One of the first things I noticed yesterday after completing our blog migration to WordPress was that none of the comment author website addresses carried over from Blogger. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, those are the links behind people’s names that leave comments here at the blog and provide their website address.

Since many of the Hawaii fans that take the time to leave comments here also are fellow bloggers or have other sites they are proud of, I felt it only right that I correct the issue as soon as I could. So, the techie in me broke out the software development skills and whipped up a solution to update all the existing comments accordingly, and comment authors who specified their blog or website address are once again being linked to with their comments.

Say Cheese!
One of the many cool things about WordPress is that they support a something called Gravatars.  Avatars, as you might have heard, are the pictures people use on message boards, Twitter, and even comments like you see on blogs. A Gravatar is a “Globally Recognized” avatar (g-r-avatar), which means you can create an account at their website, upload your smiling face, and it’s used wherever you post a comment.

So, if you’ve always wondered how those pictures made it into blog comments but never knew how, check out their website, and be sure to add one of your own. We’d love to see you here.

Mahalo to Comment Authors
Going back to the comment updates for a second, I did want to extend an extra mahalo to those that have posted here in the past, and encourage any of our regular readers that haven’t said Aloha yet to drop us a note. While photos and memories of Maui vacations passed are fun to read, your comments and feedback mean just as much to this success and the usefulness of this blog.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Ask someone with over 3,500 comments on her blog.

- Kris

Other Posts You Might Like: 

• Aloha WordPress! 
• Some Maui Aloha on Facebook
• New Daily Maui Photo Feed

Aloha, as in, Hello WordPress!

Somehow I managed to squeeze in enough time over the weekend to work through a transition of this blog from Blogger over to the popular WordPress platform. It’s still not 100% complete yet, and probably something I’ll be tweaking for months to come, but it’s good enough to start posting again without fearing the same problems I’ve had with Blogger over the last year or so.

There are still going to be a few bumps in the road until I get the rest of the site updated now that the cutover from Blogger is live.  After all, I did do quite a bit of site/blog integration to make this site a lot more interactive. Some of that functionality might still work, others could need some more fixing.  If you see something that looks broken, let me know.

Back to Posting
Now that the blog is back up, it’s time to get back posting as much as I gain. Besides, we have a new trip to plan for. In less than 4 weeks!

Mahalo, and aloha for now,
- Kris

Before we get into full trip planning mode for February, I decided to throw together a few minor updates to the site here.

Welcome Page
For first timers to the site, I added a Welcome page that gives a brief overview of the different sections we feature.  There is a link at the top of the sidebar on the main page to make it easy for newcomers to find.  If you’re new to the site, or have only been reading the blog posts, go ahead and check it out.

New Weather Page
I also updated the Weather page this weekend, improving the look of the current conditions section and switching the data feeds from weather.gov to Yahoo! Weather.  The change to use Yahoo! also features 4 new locations on Maui that I wasn’t able to display previously.  I’ve also updated the current weather on the sidebar of the home page as well, to reflect this change.

Photo Tag Match – The Rematch
Earlier in the year, I had a little fun with the Flickr API and created something called the Photo Tag Match.  The concept was to count how many publically available photos on Flickr were tagged with any of the names of one of the Hawaiian islands.  For example, at this moment there are over 400K photos tagged with Maui, and over 3,000 added in the last 7 days.  To my joy, Maui has come out #1, or as we say, “No Ka ‘Oi”.

But, the island of Oahu, which has more residents living there than the other islands combined (source: Wikipedia), would not take to 2nd place rather lightly.  So I created a rematch, this time using geotagging information stored in photos on Flickr.  While there aren’t nearly as many photos on Flickr that are geotagged versus tagged with an island name, Oahu beat out Maui by a ratio of 2:1, with the Big Island matching a strong charge in 3rd place.

Other Geotagging
I thought doing the rematch was an interesting idea, and since I’ve been geotagging my photos for the last two years now, I thought it was worth sharing.  I’ve created some neat things using my GPS travel recorder and my photography, such as the Ka’anapali Beachwalk Photo Tour here.  Also, all the photos from our Road to Hana ‘08 Trip have also been geotagged, so you can see a map of exactly where something was taken along that magical journey.  Lastly, our Island Guide map has links to photos taken in a particular location, just by clicking on one of the markers for a location you’d like to see.  Pretty neat.

More to Come
Other than neat new features on the site, I still need to get back to filling out details for other sections that are just dying for my attention.  A quick look at how many “coming soon” messages are listed on our site map (no, don’t click the link), it is a constant reminder that I’m a little behind. And with all the new things we’re going to be planning for our next trip, I need to get those finished before I’m really behind.

So play around with these new updates and let me know what you think.  I’m always looking for feedback and ideas on how make the site more useful and engaging.

Mahalo.
– Kris