Site Focus & General Guidelines - Where's Cool? is to share low-cost, independent, underground and authentic places around the world.
- Our focus is on urban locations, meaning we highlight notable small businesses and out-of-the way places in cities. We'd like to focus on:
- Places that don't normally get covered in travel guides
- Places that are in (or very near) a city with a population of 15,000 or more people
- Places that are not known specifically as "tourist destinations"
- Places that are not chains or constructed by large companies, unless of local interest or regionally unique
- Its kind of more like a "global Yelp" than a "Lonely Planet"
- Lonely Planet = "How to get around Paris"
- Where's Cool? = "Find and share a cool bookstore in Paris"
- We don't really cover outdoor adventures, escapes, resorts or travelogues. There are many other websites that do that and do a much better job of it.
- WC is an English Language website. Everything on the site should be written in English or in Western (Latin) script that can be pronounced by English speakers.
- Ex: French, Spanish, German script can be pronounced as written by English speakers. Chinese, Hindi, Arabic script can not and should be translated or spelled phonetically with Latin characters.
- I purposely have set all cities to being "inactive" unless a user adds one or lives there. This prevents us from having "empty" cities.
- You can add any city with a population over 15,000 people. Any city that is smaller, you may add as a "Neighborhood" of the nearest large city.
- Please focus on adding to big cities before small towns. Where's Cool? focuses on urban destinations, so its important that we fill out big cities first.
- If you see a large city without content that you could contribute to, please add something.
- Users tend to hover around cities with activity like moths to a bright light. If you don't turn the lights on, they won't come.
City Descriptions - Most cities on the site do not have a description yet. We'd like you to write one and submit it!
- City descriptions should be between 2-4 paragraphs long. About tall enough to fit in the right column and match the height of the map / photos.
- You can either email us your city description, or submit it as a topic in the Forum for that city.
- It has to be added to the site by us.
- I can't guarantee we'll accept every city description submission, but we'll try to give some feedback.
- City descriptions are subject to editing by our staff and may be removed or replaced at any time.
- Try to find the postal code when you add a place. It will help better locate it on the map.
- In non-US cities the map often puts a spot in the completely wrong place. Sometimes halfway around the world. Let us know if this happens and we'll mark it to be fixed.
- Don't worry too much about having pictures you can always add them later, and oftentimes when someone sees a spot without a photo they will add one of their own
- The "short description" is intended to be a one-liner about the spot. To elaborate, make sure to write a review.
Writing Reviews
- Try to keep them SHORT.
- You're a writer. You love to write. Problem is you probably want to write a full article about each place, and our users don't like to spend a whole lot of time reading.
- Do your best to keep your reviews down to a paragraph or two. We've found that users lose interest for anything more. Sad, but true.
Adding Photos- The photo upload thing is really buggy, I know.
- Photos must always be cropped to the 16x9 aspect ratio (like HD video). This creates a sucky situation for tall images.
- The only way around a vertical image is to go into photoshop and make it wider with a black background.
- The reason they need to be cropped is because it encourages creativity, and keeps all the photos in a consistent format.
Guides- The guides feature is under construction, but taking a little longer than expected to get going (we don't have money to pay for programmers, so I do this all myself)
- I typically suggest to people that a guide should answer a question for someone from out of town or be relevant to someone with a particular set of interests. Here are some examples:
- Vegan's Guide to NYC
- Best Fish & Chips of London
- Dive Bars of LA
- Lazy Afternoon in Chicago
- Punk Rocker's Guide To Berlin
- A 10 Euro Day in Rome
- 24 Hours in Amsterdam
- Each guide can only be to one city and has the following:
- Created by only one user
- 1-5 paragraph editorial description copy
- Photo(s) (unlimited)
- 2-15 Spots or Neighborhoods
- A short description for each
- To plan for a guide I suggest collecting the pieces listed above into a Word or Google document, save the photos you want to use somewhere, and then add all the spots you plan to include now, so you can skip that process when you make your guide.
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