bookslam

a great podcast that does have a bit on book reviews and poetry, some music as well and live performances. I was delighted to find this because most of the book podcasts out there are always in such a formal and stuffy way so I was glad to find this which is much more relaxed and it is great, interesting, check out the podcast on iTunes and here is their site

http://www.bookslam.com/

Thorough thumbs up from here :o)

in the next few weeks

I hope to add some more functionality to the site, including

With the 100% feedback scores under everyones names I don’t think it’s a great indication on how reliable we all are, so I’m going to add another score that just highlights how many completed swaps you’ve been involved in. I hope it’s a better indication.

I’ve been to a good book sale so I’m going to post some more books personally

I am working on the first newsletter that I hope to get out before August. Working on content and design at the moment, so keep your eyes on your inbox

I’ve added an extra page to let everyone know a forum is on the way…I hope to have this added by August as well but my jobs super crazy right now so September is probably a more realistic deadline for that. Lets see how that goes anyway.

I’ve been publicising the site in more places lately and we’ve attracted more users recently which is always good. Keep your eyes open because I hope there will be many more users and books on the site.

so what’s been happening?

Well this is just an update really.

I’ve climbed Google Search Rankings with a great pace actually. If you searched in the UK for swap and books, we were on page 12. Now we’re on page 2. Obviously with Google that could all change in the next hour, but I’ve decided to take this as positive and be happy that we’re finally moving in the right way.

You may have noticed some email errors this week, this was caused by my stupidity to be honest. There is a setting called SendMail and on my home PC it’s set to False, on the web it’s set to True. I set the web version to false by mistake and caused problems this week…sorry. Needless to say it’s been fixed and it’s all working again.

We’ve had some swaps take place, the site is working and moving real fast compared to speeds a while ago. Everything is good and I’m happy everything is improving.

In the next month the Edinburgh Book Festival launches it’s program. I’m looking forward to this because I do intend to be at the festival this year, big time. Maybe see you there.

Also either in July or August I hope to send out the first newsletter, so keep an eye out for that.

Any comments, questions then please let me know.

issues fixed

ok, I’ve fixed the registration problems, fiction and history problems and some of the firefox layout issues. To be honest I’m going to be working on the sites design and amending it here and there so it’s probably best to fix those problems when I’m doing that task.

So the problems mentioned below have all been fixed basically. I’ll start promoting the site around the web soon in the hope of drumming up some activity. If you know someone you think this site will benefit then please let them know about us.

Some of the new features added include

• new and improved layout for the book categories and the home page (including some support answers on the front page)
• newsletter
• this blog being accessible from the site
• an information bar just below the nav that hopefully I’ll add later to the rest of the site
• members profiles and profile pics to go with
• also a lot (and I mean a lot) of work has been done behind the scenes to speed up the site. I know I’m biased, but compared to the speed of the site before this has been a massive improvement.

Any problems/questions/suggestions just add a comment to this post and I’ll get on it as soon as I can.

Thanks.

issues

I’ve made some changes to the site and unfortunately I’ve came across some issues that didn’t come up on my testing server. There seems to be some problems with the registration process (so if you are trying to join, I am working on it) and some of the fiction and history pages seems to be having some problems as well.

Also I’ll hold up my hands and admit to being stupid and not looking at the site in anything but IE. I’m a web developer so I know how dumb this was, so users of Firefox, Opera and Safari will experience some layout problems.

As I’ve said before this site is a one man band and I am working hard to improve the site, hopefully I can get to these issues real soon.

The Christian Aid book fair in Edinburgh

For all Edinburgh based book lovers this has become an unmissable event. The Christain Aid book fair on George Street this year kicks off on the 10th of May and continues for the following week.

http://www.standrewsandstgeorges.org.uk/christian_aid_book_sale.php

Go along and get not only a great horde of cheap books, but help out Christian Aid as well.

Excellent book covers

Looking through the web yesterday I came across a fantastic site yesterday called Smashing Magazines and on this site I found a post looking at book and paperback cover designs. Some of the designs are really impressive. If you’ve an interest in either design or books, it’s a great read.

Check it out at http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/04/14/excellent-book-covers-and-paperbacks/

On the way

Well this is taking me a little longer than I had hoped but changes to the site are on the way. I’ve been held up by what people call “real life”. Just some stuff has come up and a bit of announcement soon as well, but for now please keep going to the site.

Hopefully in the coming weeks I will be able to launch the changes, including profile pics and layout changes in a lot of the pages. Also you can now suggest a swap from the book listing pages and add comments to books as well. I’ll also be adding a lot of books to the site very soon, so keep checking back.

so, I’m changing the site

Yeah you might have guessed that I am going to make some big changes to the site. Hopefully these should all be up and running in the near future, but we’ll see how it goes. I’ve got the next couple of days free so lets see how much of this stuff I can get done.

Some (just some mind) of the changes are going to be…

Profile Pictures

If you have a profile on the site, you’ll be able to upload an avatar (photo people) and this will be shown in your profile and next to your books (not sure if profile pics will be on the homepage though, but for sure everywhere else).

Favoured Sections

Soon if you register, you’ll be able (in your profile) to indicate what your favourite section of the site is and we’ll send you a weekly email to let you know the books that have been added to that section that week (excluding your own of course). Of course you can turn this feature on and off if you so wish.

Newsletter

I recently went to an internet marketing meeting and one of the things that came out, was that a lot of web professionals see these as a waste of time. I’m not 100% sure I agree, but I have my doubts about whether or not people read them. Out of 100 people you’re lucky if 15 read it. So, we’ll launch a newsletter that we’ll send when we have things to say but if it’s not working for me or for you, the user, then we’ll scrap it. So, on a trial basis, coming soon the fantastic We Swap Books Newsletter.

Design

There is a new design on the way. Probably won’t be anytime soon, but we’ll see. I may roll it out in stages, depends on several factors to be honest, but one thing I can say is that the eye splitting colours are going. Well, maybe not completely but defintely they’ll be toned down.

Book Swapping

I’m actually going to make this a lot easier. In your profile you have 2 lists, I’m going to combine them into 1 and include filters. We’re also going to remove some sections, add some sections and basically just rejuvinate the whole site.

Promote

I’m also going to try and promote the hell out of this site. At the moment it’s a decent site with no visitors, reason being is because not a lot of people know it’s here. That’s going to change.

Anyway, that is just some of the changes I’m going to be implementing. If you have any ideas or suggestions for the site in general or even the promotion of the site, then please leave a comment.

rob @ weswapbooks.com

The Reason

So, We Swap Books has a blog…why?

Well first off lets get some things about We Swap Books straight.

1. Activity on the site is not great. After a lot of searching, analysing, head scratching, bribing, drinking beer, watching porn, eating frosties (they’re great by the way) it was agreed that the site needs an overhaul. So in the coming months there will be a lot of changes to the site, the first being a more richly featured profile for the users and a new design is on the way as well.

As of yet we don’t have a launch date for the new design but I do hope to be getting some of the changes on the site in the coming weeks.

2. On some parts of the site I mention a development team. There isn’t one. It’s just me.

Now a lot of web marketing gurus out there will argue I did the right thing by saying “We” when talking about the site staff and painting a bigger picture than the one that exists right now. Others will call me dumb. I accept both, but I decided honesty was the best policy so here it is, this whole thing is a one man band (except the design).

I have a full time job as well, so unfortunately updates won’t happen as fast I’d hoped but I will bust a gut to get this site to where it should be. Firstpage of Google with over 1000 members.

3. I was in the middle of building a complicated News/Blog feature thing when I suddenly thought, “Why not use WordPress?” so, thats what I’ve went with. Hence the blog here on WordPress (happy to be here by the way). Hope to update this pretty often about updates for the site, maybe try to throw in the odd book event announcement from around the UK, maybe some book reviews now and again. So keep checking back.

4. I really need to throw some promotion behind this site. You can help you know. If you know anyone with even just a passing interest in books, let them know about We Swap Books.

The site can be found at http://www.weswapbooks.com/

5. This one is to the Americans in the auidence. Now….some of you know that I was planning to launch a US version of the site sometime this year. I’m sorry, but that won’t be happening in 2008. Pushed it back to 2009 for now.

Mainly because I think I need to get the UK site on a sure footing. I felt that launching the US site this year would have spread myself too thin and both sites would have failed. Still hoping to get an American site at least under-development this year.

Misc
Any people out there with at least a passing knowledge will notice that my spelling and grammar ain’t good what it should be like. I won’t apologise for that. I’m a web developer trying to make the site I built as a hobby and as an indication of what I could do, into a success so give me a break.

Also we will be sticking with this default theme from WordPress for now. Once I have a better idea of the final design of the site, I will adjust this to be a bit closer to how that looks.

Anyway I hope you got a lot from this first blog posting and I hope you try We Swap Books.

Rob @ We Swap Books.