myDailyPhoto

What We Do

Simply put, myDailyPhoto is an online community where people can create and maintain a photo diary, of sorts. Our goal is to assist you by making things a bit easier (no programming required).

Each and every day, users will post a picture that sums up what they have done in the past twenty-four hours. Just ate calamari for the first time? Take a photo of a tentacle sticking out of your mouth. Took a trip to Boston? Post a picture of yourself at the top of the Prudential Building.

There are a limit-less number of reasons to register as a user, but we have a few personal favorites:

It will force you to become a better photographer, you'll have to keep your camera with you at all times (just in case Big Foot shows up), and because reflecting back on the past year is much easier when you can see memories with your eyes instead of just in your mind.

History

In April of 2007 two people, Matthew and Lauren, felt that they weren't taking nearly as many photographs as they should and they definitely weren't going outside of their comfort zone. Overnight a project titled Two Clicks a Day was born and the two were posting a picture every day, lugging their cameras around everywhere they went. It was a mix of a photography website and a blog, and it soon caught the attention of their friends.

It took some convincing, but eventually there was enough pressure from friends and family members that Matthew decided to open up the project to anyone who wanted to participate. Programmer, database guru, and long-time friend Sean was signed on to help with the transition from minimalist photo blog to full-fledged community, and the name of the project was changed to myDailyPhoto.

The first iteration of the website was released to the public in an open beta on September 24th, 2007.

After a few months passed the membership had steadily grown, but features were lacking and there was no real sense of community. Matthew decided to take some time off from work to devote himself full-time to developing myDailyPhoto. Dozens of features were added, the code that powered the website was completely gutted and rebuilt, and the design changed slightly to reflect the most current trends.

Dubbed myDailyPhoto 2, the new site launched on June 30th, 2008.

After nearly two years of operation the orange and grey color scheme, the icon-based logo, and the entire look and feel of the site was painfully behind the rest of the pack. Over thirty different logos and seven different website designs were created during the course of a three month period, each attempt more promising than the last.

On January 31st, 2009, the freshly designed myDailyPhoto 2.5 went live.

Appreciation / Who Did What

Matthew Congrove created the website, did the majority of the programming, and did all of the design. Timothy Buckingham created the predecessor to myDailyPhoto, called Two Clicks a Day, and some of his methods are still employed on this website. Sean Reed assisted with programming and does most of the database work, especially the complex queries. Numerous features were concocted by Michael Young, as well as the branding initiative. Creative direction assistance and API testing was provided by Rick Blalock. API and OOP-architecture assistance, server set-up, as well as general mentorship, was provided by Richard McCluskey. Erin Sunday and Ruth Soto helped guide the community feature-set.

myDailyPhoto resides on Linux Ubuntu servers that are provided by Linode. The website is built on the PHP programming language along with the usual languages for front-end design (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). The database utilized is MySQL. The cropping tool is a customized version of the jsCropper UI by Dave Spurr. We use Springloops as our SVN repository and off-site back-up. Almost all of these technologies are open-source, which we're a proud supporter of.

The Team