WalesOnline's Pinterest presence has been steadily growing in the two months since we set it up, with 16 boards now covering everything from music to sport and interior design.
It's a great resource and we've hooked it up to Facebook and Twitter to enable cross-promotion of what we're up to, so as an experiment I'm happy to see it progressing well.
Anyway, digital journalist Gareth Rogers has been using it to great effect for the Bluebirds Banter blog, but today he showed me an ingenious way of displaying photo content well on our site, via Pinterest.
One of the limitations of our current CMS is that it doesn't allow you to really showcase great photos well - as a user, you can't click on an image to enlarge it, for example.
It may seem like a small thing, but when you've got images that the reader would want to see in more detail (or an infographic, for example) it can be somewhat restrictive.
Anyway, Gareth came up with a clever workaround (necessity really is the mother of invention) to show off a series of fashion photos from the Aintree race meet - he pinned the images to our Piinterest news board, and then embedded them back on the site. Now , when you click on the image, it opens, large-scale, in a new tab.
I love Gareth's solution. And I love the fact I work* with clever people who don't let system limitations get in the way of story-telling.
I love Gareth's solution. And I love the fact I work* with clever people who don't let system limitations get in the way of story-telling.
On the site it looks like this (full story here):
I think it's very nice; take a bow, Mr Rogers.
* On the subject of work, I have a new job - I'm heading to North Wales to edit the Daily Post, starting on Monday.
I've loved my time with WalesOnline and Wales on Sunday - it's been hugely educational and I got to work with some great people - but (despite being a committed worshiper at the Church of Digital) I'm massively excited to be given the chance of editing a daily newspaper, and working with the DP team in print and online.
However, first I have to persuade two cats into travel baskets and brave the A470 to North Wales. Compared to that, editing is a doddle...