Posted: Fri 01 Feb, 2013 7:34 pm
Hi everybody,As regular visitors will know, we've been going through some changes here at SecretLeeds recently. I just wanted to update you all with what's been happening and why, and to share some plans for the future and get your feedback.Change in ownershipWay back in 2006, James Hill (site name 'munki') and myself (Duncan Scobie) came up with a concept called SecretLeeds that we planned to be part of the "Celebrate Leeds 2007" festivities for the 800th anniversary of Leeds being granted its town charter. We were working for Leeds City Council and Marketing Leeds respectively, and wanted to harness the rising power of social media to investigate and celebrate some of the more unusual and unique aspects of our home city. This website was the result, and it turned out to be quite popular Fast forward six years to 2012 and James had moved on from his job to pastures new and the company I worked for was merging with various departments of the council and becoming a new entity. SecretLeeds had not been developed for many years and was something of an anomaly for the new organisation that inherited it, Leeds and Partners. As I was about to leave my job too, I was keen to ensure that the site's future would be secure and began to investigate what L&P's plans were for it.One way or another it became clear that L&P were not interested in maintaining and developing the site, so I began a bid to take it over and run it on behalf of the community. L&P were happy with my proposal and the transfer of ownership was completed in January 2013 and the site was then transferred to a new server under my control.So in short, SecretLeeds will now be run on behalf of you lot, by me! One of my first acts as the new 'curator' of SL was to get James/munki back on board, as he's been sorely missed since leaving the council. Recent changesI've been busy for the last few weeks making various tweaks and improvements to the site. The initial focus has been on sorting out the site layout and updating it to display better on modern computers and browsers. Hopefully it's a bit easier for folk to read now. Improvements will be ongoing, and we're running competitions at the moment to update the banner images at the top of the site as well as the SecretLeeds logo. For more information and details on how to enter, please see here: Photo competition and here: Logo design competitionToday I've implemented a new search function as that was something that people seemed keen to have working. It's a service provided for free by Google and as a result there are Google ads served next to your search results. It seems to work really well (certainly leaps and bounds better than the old search function!) but let me know if you have any issues or can suggest improvements.Coming soonThis month we celebrate SecretLeeds' sixth birthday and naturally we're going to have a party! It would be great if you could come along, it's going to be on Friday 22nd February at The Victoria pub on Great George Street. We have reserved "Bridget's Bar" for the do; there will be nibbles and cake provided but you'll have to pay for your own drinks Hope to see as many as possible of you there.One of the top priorities for future development work is sorting out the system for uploading and displaying images. This has been broken for a long time now and I'm not too sure what the problem is. I'll be working on it over the coming weeks though, trying to either fix it or find an alternative solution. I'll keep you posted.In order to pay for our server costs we will be implementing advertising on the site in the next few weeks. I know this may not be welcome news for everyone but we do have to pay the bills somehow! They won't be too intrusive though and we're looking at using a Leeds company to serve the ads as well as major providers like Google - we like to keep things local where possible. SecretLeeds is all about you guys, so if you have any suggestions for new features or improvements please post below or email info@secretleeds.com with your ideas - no matter how outlandish!Long term plansUltimately I hope to rebuild SecretLeeds on different forum software. The site was originally constructed on a shoestring budget and the background system that runs it all is pretty basic, a bit outdated, lacks some key features (like private messaging for example) and the team that built the software are no longer working on the project.For SecretLeeds to move into the modern era of the web we're going to have to migrate all the site content to a new system. To be absolutely clear that does not mean losing any of the existing site content - we'll be preserving everything but we'll be able to add new features to make the site easier to use and more informative. Current ideas include things like GPS mapping, a site wiki for important SL subjects (so new users don't have to wade through 100+ pages of info about The Skulls for example!) and more social media functions to connect with the modern web. I'll get any interested parties involved in the design process when the time comes.And finally...This post is way too long already, but I wanted to keep everyone fully informed about recent developments - thanks for taking the time to read this far This site is nothing without its users - it's all about you guys, so if you have ideas, comments or suggestions about any of the above, or anything else SL-related for that matter, please don't hesitate to get in touch - either post in this thread or email info@secretleeds.com. I look forward to hearing from you all - let's see where we can take this site together!