P-Pod.co.uk - Growing an image library

Like Google, but better

2007-08-23T15:26:00.000+01:00

Spelling the names of plants can be a bit of a swine, the number of times I still type Camellia as Camelia or Camelllia is annoyingly large. Never mind trying to spell words phonetically, osteospermum anyone?

To try and help our users get around failed searches due to mis-spelled words we thought we'd copy Google and have a "Did you mean?" for search results. We even found some lovely code that let Google check your search phrase for you. Sadly however this doesn't always work, I now know there is a town in Michigan called Azalia, which means Google doesn't think the word is mis-spelt.

No now we have our own in house solution that provides suggestions based on the words we have on the site. Pretty spiffing it is too!

Check it out with a few different search phrases...

Changes to Site

2007-08-16T15:47:00.000+01:00

The Dahlias are still being checked and tagged, which unsurprisingly takes some time for 4000! Halfway there now.

However on a more technical note clicking on the images link to view all the images now lets you order them by oldest or newest, or alternatively just see some random images which really brings home the sheer electiveness of the site!

For instance I did not realise that a) scarecrows could look like this, or b) that we took photos of scarecrows that do:

Hostas galore

2007-08-15T14:40:00.000+01:00

It was hostas that placed us over the 50,000 mark, a mammoth shooting session resulted in just over 2500 hosta images being uploaded.

Given the awful weather we're experiencing in Devon it's rather fortunate that the National Collection at Bowden in Sticklepath is just up the road so a look out the window can save a day getting soaked!

The photos as usual contain a wide variety of rare and unusual specimens as well as a number of American hybrids.

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Coming soon are the results of a two day dahlia shoot which contains some amazingly vivid colours.

The Beginning

2007-08-13T13:45:00.000+01:00

Hello and welcome to the beginning of the P-Pod story.

P-Pod is a new horticultural image library run out of the UK by horticultural and botanical experts. Three years in the making it has recently launched (2 weeks ago!) with over 50,000 images.

This blog is designed to be a means to record where recent shoots have taken place, highlight additions to the site (we have new ideas planned) and anything else we think may be of interest.

Hope you enjoy it.