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Project Websites Advice

M

mbishop

Well Known Member
New project starting soon and I'd like to create an area for the pics and files that I'll be taking to document everything. Does anyone use one they like and is easy to use? I want to spend my time building and not fussing with HTML, PHP, etc.

I'm just looking for an online repo to keep everything organized. Heck, Google Drive might be all I'm really looking for.
 
I used Wordpress. Spend your time posting words and pictures, not writing code. I found someone who had written had a little script add-on to total up the build hours by section, that's about as far as I got into anything resembling code.
 
Documentation

I saw a really easy one recently. A Facebook page.
That said, it comes down to how much you want to document. The easiest is probably jotting down a date and hours i. The margin of the manual. Next maybe a VAF or FB page.
I'm on the other side. I document time on paper, transfer to Excel and copy to a Google blog along with photos. Everything is backed up to at least three places including scans of every receipt.
 
mbishop said:
New project starting soon and I'd like to create an area for the pics and files that I'll be taking to document everything. Does anyone use one they like and is easy to use? I want to spend my time building and not fussing with HTML, PHP, etc.

I'm just looking for an online repo to keep everything organized. Heck, Google Drive might be all I'm really looking for.
Click to expand...

I ended up settling on blogger ... simple and free ... wordpress would work just as well too.
 
Any word processor will do the job and let you add photos and track hours.

I pay my dues and use the "My RV Build Project" section right here on VAF. It lets me write whatever I want to and post photos. Here's my page.

After each posting, I'll print to PDF and save the file on my computer, overwriting each time. Print to PDF is easy on a Mac with Firefox and probably any browser, look under File, then Print, then device or some other menu choice there.

Do a search here on VAF for project or building documentation and you'll find many discussions.

Dave
 
+1 Wordpress.

Lots of people use mykitlog, but it isn't free and it doesn't work for Mac.

I also scribble completion dates in the manual. The blog is mostly a place to stick pictures for some future DAR to look at. As someone said before, I'm building an airplane, not a website.
 
I have switched to an apple app called Aircraft Builder. I tried to use kit log and found it clunky and they do not support apple products.

I now use an App on my iPad . Its $24 and is very simple and easy to use. It was designed for the Australian Market and has some different quirks they need down under.

The big advantage of using this system is that this simple app allows you to use the iPad to take pictures and attaches them to whatever your task is at he time. It produces a page by page log you can export to back up and save and also print if you like.

I find that having the iPad with all my manuals on it really helps.

Just an opinion. Hope this helps
 
mbishop said:
I've decided on a facebook page that will just be shares of the blogger site.

https://www.facebook.com/N9306b/

https://n9306b.blogspot.com/

What I could really use is a Gallery functionality to group my pictures. Still looking for that on Blogger. It might be that this is what makes Wordpress so attractive.
Click to expand...

You can pick photos from your Picasa Web Albums when authoring a Blogger blog post. I suspect this is the old name still sticking around, and most likely, you can use Google Photos to the same effect. Easy enough to test though:

- Create a Google Photos folder/gallery, and load a bunch of photos (i.e. "Empennage")
- Go in Blogger, select "Add Image" -> "From Picasa Web Albums" and see if they show up ... I suspect they will.

If that works, and you want someone to see the plain gallery, you can link them to Google Photos.

Note that adding multiple photos to a post automatically makes them clickable and browesable in a bigger size ... at least it does for me and the skin/theme I'm using ...
 
Don't use Google Photos...

Keep in mind that as of right now, Google Photos does NOT support the BBCcode for posting individual photos in a bulletin-board post, which is what you'll need if you want to post pics from your site here on VAF. I used Picasaweb for years, but now that Google is dumping it, I am moving to Flickr. Flickr has an app that backs up your phone photos, and it's really easy to make an online photo album with them. (Just like Picasa used to be.) My Picasa log is just one big album, but now I've started breaking my build down into a collection with several albums inside it for different sections of the airplane.

I used to write a blog, but got tired of it, so now I just upload my pictures, type a quick caption of what I did, and POOF. The date is there, too. The only thing I wish I had done differently is keep track of actual hours spent building. I started to do this, but lost track a few years ago. It's like counting trees whizzing by as you drive a country road... after a while it's all just a happy blur. :p

The reason I chose Flickr is that it has a nice app and is supported by Snapfish.com, which has a neat service where you can create and print a picture book. A Panther buddy turned his build log into a coffee table book, and it's awesome!
 
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KatieB said:
Keep in mind that as of right now, Google Photos does NOT support the BBCcode for posting individual photos in a bulletin-board post, which is what you'll need if you want to post pics from your site here on VAF. I used Picasaweb for years, but now that Google is dumping it, I am moving to Flickr. Flickr has an app that backs up your phone photos, and it's really easy to make an online photo album with them. (Just like Picasa used to be.) My Picasa log is just one big album, but now I've started breaking my build down into a collection with several albums inside it for different sections of the airplane.

I used to write a blog, but got tired of it, so now I just upload my pictures, type a quick caption of what I did, and POOF. The date is there, too. The only thing I wish I had done differently is keep track of actual hours spent building. I started to do this, but lost track a few years ago. It's like counting trees whizzing by as you drive a country road... after a while it's all just a happy blur. :p

The reason I chose Flickr is that it has a nice app and is supported by Snapfish.com, which has a neat service where you can create and print a picture book. A Panther buddy turned his build log into a coffee table book, and it's awesome!
Click to expand...

Cool, I'll take a look at it. If it is as simple as you say, using Flickr would be better than Google Photo. There are a lot of people complaining that they are taking Picassa away.
 
Eventually Flickr will get bought out by someone else too, then you'll be in the same boat again. Until Doug finds a way to store photos here, there's not much point linking them to posts here except for those topics that you don't mind expiring and losing the photo links. Nobody will ever go back and re-link all the photos to another hosting agency.

For build logs, I agree with the suggestion of Wordpress... It's very easy to use. Personally i'd install it on a website I had control over, and would resize photos to keep them small and then store them on the same site. Back up regularly, stuff happens and you don't want to lose your entire build log.
 
Paper tablet and #2 pencil kept in my toolbox.

Photos are in iCloud.

Started building my bird in 2004. Technology changes. I do IT Work for a living but preferred to build my airplane rather than upload pics and deal with changes in providers, software, paying to keep a site alive that was free when I started, etc. Besides, work needs to stay at work and the airplane is my departure from work. Anyway, it "works" for me. Ive got way too many build photos and will just present pics of the "general idea" along with my written logs. I can pull up any photo by date if there is a question. Anyway, it works for me. :eek:)
 
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