stuff about autopendium

One of the early suggestions for a new feature for Autopendium :: Stuff about old cars was a classic car events calendar. Seems simple enough, and it’s certainly something I’d find useful.

So why has it taken so long to add it? Simple. We wanted to be able to do it properly, and as shown by the large number of not-very-good online classic car events calendars, that’s not easy.

1. It should be simple and easy to use. We think it is. You can see all types of classic car events; or just a specific type of event (show, auction, race meeting or tour); or events limited to a particular country (e.g. classic car events in the UK); or a combination of event-type and country (e.g. classic car auctions in the US)
   
   
2. It should be at least as comprehensive as the classic car event listings in the magazines (that’s not always true of the magazine’s own websites. Octane, for example, has a pretty good listing of events and auctions in the magazine, yet the online version doesn’t include many of the events listed in the magazine). So we’ve currently got over 200 events listed already and are adding more every day.
3. It should be possible (and easy) for people to add details of their own events. It should take no more than a minute and if you’re adding an event for a single-make club (e.g. the Volvo Owners’ Club), you can even link the club to the event, and the event will show up on the main page for that club.
4. It should just work. Want to import an event into your electronic calendar (e.g. Outlook, Apple’s iCal or online in Google Calendar)? No problem, just click on the icon to the right of the event’s title.

   What about allowing your electronic calendar to subscribe to the classic car events calendar? Again, no problem. You can even subscribe to just a particular type of event in a particular country, and your electronic calendar will be automatically updated whenever an event is added or updated. How cool is that! See the FAQ for more details.
   

So check it out, and go ahead and add an event if we’re missing one you’re organizing, involved with or just think is worth telling other people about.

OK. I’ll make this quick. We’ve just added a new feature to running reports. Instead of being restricted to plain old text, you can now format them and add links too:

We’re hoping this isn’t going to open the floodgates to spam, and if you see any using it for that purpose or anything else that’s inappropriate, just click on the “Report Abuse” link that’s on pretty much every page, and we’ll deal with it at once.

It’s been a month or so, since I last posted about improvements to Autopendium. However, that doesn’t mean we’ve been standing still, and there’s been a whole raft of minor improvements and new features. Here’s a rundown of them:

• Improved browsing of photos. Right since the early days of the site, you’ve been able to get a large version of a thumbnail photo simply by clicking on it, but now (thanks to redranch’s nagging) you have the option to see the other photos in a group without having to close the existing photo. It’s no big thing really, but does make browsing a bunch of photos rather nicer:

• Improved eBay product searching. I haven’t actually posted about the eBay sidebar before, but basically, when you’re on page featuring a model or vehicle, the eBay sidebar shows related models, vehicles and parts for sale on eBay. It’s all pretty straightforward and seems to have been quite popular since we introduced it. One question I have been asked is, Which country do the eBay listings come from?
  
  

  Well, if you’re not logged in it searches the US eBay database, but if you are, and you’re from the US, UK, Canada, Germany or Australia, then it will search that country’s listings. That makes sense to me, but what if you want to search other countries’ listings (as the owner of an American car, I know that sometimes you have to got to the source)?Well, just click on the “see more” link, and not only can you see every single matching item without leaving the site, you can also search the other countries:
  

• Links to relevant entries in the Internet Movie Car Database. If you’ve not heard of the IMCDB, it’s definitely worth checking out, and is packed with and amazing amount of info. In short, it’s a database of cars appearing in films and TV, and now we’ve integrated the data into Autopendium, and have listed the key films in the models’ resources section:
  
  

• Ability to download clubs and suppliers to your computer’s address-book with a single click. Does just what it says on the can:
  

Plus there’s countless design tweaks and bugfixes. As ever, if there’s any features you think should be added, drop me a line at webmaster@autopendium.com

As I mentioned in the previous post, about pimping your user profile, we’ve improved the way Autopendium handles videos. Well now, as a by-product of that, you can now add a Youtube video to a running report entry.

As a example, my Volvo Amazon, which is undergoing a bare metal restoration, has finally had its engine finished with the arrival of some much needed rocker arms, and just over a week ago, we fired it up for the first time in, oh, nine months or so.

I thought this warranted videoing, not because it will be of massive interest to everyone else (although there’s a certain pleasure in watching Mark at Romance of Rust get a mouthful of fuel), but because it’s all part of the Amazon’s history, and a few years down the line I’ll be glad I did it.

To add a YouTube video to a new (or existing) running report entry, first put it on YouTube. Then click on “add running report entry” on your vehicle’s home page, just as you normally would. Then enter the id of the YouTube video in the bit that says Youtube video (or the URL of the video), write the entry, adding any photos you want while you’re at it, and it’s done:

The video will show up as normal on the entry, but with the word video superimposed to let people know it’s a, er, video:

In fact, MudRide, who’s posting his countdown to the Shasta Snow Trip (a mad trip to the snow for VW Type 2 buses) has already added a video for his latest post, and if you fancy watching of a fully loaded VW van tearing around in the mud and snow (and you know you do), check it out.

One of the most popular parts of Autopendium is the way it shows relevant YouTube videos right there on a model’s page:

Well, we’ve updating the how this happens under the hood a bit, with the result that we’ve been able to add a couple of new features. First, you can now see all the videos for that model, not just the first 10. Just click on the more videos link and it’ll scroll you through them batch by batch.

The second thing we’ve added is the ability to add your favourite YouTube car videos to your profile page. Rather than have you submit this info all over again, we’ve made it easy. You just edit your Autopendium account and enter your YouTube id.

Then the videos you’ve marked as favourites on YouTube (and that are in the Autos category) will show up automatically.

And this is what mine looks like.

We’ve got a few more tweaks to the profile page coming soon, and some more video functionality too, so stay tuned.

Cheers

Chris

At the request of several users (redranch and dustyrumble), you now have an alternative to deleting your car (and its running report entries and photos) when you say goodbye to it, whether it’s to a new owner, or to the great garage in the sky.

Simply click on ‘edit vehicle details‘, then click the checkbox that says ‘I no longer own this vehicle‘, enter the date you got rid of it, and that’s it.

The vehicle will now show up in a separate section of your personalized home page just for vehicles you’ve previously owned, but you’ll still be able to see all the posts and photos, as before.

Incidentally, you can also use this facility to add other cars you once owned. Just make sure when you add the vehicle, you click on the ‘I no longer own this vehicle‘ checkbox and add the approx date you stopped owning it.

Credit to this one goes to Pete (aka redranch), owner of what’s going to be a very nice 1950 Merc Coupe when he’s finished rebuilding it.

Have I ever thought, he asked, about giving people the option to post photos of classic junkyard finds on Autopendium. He’s got a few, and he’d love to see some other people’s too.

OK. Seems like a good idea. It’s a popular bit of many classic car magazines, and shouldn’t be too hard to do.

Well, it wasn’t, and adding a graveyard photo is pretty much a cinch too. Just go the the model of the car (or just the marque, if you don’t know what model it is), click on ‘add photo’, and tag the photo ‘graveyard’ and it’ll show up in the new graveyard section automatically.

If you’ve got a feature you’d like to see on Autopendium, email me (webmaster at autopendium dot com) or send me a personal message via Autopendium.

Quick update to let you know that you can now see the latest activity on Autopendium from within the Autopendium application on Facebook (see here for more details). It’s nothing overly fancy, but if you spend your life immersed in Facebook you can now check on new vehicles, photos, running reports etc without leaving it.

Here’s a quick screenshot:

Back from a week’s holiday in Italy, and, God, those mountain roads are just brilliant, even though I was in a crummy diesel hire car (a Lancia Musa, in case you’re wondering). Can’t wait to get the Amazon back on the road and maybe even drive it over there.

In the meantime, the improvements I’d made to Autopendium seemed to work well, with no problems or flakiness while I was away. Before I went, I also tweaked the performance in a number of areas, all of which helps keep things running nice and smoothly.

Now that I’m back there are a number of new features I’m going to be adding, and probably a few slight tweaks to the design to make things clearer in places.

The first is you can now add comments to a vehicle’s running report entries, and you also get notified when someone comments on one of your vehicles or running report entries.

I’ve also made it a bit easier to see when vehicles have been updated, with a little ‘Updated’ flash appear next to your friend’s vehicles when they update them or add a running report entry.

You can also now see at a glance your activity on Autopendium (just go to your home page), particularly resources you’ve added for the benefit of the community, e.g. book reviews, websites, clubs, suppliers, etc.

Finally, I’ve added the ability to reset your password if you have forgotten it. Just click on the “Forgot password?” link on the login screen.

That’s it for now, but do let me know if there are any features you’d particularly like to see — leave a comment here, or message me on Autopendium.

Though this blog has been kind of quiet the past few weeks, it’s not been for lack of action as far as Autopendium goes. Behind the scenes we’ve been testing a couple of new features, one small, one pretty big.

The first one is quite a minor thing, but one that’s been a major annoyance of mine for quite a while — there was no way of governing which photo was the main one (i.e. the biggest one) on the vehicle’s page. Well, now you can, and it’s simplicity itself to set it. Just go to the details page for the photo you want to set as the main photo (click on the photo then click on ‘See photo details’), and click on the icon next to “Make main photo for [your vehicle name]“. That’s it. You can even set main photo to be one of the photos from a running report entry.

The second feature is integration with Facebook. What does this mean? Well, for those of you with Facebook accounts (and that’s increasingly most of my friends here in the UK), your profile will show off all your vehicles on Autopendium and will update it every time you update them. It also means you can keep up-to-date with all your friends’ vehicles while you’re on Facebook. Finally, it will automatically update your mini-feed, and those of your friends when you add a new running report entry. And that includes showing the photos for that entry.

Keeping track of what’s happening with your friends old cars, and for them to see what’s happening with yours has suddenly got a whole lot easier.

Try it out. Just go to http://apps.facebook.com/autopendium now.