First a request: when you add a photo or resource for you vehicle or a model or marque on Autopendium, take a couple of seconds more to tag it. Why?

Well, Autopendium has the little-known feature that allows you to quickly see all the photos with that tag, and it’s surprising just how many photos there are for some of them.  The ones you may have come across are the classic car graveyard photos, and the classic car publicity photos. All you need to do is add the tag to http:autopendium.com/tagged photos.

Here, for example, is a selection of the classic car badges at autopendium.com/tagged_photos/badge:

But you don’t need to stop there. What about classic car interior photos, (at http://autopendium.com/tagged_photos/interiors),  steering-wheels, or engines. Well, you get the, er,  picture.

There are even some events that have been tagged (photos from this year’s Enfield Pageant of Motoring). So, next time you’re adding a photo, consider tagging it, or just have a play around and see what you can find.

When we did the design refresh on Autopendium a couple of months ago it was with the aim not just of freshening the look up, but using the space more efficiently so we’d have room for some of those features we’d been wanting to add.

The first was Flickr photos — which is simplicity itself. When you’re looking at a vehicle or marque or model, the system will simply show you the latest Flickr photos relating to that vehicle.

Similarly with Yahoo Answers. For those of you not familiar with Yahoo Answers it’s a way people can find out stuff on all sorts of weird and wonderful questions… including old cars. Sometimes they’re pretty lame, sometimes pretty interesting. Here are are current ones for the Volvo Amazon:

Another little new feature that’s actually incredibly useful is targeted Google Custom Search. This is a great feature that allows you to use Google to search only those websites that are directly related to the make and model you’re interested in. To use it, just enter the search term in the Google Custom search box on the vehicle/model page and go:

The result is something like this:

[For those interested in the details of how this works, Google dynamically searches only those clubs and websites listed as a resource for the model, which means instead of 54,000 useless entries you get a handful of relevant ones.]

Finally, we’ve now gone over the 150 mark in our classic car museum directory and have comfortably over 500 entries in the Autopendium classic car club directory (which helps make the Google Custom search work really well in general).

One of the joys of restoring an old car, even if you’re doing it slowly (perhaps especially if), is the incremental nature of it. Rarely do we have all the bits we need to start and finish a job on the same day, and things have a habit of taking longer than you at first think.

So it is with the Autopendium Classic Car Resources Directory. We were always going to add museums and other places to the Clubs, Websites, Books and Suppliers Directories — just took us a little longer than planned. Well, it’s done now, and the Autopendium Classic Car Museum Directory is now live, and already has nearly 150 entries, ranging from the small Cotswold Motor Museum & Toy Collection to the huge Petersen Museum in LA, as well as some great specialist ones such as the Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum.

You can filter by country, so can see just the classic car museums in the UK, for example, or car museums in  Germany. We’ve also got sections for race tracks and historical locations, so if you know of any good ones, please do add them. Similarly, if we’ve forgotten any of your favourite museums.

Finally, we’ve tied all this in to Google Maps, so with one click of the mouse you can see the location on a map easy as you like:

Example of Classic Car Museum Directory entry

Despite the lack of posts on the this blog, we’ve been far from inactive on Autopendium :: stuff about old cars these past few months. There’s been loads of new features, tweaks, bugfixes and back-end improvements, all designed to make Autopendium the best classic car resource possible. I’ll be doing a series of catch-up posts, over the next few weeks to bring everyone up to speed.

First off, since the beginning of this year, we’ve been giving the site a bit of a design refresh. What does that mean? Well if you’ve not visited the site for a while, it’ll perhaps look slightly different to how you remembered it (but only slightly); if you’re a regular visitor now and then you may have noticed a few changes to colours, typefaces and positioning over the past few months; and if you’re a new visitor the site’s even easier to use.

What’s changed? Well, let’s look at the heart of Autopendium, the pages for classic car models and marques. This was what they used to look like:

Classic car model or marque information page

And this is what they look like now:

New look for classic car model information and resources

As you can see, we’ve been able to get a lot more information there, and hopefully you’ll agree that it’s all rather more concise and easy to use.

We’ve also updated the vehicle page from:

Information and resources for member's vehicle

to this, meaning when you go to your vehicle’s page, all the info you want is right where you need it:

New classic car vehicle information page

Along the way, we’ve also improve the look of the Autopendium Classic Car Events Directory, the Classic Car Resources Pages, and the front page.

The design work is, of course, a work in progress — it’s often better to make a series of incremental improvements than try and get everything perfect first time — so do let us know what you think. Comment, or send me a message through the site.

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.