We went and got ourselves a blog. Some things that we might have sent here [the announcements list] will be posted there instead. We’ll now reserve this list for major announcements. The blog will include the announcements plus other odds and ends–whatever seems at least somewhat relevant and half way interesting.
The blog is located at http://byCycle.org/. Our home page also shows selected items posted to the blog (ones tagged as news).
Today I installed Trac. “Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects.” We plan to use it to keep track of issues with the trip planner and any other software projects we might undertake. Issues (AKA bugs) with the trip planner can now be reported at http://trac.bycycle.org/newticket. This is somewhat developer-oriented, but users can (and should!) use it too. Also, since Trac contains a Wiki, anyone can contribute useful information about the trip planner, which might be documentation, tips and tricks, or anything else that’s relevant. Here is the high-level outline of our Trac installation: Dependencies Install Subversion Install ClearSilver Install SQLite Install PySQLite For some reason, this was the hardest thing to install. Install Trac Set Up and Configure Trac Create a Trac Project Environment for the Trip Planner TODO Somebody requested keyboard shortcuts for the map a long time ago, and we finally got around to adding them. I actually attempted to do it back then but must have done something wrong because it didn’t seem to work. Then I forgot about it… For those that don’t know about this, after you click on the map, you can use the keyboard to navigate. You can use the arrow keys to move the map continuously; the page up, page down, home, and end keys to move in larger steps; and the + and – keys to zoom in and out. We just had our photos taken for an article on byCycle that’s coming out in the Portland Tribune in its new Sustainable Life section. We’ve heard that the article is coming out next week (Tuesday, August 8th), but we don’t know for sure. Keep an eye out for it, and we’ll post here when we know it’s out. PS In case anyone is unsure, byCycle is pronounced as two words, like “buy sigh-cle.” Installing WordPress is straightforward. Since we wanted an embedded blog for news on our front page, along with a standard blog in a subdirectory, we had to go through a few extra steps. Here’s how to reproduce our setup: Note: The following assumes Apache, PHP, and MySQL are already installed and configured (correctly), which means, amongst other things, Apache is configured to load the PHP module, there’s a database for the WordPress tables to be installed into, and there’s a MySQL user that can access those tables. I should mention that even though PHP is not my favorite language, I think WordPress is pretty cool, and hacking on it is fairly easy. I’ve been thinking a blog would be a much better way to manage the news on this site. As it is now, we hack into the HTML source and add new items to the bottom (go ahead, take a look). That’s not so much fun and we post a lot less often than we’d like to. We also plan to post other information that doesn’t necessarily qualify as news, things that we’ve learned while working on this project and whatever seems like it might be interesting or useful to somebody. Note: We are clearing out several items in this announcement. In the future we plan to make shorter announcements on a more regular schedule. Table of Contents 1. New News/Announcements System 2. Trip Planner Status For the user interface we are adding some new functionality, but mostly we are focusing on creating a consistent, uncluttered, easy-to-use application that includes inline help. There are many “behind the scenes” changes that will make the system easier to maintain and extend. One quick note about using the trip planner: I notice that people often try to type in the names of businesses, schools, and other points of interest. For the time being, the system only understands street addresses (including intersections). You can also *use the map* to input addresses. There is more information about this that we’ve incorporated into the trip planner and also on the trip planner help page http://bycycle.org/tripplanner/help.html>. Using local map data will have a number of benefits. For one thing, we will be able to show things like bike routes, light rail lines, etc. Also, we will be able to more easily track down problems since we will be able to look at the *actual* data the trip planner is using to find routes. 3. Lloyd TMA Presentation We shared the spotlight with the Mayor’s Visioning Team. Our presentation included the history, goals, and future of byCycle; our newly revised information on integrating a region into the trip planner; and a demonstration of the trip planner. You can view the presentation at http://presentations.byCycle.org/2006_07_13_LloydTMA/. You might have to adjust the size of the text in your browser to be able to see everything. You can also view the whole thing as a single normal Web page by moving your mouse to the lower right corner (inside the blue bar) and then clicking the Oh-with-a-slash-through-it symbol that appears. To schedule a presentation for your organization, please contact Lauren. Her email address is lauren@byCycle.org. 4. Ads Added In addition to Google Ads, we are looking into other sources of revenue. One idea we are considering is displaying ads for local businesses. We also have shirts for sale and accept donations–see http://byCycle.org/support.html for more info. —-Installing Trac
Keyboard Shortcuts for the Trip Planner Map
Photos for the Portland Tribune
WordPress Setup
<?php
$cat = 2;
$show_how_many_posts = 2;
require('./blog/wp-blog-header.php');
?>
<div class=”narrowcolumn” id=”content”></div> (but not the div tags)here is the source; look for the section that starts with <!– Begin Embedded WordPress –>)Let the Blogging Begin
Announcement 0
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1. New News/Announcements System
2. Trip Planner Status
3. Lloyd TMA Presentation
4. Ads Added
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Instead of maintaining our own news/announcements system (which you may have noticed we almost never used), we are now using a Google group. When we send out announcements, they will be automatically archived on the Web at http://groups.google.com/group/byCycle-announce.
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We are in the midst of making a bunch of changes to the trip planner. The two things we are focusing on are 1) refining the user interface and 2) working with Metro to create a version of the Portland area trip planner that uses local map data.
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On July 13th we did a presentation (our first!) on byCycle and the trip planner for the Lloyd District Transportation Management Association (TMA) luncheon. The Lloyd TMA is “a non-profit business association representing large and small employers in the Lloyd District.” Their Web site is at http://www.lloydtma.com/.
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We decided to give Google Ads a try and see if we could at least make enough money to cover our Web hosting costs. So far, it looks like we will make enough to cover the costs for hosting the informational part of our site <http://byCycle.org/>, but nowhere near enough to cover the costs of hosting the trip planner (or, for that matter, the costs of developing, deploying, and maintaining the trip planner).
If you have any feedback regarding this announcement or about anything relating to the Web site or the trip planner, please feel free to email us at contact>@bycycle.org (or use the feedback form on our Web site).