This idea began one morning when I was in the shower. I just wanted to find a bunch of places (possibly nearby) that could be good candidates for ghost hunts. Not that I am one of THOSE kind of folks. I just enjoy history and stories. Most all hauntings I have ever heard of are rich in both.
I worked with Carl and Maryanne Nestor on the design.
The site currently:
- Lets users sign up for an account and add their own sightings.
- Comment on the listings of others.
- Search by free form string.
- Built in Ad system. Allows a repository of Amazon ads to be served on the front page.
Some plans for the future:
- Allow users to sign in via facebook.
Technologies Used
- Google Maps APIs – All of the mapping and geocoding of addresses uses the Google Maps API. The fact that this API is free for anyone to use is incredible.
- Ruby on Rails – I initially wanted to use Seaside to build the project, but the deadline was too close to mess too much with a technology I hadn’t done a full scale project in yet.
- Git – We used git to keep the CSS and HTML templates updated.
- Blueprint – There are too many bonuses to using blueprint to list. Most importantly, no fiddling with finicky CSS rules to get it to work across the different browsers.