secretlondon got too big for its Facebook home! Follow us as we blog about our experiences of turning secretlondon into the website we hope Londoners will love.

Anglo-Russian secret relations strong as Moscow and London meet

Nikita and me in front of secretlondon's mural

We were all very excited to welcome the creator of the Secret Moscow facebook page today at secretlondon towers.

Nikita Turkin, founder of Secret Moscow came to have a chat with me about our two cities and the secrets we had discovered! We also discussed differences between the two cities and what that meant for the development of global secret cities. Currently, Nikia informed me, most Russians use a facebook rip-off called vkontakte, and although some are moving over to facebook there came the question of how Nikita could unite both groups to create a secret Moscow community.

It was really interesting to discuss the different social lives and online habits of  Moscow in comparison to London, but what was clear was an international desire for people to discover lesser known, independent places in their city, wherever they are in the world.

secretlondon, now eighteen times better

After the launch of the secretlondon website only a few weeks ago, we have received some great feedback (thank you!) and we have been spending all our time thinking about improvements. We decided to completely overhaul the design of the secretlondon website and make everything simpler and, well, prettier. Now after two weeks of caffeine-fueled coding and design sessions, it’s ready!

First off, you’ll probably notice lots of changes in how things look. You can find a little bit of everything on the homepage; latest discussions and secrets, new photos and some recent visitors to the site. Browsing and searching discussions, secret places and photos are now all just a click away on the top of the page. Uploading photos is a breeze now and participating in discussions hasn’t been easier. Also, try out the new search; we still have a few things to add (location search, map results) but it is a big step in the right direction. Please continue to give us your feedback, as without you this new and improved version would not exist!

What would make the secretlondon event work for you?

At secretlondon towers we’re plotting to bring you a special secretlondon event. We’re hoping to celebrate our new website with members of the secretlondon community, but of course we want your input!

What would make a great event for you? Would it be a day or night time affair? What kind of music, atmosphere or special surprises would add to the proceedings? Should we keep it underground and exclusive, or take over a London park in our thousands?

We’re keeping it pretty open, so any suggestions you may have, from the practical to the weird and wonderful would be most welcome. I can’t wait to hear about what London is craving from us, so help me out by answering what would make the secretlondon event work for you?

Snap happy secretlondon! The photo upload is here.

My favourite feature has now come to the secretlondon website, you can now upload photos of secrets!

The first thing I did was run out and take some snaps of the lunch stalls at Exmouth Market. I’m hoping others will do the same so we have a site with a catalogue of great photos!

As part of my general enthusiastic photo taking, I also went out to J&A cafe recommended by someone on the secretlondon website and uploaded photos from there on my return. It’s so easy, just find the secret, go to its secret profile page, click the upload button and away you go. It makes the site look so much nicer, and helps people discover these secrets with greater ease! And anything which helps Londoners discover great cake is brilliant in my view! Happy snapping London :)

secretlondon reaches 200,000 members!

I’m happy to say that barely a month after it was started, the Secret London Facebook Group has just got its 200,000th member! Thank you so much for everyone who has joined so far, London is talking about secretlondon and it is all down to you.

While London continues to grow steadily, it’s also incredible to see that the ‘secret city’ concept has gone global and the international community continues to grow – which will be the next city to reach 200,000 members?! See http://secretcities.com for a list of some of the secret cities on facebook now.

But secretcities is not just about the number of members, enagagement in the secretlondon group has continued, with thousands of contributions and over 100 discussions started in the last week. We’re soon to be adding new features to the secetcities site that make it open to people who aren’t on Facebook (shock horror!) so we’ll soon be able to welcome more Londoners to share their secrets of the city. Photos are finally working (just!) and we’re beginning to encourage people to explore the new site and tell us how you find it.

Thanks again to everyone who’s helped make this possible, and keep sharing your secrets!

The secretlondon Spam Police

I’ve been questioned many a time about spam control on secretlondon and the honest answer is, until now I have had to watch the page regularly and delete anything I considered spam as it came along. As the facebook page continues to grow (almost reaching 200,000 members!)  this ad hoc approach to removing spam isn’t working, and so I am creating  a more structured system for tackling the increasing spam problem.

I have instigated a spam rota for the facebook group, every hour of every day there is a ‘duty manager’ watching the facebook group making sure no spam slips through the net. This is why there has been an increase in admins on the group site.  On the website, such vigilance won’t be as necessary as we’ll have far better spam monitors in place.

The trickier question is – what do you define as spam? I have written a guide which I will shortly be sharing with the other secret cities Facebook groups to try and answer this. There are grey areas and spammers use lots of tactics to promote themselves — pretending to be a member when suggesting their product or service within a discussion, for instance. Having worked on spam control for a month on the facebook group, I am beginning to understand some of the patterns. One approach of spammers on Facebook is to join the group, post their message and then leave before I can ban them permanently, so they re-join and post the same spam message again

Hopefully, our new methods will work. So watch out spammers, the secretcities spam police will catch you! :)

Django contractor? secretlondon needs you!

We’re expanding fast and need an experienced contractor with strong expertise in Django, JQuery and CSS to help us build http://secretcities.com/london. You’ll be working with a small passionate team in EC1 (London, UK). Initial period of 1 month, starting right now!

Email jobs@secretcities.com with your CV, day rate and links to your blog & project work.
Cheers!

Over 1000 visitors to the site today – and it’s not even ready yet!

Today over 1,000 people visited our new site at its new domain name secretcities.com even though it’s still under construction! I haven’t begun to try to transfer people from facebook to the site as I’m waiting until the site functionality is running a bit more fluidly first.

We’ve now made it so secrets can have longer descriptions, and we’re going to start adding more details to secrets you’ve already suggested (feel free to take part and help us out!) We’re also working on a suggest a secret button now which means you can just come and add a secret that you want to share outside the context of a discussion. So if you are just dying to tell London a secret, soon you can do just that!

Finally, what I’m most excited about is the uploading photos function, photos are second to discussions for popularity on the secretlondon facebook group and once we’ve got them up and running we’ll be able to organise and sort them making sure none get lost as they do on facebook!

So we’re still working away and still gathering feedback and bug reports. Thanks to all 1,000 of you who checked out the website today, it’s really encouraging.

Announcing our new domain name — secretcities.com!

At secretlondon towers we’ve been busy evaluating your feedback on our new site and I am incredibly excited to announce that as a consequence of this we have got a new domain name!

You asked and we listened, we are now secretcities.com.*

The other great thing about our new domain name is that since secretlondon has taken off the secret city movement has gone global! All around the world, people are exchanging and discussing their secrets in Facebook Groups. We want everyone to benefit from the community effort, and so secretcities.com means we can all share one roof! London is live today, and others coming soon. I can’t wait until we’ve got a whole secret world in one place.

I hope you like our new domain name! Thanks for all your feedback—keep it coming!

(*Special thanks to Terra Serve of the Cayman Isles without who this literally wouldn’t have happened :)

Weekend learnings

Musings.

1. Websites are hard to build – even with lots of help and bagels.
2. Websites are fun to build – even when everything dies minutes before you get techcrunched.
3. Caffeine and sugar really can allow you to code for well over 56hrs straight.
4. Coding for more than 55hrs straight will cause you to have a mental breakdown.

On a more techie note.

1. RDS… total let down
   Only available in Virginia (US-east region) and only available with MySQL5.1 (not 5.0). Which considering we’re primarily London based traffic (for now) and 3rd party software support for 5.1 is still low, I recommend against it. At least until the support increases. Servers are one of those things you can’t really afford to go with an unknown player.
2. CSS… the fat kid
   Who invited them to the party? I’ve been a designer for years, I keep up with CSS and its changes, but its only hit me now how totally inefficient a language it is. Front-end designers are clearly vastly under-valued and under-paid. They’re stuck with slow moving and antiquated technology, both in terms of the language and browsers that run them. There are other technologies out there, but no-one knows how to use them and to be honest they’ll never get into the main stream. Which means you won’t be able to recruit anyone for open projects or hire them for your company. So learning is – suck it up but way over budget for front-end and UX treatment.