Photo Directory that Utilizes Maps (Such as google maps, or bing, etc.)
A) Posting photos:
Users can take photo and post on this website by three means. Browser upload, upload from a URL, emailing it to photos_username(at)example.com. Emailed photos will accumulate on user account and when user visits their account they can click on un-posted photos to finalize posting. They can also receive emailed reply upon emailing photo with a unique link to finalize the posting.
The posting will contain:
1. The photo itself (resized and formatted to a standard specified at back-end). Photo is optional and at its absense will be displayed as “No photo – Add your own”
2. Location (latitude, longitude) that is provided by the smart device (e.g. Android, iPhone, iPad, etc.). The photo will be geotagged if technically possible within the photo itself before emailing and the website will extract this meta info.
3. If location is unavailable, the user can choose to input address, or drag and drop a marker on the map.
4. New posting creates a marker (choice of several types from pull-down, e.g. Red, Green, Blue) configurable from back end where new unlimited types of markers can be added (transparent png as icon and marker description).
5. Posting will have other attributes associated with it such as: title, short description, long description, user name (not optional but can be hidden as private from user account panel), also the county, or authority (e.g. city) for that area. This can be selected from list of choices (search suggestion tool), no need to be approved by admin but admin can lock this choice. Also, entries suggested by user that were not already on the site list can be added by admin and approved for sitewide use at back end. This authorities list is managed at admin side.
6. Before final posting, the software will check for possibly matching postings using general area (location), title, description, and if close enough match is found it will ask user whether the duplicate may already exist and offer to add photo to existing record or offer to override and post it as new record.
7. The submission page will be Ajax based and will work flawlessly with all major browsers and devices that support Ajax. If there is no Ajax support with the device, an alternative code will be loaded to handle submission.
8. Email (as user id) of the user and password. If user ID doesn’t exist, offer to create new account via emailed secret random code. Random code will be emailed and box will appear on the same page to input the code.
9. Newly posted photos will be moderated before they go live. Moderation can be turned on or off at admin side.
10. There will be a special user type that is the authority type mentioned above. They will have special permissions to change some aspects of each entry. These aspects are configured at admin end globally as well as per such user.
11. Some entry types are premium and can be promoted for a fee either one time or ongoing complete with payment integration (paypal and paypal pro) with flat fee or subscribtion type with expiration. These properties are configud at admin end.
B) Viewing photos:
Mostly Ajax when possible as stated above
1. Visitors will be able to view the posted photos by zooming onto a map or typing address, zip code, city, etc. that will bring up zoomed in area they typed in.
2. As the map zooms in, more photos will appear in much the same way as house icons on Zillow.com
3. Navigation, map dragging and interaction will be smooth and similar to Zillow.com
4. Individual markers on the map can be moused-overt to reveal photo and short recap (e.g. title, description, other attributes) lik a quickview on many sites.
5. On click the bigger floating div will expand with full attributes. Floating div can be then closed
6. Each entry will have associated comments, criterias of rating (criterias managed at admin end) on a 1-5 star scale, it will also have up/down thumb button to vote it up or down. When more people vote up than down, the marker becomes Green. When down, it will become red. Admin will have a capability to permanently lock the record as green or red regardless of up/down votes.
7. Registered/logged-in users will be able to rate the entries.
8. Under the map, click of an expand button will reveal paginated list of entries that appeared on the map for that area that can be filtered or sorted by most popular, highest rated (of any of the criteria above), and most promoted (thumbs up down)
Home page will have a nice web 2.0 style design with map and featured entries, popular entries, recent entries and couple other criteria determined later. It will have an easy and visible buttons to submit entry or search for one.
