caption.me - a zero-maintenance website
The idea behind my new site Caption Competition is simple - pull an interesting photo from Flickr every day and let people add captions which can be voted on. Photos can be browsed with their best captions, and there is a "top captioneers" list, showing the users who've added the best captions.
I already have some scripts for handling photo uploads but I have deliberately avoided using them. Using Flickr gives two important advantages:
- I don't have to concern myself with accepting uploaded photos, which would require some form of manual moderation. Instead I've set up a group on Flickr which is moderated by Flickr users (and Flickr's own system which blocks porn, politically incorrect images etc). An automated job on my webserver loads the most interesting new photo from the group every day. To do this, it sorts the photos using Flickr's "interestingness" algorithm, which works surprisingly well.
- The Flickr API allows me to serve the images on caption.me from Flickr's own webservers. All I'm serving is the HTML and CSS, which are negligible in size. If my server was serving images, the bandwidth usage would be orders of magnitude greater, and very costly as the site grows.
I have also written a script that posts a comment back on the photo within Flickr to say the photo has been featured on caption.me, with a link to the relevant caption.me page (a shameless advert for the site!). The script waits until several good captions have been added to the photo before posting. To work this out, it takes an aggregate of the vote score, and posts a comment when this score exceeds a set threshold. Without this check, a Flickr comment could be posted and bring visitors to caption.me to see a page of bad captions.
As of today, there are 128 photos, 548 captions and 50 signed-up "captioneers" (users). The site is growing, and is now the number one result in Google for a search on "caption competition." It's satisfying to reach a conclusion on a website project, such that the site can now run itself.... though I will undoubtedly be tinkering with it for some time 
16/09/07 1:56pm
(9 years, 8 months ago)
6 comments
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5:12am
http://www.theonlinecasinowebsites.com
5:11am
Does this ring any bells..?
"API Keys
To use the Flickr API you need to have an application key. We use this to track API usage.
Currently, commercial use of the API is allowed only with prior permission. Requests for API keys intended for commercial use are reviewed by staff. If your project is personal, artistic, free or otherwise non-commercial please don't request a commercial key. If your project is commercial, please provide sufficient detail to help us decide." - Flickr
12:44am
Now then.
If somebody doesn't respond to my requests concerning the removal of one of my images from the Caption Me site, I shall be forced to take some sort of action.
And the first stage of this action will involve me writing the words 'Arsepart; where's the response?' hundreds of times in these comment boxes until such a response is forthcoming.
Here's a small sample to be going on with..
Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response? Arsepart; where's the response?
Thanks,
Big Lion Head
12:32am
Please remove my photo from your caption me site. I didn't give permission for it to be used and am not happy for it to be used in such a frivolous and disrespectful manner.
Thank you, Big Lion Head.
10:22pm
9:21pm