City Daily Photo blogs

City Daily Photo Blogs commenced in March 2005, when Eric Tenin launched Paris – One Photo A Day. It very quickly attracted thousands of regular readers around the world: readers who had been to Paris and wanted to re-live their experience; readers who had never been to Paris, but longed to visit; and, readers who were planning a trip to Paris, and who surfed Eric’s site to get their ‘Paris legs’.

Eric’s blog name was changed to Paris Daily Photo, and became so popular, that readers began to contact him asking how they, too, could blog on the joys of their own city. By early 2006, there were over 30 ‘daily photo’ sites, representing communities ranging from massive cities, to small villages.

A mailing list and a forum were developed to enable participating bloggers to communicate on issues of mutual concern. These blogs all linked (in a rudimentary way) to each other; a community of like-minds was evolving.

As the number of sites grew past 50, 100, 200, then 500, it became increasingly more difficult to visit all the sites regularly. For a time, there was a ‘web ring’, but success and growth brought its own challenges. An automated updating and meeting place was desperately required.

One of Eric’s friends created the first City Daily Photo portal and operated it from 2006 until mid-June 2012. In this six year period, the number of participating blogs grew out of sight, with over 1,000 blogs being registered and over 500 of those actively posting. However, in April 2012, the portal was brought down by hackers.

By then, maintenance was done by two volunteers based in Boston and when the portal was hacked for the second time, in mid-June 2012. the developers were unable to dedicate the time that would be necessary to retrieving the necessary data and structure, and for the second time in four months and the portal was lost.

This ‘phoenix portal’ was born in October 2012 an entirely newly constructed creature. Not as sophisticated, nor as comprehensive as the last, hopefully it may evolve as time passes and new skills are gained, or perhaps conscripted, but at least the spirit of the original lives on.

Guidelines

Eric’s original thoughts were that bloggers should post one photo a day, though not necessarily one taken that day.

Each post should include text describing the situation, adding some background, use English as the standard language as well as the language of the city.

Members should live in the city they highlight, to enable them to share an authentic perspective although they did not have to be a native of the city about which they blog.

The name of the city had to be included in the title of the blog to make it clearly a “City Daily Photo”

Experience proved that the daily posting was the most difficult guideline.

It can be a truly onerous task to post an image, with text, every day of the year as those who were posting before the advent of “scheduled posts” can confirm.

It is a testimony to Eric’s simple guidelines that they remain almost unchanged today. Current guidelines can be found at this link.