Since the end of last month or so, I’ve been working on an original website dedicated to the most beautiful villages in France. This is the reason why I haven’t updated my blog recently.
Anticipated content
It’s the content that makes the work go faster. I already have a lot of material. It’s just a matter of how many ideas I can come up with.
The content we have in mind for now is ,
- 自ら撮影したフォトアルバム
- 村の基本情報（地域圏や県、簡単な紹介コメント）
- 村の評価（総合的な美しさ、写真のとりやすさ、車での訪問のしやすさ等）
- 自分のblog、公式サイトへのリンク
- 村最寄りのホテルの紹介（Booking.comアフィリエイトを利用）
- 近隣の美しい村（Google Direction APIを利用して距離検索）
- 主要都市からのアクセス方法（同じくGoogle Direction APIを利用）
- おすすめルート作成シミュレーション機能（可能であれば）
Structure based on your strengths
When it comes to the quality of content and design, there’s no way you can compete with the professionals.
しかし、僕には彼らにはない「全て自分の足で訪れている」、「商用ではないため主観的な評価を全面に押し出すことができる」という強みを持っています。これらを全面にアピールでき、かつ見やすくて楽しいものがが作れるといいなと考えています。
It is a fact that it has been ranked in the top of the Google search results for « the most beautiful villages in France », but it is still overshadowed by Wikipedia and a few other sites (but only one or two).
There are some SEO reasons, but we still need to do a lot more work on readability, features, and this area.
Coding is still at a manageable level.
I decided to create the site by myself because I have to stock and use a lot of data and CMS like WordPress can’t handle it.
Fortunately, even though I’m an amateur, I know the rudiments of html, php, JavaScript, and jQuery, so I can make a website that looks like that on my own. Even if I don’t understand it well, I can handle it by searching Google or Stack Overflow.
I’ve been struggling with responsiveness in coding, and sometimes I try to use jQuery library (chart.js, etc.) which is available under MIT license, but it’s not always responsive, and sometimes I can’t use it in a good way. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not.
By the way, as for MySQ which I use as DB, I am accustomed to it there though I usually write only about Select statement in Oracle at work.
So far, I haven’t had any difficulties with data maintenance, handling, and integration between the website and MySQL.
After all, design is very difficult.
I feel like the coding itself is still manageable, but my biggest concern is still the design aspect. This is the most important part…
I thought about studying it myself, but that would be limiting, plus it would take more time to do other things, so I’m considering outsourcing for now.
I would like to request only single page design, no coding etc., so I think I can ask for 20,000-30,000 yen.
By the way, it is responsive, of course. Nowadays, it’s a matter of course to be viewed with a smartphone. My blog is also accessed by almost half of the users from iOS and Android. As I mentioned above, I think coding can be managed once the design is decided.
Providing information on nearby hotels and affiliates using Booking.com
I also plan to be an active affiliate. However, I may not use Amazon Associates or Google Adsense so much. It’s because they’re not so good in design.
We are now looking to hire Booking.com affiliates.
Specifically, the following links will be placed on each village’s introduction page.
It’s possible to add a variety of parameters to the URL.
Because beautiful villages are small, you can easily configure a URL that allows you to search for hotels within a radius of 20 km (radius) from a location specified by coordinates, i.e., latitude and longitude (latitude, longitude), instead of searching for a specific village name.
I may write a separate blog post about this.
Recommended route creation simulation function that also fully utilizes data analysis
This is also one of my own strengths. I’m considering a recommended route creation simulation function that also fully utilizes data analysis. It’s a very difficult task, but I really want to make it happen, even if it takes a long time.
Again, one of the strengths of my content is that I have various « scores ». If you combine that with the location and distance information from the Google Maps API and Directions API, it should be possible to perform a quantitative optimization simulation using a certain logic.
It sounds difficult, but actually, creating this kind of logic is one of my specialties in my work. Since I have the score and distance matrices, I think I can reduce it to a simple constrained quadratic programming problem.
It’s a bit self-satisfying, but if we can do it, it could be a big differentiator.
Using this quantitative data, my own photos, and Google Maps Street View, a virtual tour of beautiful villages could be developed on a website.
I’m wondering if I can make a web application in python that can be used for statistical analysis, but the problem is that external modules such as numPy, which are essential for numerical analysis, are not installed on the rental server, so I need to solve this problem somehow. I need to solve this problem.
There seems to be some talk that you can get by without root privileges…
If you can’t do that, or if it’s too much trouble, you can use another server (more flexible rental server, AWS, Google Apps Engine, etc.), but you want to build it under the yuu-koma.jp domain.
In any case, this is still quite a long way off. I’m going to put this one off for now.
To be completed by the end of June, to be applied to the Italian and Spanish editions.
The first version of the database site is the French version, but in the future, I plan to create the Italian version, which will start from this GW, and the Spanish version, which will start almost at the same time.
For that reason, we want to release the French version as soon as possible, and our immediate goal is to complete it this quarter.
People often say, « Why don’t you write a book? I’m often asked if I should publish a book, but that’s fine, I’d rather improve my website first.
これからもこちらの世界の趣味に時間が追われる日々が長らく続きそうです。
