Tell us how about yourself

Eric Miller: I am Eric Miller from Brooklyn, and my freelance design business is simply Eric Miller Design. The majority of the work I do is web design and development for all types of clients, a lot of which are music related or creative professionals such as photographers. I also do a good amount of print design, including designing those guitar and piano songbooks that we all grew up learning instruments to. I am also the graphic design guide on About.com, for which I write articles and a blog and help out new designers.

Tell us about the site.

Eric Miller: MyTerritory.com is my personal photo site, and has even become somewhat of a personal brand (at least according to friends and family). I first launched it about 10 years ago, but it was a static site with galleries listed by date. Last year I redeveloped it (version 3) using ExpressionEngine, and it became a bit of a design obsession!

As I’m often considered the resident photographer in the group, people are always asking to see photos. I wanted to provide something that would be fun to browse and easy to update. To accomplish this, I kept the overall concept fairly straightforward, with a focus on tagging event galleries rather than individual photos, and browsing options by people, place, event type or date.

What’s interesting about the site is that it was built for a very small audience, but it’s been great seeing it get more attention with the recent Webby nomination (traffic went up 100x).

Why did you choose ExpressionEngine?

Eric Miller: I was never satisfied with what I could do with My Territory; I always had the concept in my head, but couldn’t quite execute it. Once I used ExpressionEngine for some freelance projects, it became obvious that it was perfect for the site. Categories could act as keywords, allowing me to tie photo galleries to the 4 main browsing pages and show related galleries.

I integrated SlideShow Pro for the flash galleries, so adding photos just requires an iPhoto export and 1 new weblog entry with a few fields. So basically… because it could do exactly what I wanted and it made it easy to maintain the site. Once I got started, I kept adding features such as member accounts with the ability to customize your “people” page, commenting, and a calendar… and have more plans for the future.

What part of the site are you most proud of?

Eric Miller: I would say I’m most proud of the “people” page. Doing the “sketches” in Photoshop was a painstaking process, tracking down photos that made people look good! While I still get a few complaints (re-do my sketch!), everyone gets a laugh when they first visit the page, and it’s the main way they navigate the site. It’s also somewhat strange to see so many people you know on one screen…

I’m also proud of a fun little feature: the Polaroids on the individual people pages. If a member selects a favorite gallery in their profile, it shows up in their Polaroid and their name gets “handwritten” below it, just like we used to write on Polaroids… which I’m sad to say I heard are officially out of production (at least in the real world).

What add-ons are you using?

Eric Miller: The current version actually doesn’t use anything that isn’t built into ExpressionEngine, though I do integrate Slideshow Pro all over the site, FeedBurner for subscriptions, and the Google Maps API for “places.” I am looking forward to adding Moblogging so members can contribute to a community photo gallery. Since I developed this site, I’ve done so much more ExpressionEngine development… so I’m also looking at how I can integrate some of the add-ons from other projects into My Territory.

You mentioned future plans - any hints?

Eric Miller: One of my next projects is to add “My Territory Classic,” which will feature family photos dating back as early as the 20’s or 30’s (that’s the NINETEEN 20’s for those reading this 20 years from now). Once I get everyone to contribute, it’ll be great to have all that stored in one place, and a lot of it will be photos many have never seen.

I also want to introduce ways for members to contribute photos, starting with setting up several email addresses in the Moblog Module so people can send in photos to generate community galleries. I’ll probably also use that module to allow members to have a blog on their “people” page, which will expand on the current setup which gives them a single quote at the top.

Other ideas include a gallery rating system (which would then allow me to show top rated galleries, etc), a way for members to tag or keyword galleries, and subscription by categories… so someone can get email notifications when galleries are tagged as certain categories, such as themselves or a particular location.

What can members customize, and how did you accomplish that customization?

Eric Miller: The customization is the area I plan to work on the most… right now, members can add a quote at the top of their page and select a favorite gallery (the polaroid feature I described earlier). Both of these features are done through custom member fields, so members edit their profile to customize their page.

What’s your next camera?  Any more plans on the photography front?

Eric Miller: I’ve actually recently upgraded to a Canon SD1000…

Something I’m always going back and forth on is how far I can go with embarrassing photos on the site… right now, I’m really good about not making people look bad (or getting them fired), but that ends of taking out some of the best shots and leaving a lot of “people posing with their arms around each other” photos.  I need to know my members’ individual preferences, which is giving me a new feature idea… perhaps a required member field should be a “how much I am willing to be embarrassed” scale, going from “I hope to go into politics, keep it clean” to “I’ve already been on ‘Best Week Ever,’ post anything.” Then, along with displaying that on their page, I can use that it decide what should go live.

Any thing else you’d like to add?

Eric Miller: Really, the eventual goal of this version of My Territory is to make it a social networking site (of sorts) for my small group of friends and family. I guess I should have registered “OurTerritory.com” when I had the chance.