August 19, 2010

Thanks for checking out my site, and thanks to all of the early beta testers who have given me great feedback.

A little back story, I decided to buld this site when I wanted to keep an online journal of my car, and I couldn't find a place that I felt comfortable with. Many sites felt a little too much like MySpace, and I just felt that there could be something better, cleaner, and easier to use. There's also plenty of automotive forums, but they are mostly for people that have done killer work on their car, and it would be a while before I'd have my car in shape to really brag about.

So I figured, I can design, and I can code well enough, and after many many months of tinkering and chopping and just plain hacking code to do what I want it to do, I ended up with a fully functional site. A simple and clean dashboard, easy updatable forms, a journal view to see the pure history of your updates, and the ability to follow and be followed by others, kind of like twitter.

I also spent a couple months designing badges as status for each modification category, but I eventually nixed them in favor of simpler and easier-to-read gauges that get redder the more mods there are.

I didn't want to provide an alternative to the way people post their journals on auto forums. I actually wanted to figure out how to make it work hand in hand. So on each dashboard, modification, or photo page, I added BB Code (that's code for vBulletin forums) that you can just copy and paste right into any forum post, and all of the images and formatting are done automatically for you, saving you time and energy. The images displayed are in large format providing a great view in any forum post. Essentially, you can host your vehicle journal and photos on Motorgrounds and share it on your regular auto forum.

The site is still technically in beta mode, so if it starts chugging or acts kind of weird, bear with me as I do my very best to both maintain and improve upon the site. You can always send questions or advice to me at henry@motorlogs.com

Thanks!

- Henry @ Motorlogs