best Destination Blog
• Best Expat Blog
• Best Travelouge
• Best Consumer Travel Blog
• Best non-English language Blog
• Best Video Blog (including YouTube Channels)
• Best Micro-Blogging (twitter etc)
• Best Image Blog
• Best Themed Blog (trekking etc)
• Best Group Authored Blog

Explore With Me fits into a few of those categories and we want you to help us get through the next round! We have decided that we fit into the “Best Destination Blog”, but you can nominate us for all categories if you like!

Please nominate Explore With Me for the Best Destination Blog

I am not expecting to win by any means, but if we can make it into the final round of voting it will give the blog great exposure and hopefully drive up hits! Plus, it will be nice to see the hard work pay off!