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!

An Interview with…Me!

// May 28th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // General

Last week I was asked to answer a few questions for SocialMediaPortal.com in regards to my work on Explore With Me. The Social Media Portal (SMP) is a resource that maps global social media, social networks and user generated content (UGC).

A few times a week they profile various people who deal with social media, and as of today you can see their interview with me!

Check it out here.

BuddyPress v1.0 Has Arrived!

// April 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // Buddypress

The first official version of BuddyPress was released earlier today! After a year of development, Andy Peatling and the BuddyPress team have officially released the very first stable version of the WordPress MU plugin that turns your blog into a social community.

This is the first of many versions to coming – with status updates and a photo gallery coming later on in the year. No doubt plugin and theme developers will start coming out of the woodwork to make this fantastic plugin even better.

The community has played a massive part in this project, but a massive thanks has to go out to Andy Peatling who turned this project into the most eagerly awaiting WordPress plugin that has ever been offered within the WordPress family.

Check out more info here (even I get a mention!)

Explore With Me is built on BuddyPress.

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!

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.

Wednesday Ramblings

// December 17th, 2008 // 3 Comments » // General

I know it’s an odd day to have a “ramblings” post, but I’ve never done one and have a few thoughts going through my head that I want in writing so I actually make sure they happen!

• Twitter: Been spending a lot of time in Twitter this week. Not sure why really, but for some reason this week I am hooked on it! I am updating it a few times a day and I have had a lot of new followers this week! Follow me on Twitter!
• Blog via Mobile Phone: Trying to find a plugin that will allow Explore With Me users to create new blog posts using their mobile phone. There is an WordPress iPhone plugin but I don’t want to limit it to only people who have an iPhone. I have had a quick look around but will spend some more time on this over the weekend and probably wait until WordPress MU 2.7 arrives before implementing anything.
• Explore With Me: Concentrating on getting some new content written this week. I am holding off updating features, themes, plugins, etc until WordPress MU 2.7 is out. I don’t want to do any major changes until the new version is out as some of it might not work. Once WPMU 2.7 is out I will also write the “Help & Support” pages which will teach users the basics of WordPress.
• Danielfelice.com: Need to do some work on this blog. I should clean up all the affiliate and adverts on the site as they don’t bring in any revenue. I get a handful of clicks, but I think I need a new approach here. Need to do some research.
• Sharing the Knowledge: Helping a friend from work get setup with his own blog. I sent him my “How to” guides so now he is in the process of registering a domain name, hosting and setting up WordPress. Should be interesting!
• Thats about it!

Creating a Social Community with WordPress

// October 28th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Projects, Wordpress

When the initial idea of Explore With Me was discussed, we wanted to create a travel blog as well as allow other travellers to sign up and create their own travel blog. This is when I discovered WordPress MU. After we figured out we could host other blogs, we then decided we should create an online social community for travellers.

This is when I said “OK, good idea, but how the hell do we do that!?!”

I then turned to my trusty friend – Google. I searched for “WordPress + social community” and to my surprise it actually brought some good results.

This is where I met BuddyPress.

BuddyPress is currently in development. It was created by a guy called Andy Peatling who started the development earlier this year. Since then Andy has landed a job with Automattic – the guys who develop WordPress, WordPress MU and anti comment spam plugin Akismet.

BuddyPress is a plugin designed to work with WordPress MU and allows people like me to turn their WordPress MU blog into a social community with functionalities such as adding Friends and Groups, sending Messages and writing Comments.

At the moment the plugin is still in development. The final version is due out at the end of this year.

I am currently running a beta version of the plugin on Explore With Me. Please feel free to sign up and test it out.

Check out BuddyPress.org for more information and don’t forget to visit Explore With Me!

Explore With Me & WordPress MU

// October 26th, 2008 // No Comments » // Projects

After getting Explore With Me up and running a few weeks back I pretty much had to start all over again when I decided I wanted to use WordPress MU instead of the standard version. WordPress MU has the ability to host endless numbers of blogs on the site – the way sites such as WordPress and Edublogs works.

We had the idea to allow our audience to create their own travel blog through Explore With Me. We thought it would be a good idea to host blogs created by other travellers and then later on we will setup a social community type environment so travellers will be able to connect with one another.

In our quest to be the “one stop shop” for everything travel related we thought it would be a good idea to setup a social community specifically for travellers. There are a few sites that do this already, however before Facebook there was MySpace and before MySpace there was Bebo – so if done properly we aim to be better than everyone else offering this type of service.

The configuration of WordPress MU meant that we had to export everything we had already done and then import it back into the WPMU database.Though if we started from a fresh install it would have been much easier to setup and configure. The setup is a little different to the standard WordPress, however anyone with basic knowledge of web hosting and web site configuration should be able to manage.

Not only do we now have to take care of our own blog we have to make sure that our members have the latest and greatest themes, plugins and other WordPress hacks that will enable them to create a professional looking travel blog.

We will also have to create a support forum and a few “How To” guides so our members can learn how to use WordPress and if they come across any problems they can share it in the forums.

The configuration of Explore With Me is nearly done, so now it is working the backend making sure members have themes, plugins and anything else that I can think of.

The social community plugin won’t be available until the end of the year so that will be the next big phase of the site. Though we will aim to launch in a few weeks and then add the social community when it becomes available.

If you would like to help us out and test the site – please sign up as a member and create your own blog. Any suggestions are welcome as I am new to this so I am bound to be missing a thing or two!

Explore With Me Update

// October 19th, 2008 // No Comments » // Projects

Just a quick progress update on explorewithme.com. We had a productive weekend and nearly finished the design of the site and are continuing the add articles to the site.

Explorewithme.com hits have been very very good considering the site has not even launched yet. I am embarrassed to say, but it received more hits last week than this blog did! We even have users who have added the site to delicious.com and subscribed to the RSS feed.

We added a forum over the weekend to attempt to build a bit of a community among travellers and we have another idea that we hope will take off – though I can’t discuss that with you yet and probably won’t be able to until the end of the year – but it is very exciting.

Before we officially launch we need to add more articles and tidy a few things up. A logo needs to be designed, redesign the forum, fix the contact forms, create an about page and a lot more! Then it is just a matter of getting the word out and drive traffic to the site.

If all goes well we will launch in the next week but definitely by the end of the month!