Are you a fan of the ABC Sunday night show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition? We are (if you haven't watched it, tune into ABC at 8p EST Sunday... you'll get hooked). On the following Monday ABC airs a show called “How'd they do that?” which is a behind the scenes of the previous night's show.
Over the last few days, I've received quite a few emails about what makes this site work, how I implemented it, and how we were able to put pictures on the MoBlog so quickly (1.5 hours after Steven was born in fact). All in all, there are three components to this site... and it took me probably a combined 2.5 hours to get it all working.
- Blog engine: this site is actually a blog. A blog is short for “web log” or a place to put short text messages on the web. I use an engine called .Text... the same engine I use for my professional/personal site (www.andrewconnell.com). Deploying is as easy as uploading a bunch of files. You make changes to a single file for your specific info (such as the contact email address, database connection, etc). It has a nice admin interface that's protected by a specific password only you can access. This made it easy for us to post messages to the blog from our hospital room (there was a webTV like box where we could email throught he TV... similar to what many hotels now have). The blog engine runs on Microsoft's .NET platform and stores it's information in a database.
- Site host: I am already using WebHost4Life.com to host my other sites so I piggybacked off this account. I'm only using the $10/month plan.
- MoBlog: The MoBlog, short for Mobile Blog, is a blog that consists of posts submitted from mobile devices like phones. I have a Treo 650 which can check/send email as well as take pictures & short movies. I subscribe to a free service for my MoBlog (TextAmerica.com). Once you setup an account, they give you a specific email address to send pictures to. This is a combination of your username and a special pass phrase you come up wiht. Then, you take pictures with your phone and send them as an attachment via email from the phone to the address TextAmerica gives you. The images are posted immediately! The subject of the email is what's displayed.
Our of everything, the customization of the colors and layout of the blog took the most time (prob. 2 hours). It made this week's Steven experience so much fun. I knew there was no way I'd be able to email/call everyone right when he was born, but I figured it would just be so much more efficient to get a website up, and send a post to it as soon as possible. Then I'd let everyone know ahead of time about the site and they'd watch it on their own time (hence the email update on Monday/Tuesday).
While Meredith was scheduled for a 10:30a c-section, it didn't happen until 11:30a. There were two emergencies that came in before us. I wanted to post something, but it just wasn't possible as I didn't have cell reception in the room we were waiting in. After he was born, my brother took pictures and movies with my phone while I was in the nursery (the first pictures that were posted on the MoBlog). Once I had time to make sure he was ok, and Meredith was out of surgery and ok in recovery (all in all, about an hour), I ran to the closest window to email two or three pictures, make 3 calls (her sister took care of a few as well), and then ran back in to see Meredith and Steven. It was so cool... looking back, before I ever sent an email/post on the blog, emails were coming in from people who saw the MoBlog. It was so exciting!!!! Finally that afternoon I had about an hour where I rushed to my parent's house, uploaded a few pictures from my real camera to the site, send out that announcement email, and post a message the blog.
It was a great way to announce the news to everyone... tons of fun :) I'll put more details on the site later.