About Portland Diner
Portland Diner is a restaurant guide for Portland, Maine. It's a quick and easy way to you to find a great place to dine.
The site started out as an experiment. A few years ago I noticed that while there were a few Web sites devoted to restaurants, at the time none of the popular ones were easily searchable. At the same time, I wanted to teach myself how to build a search tool to help people easily sift through a directory.
So I originally set up Portland Diner so you could search for: "...that Thai place in Portland with 'house' in the name...".
Later, I built a Facebook app for PD as a proof-of-concept, again, to teach myself how to do such a thing. The app let's you search the restaurant directory and invite a friend to dine. It's very rough around the edges, but it works.
The latest additions are an interactive map, and a content management system powered by Django (for all you Web designers out there keeping score).
Obviously a site like this isn't very useful if the listings are out of date. The most challenging thing about this little project is keeping it current while managing a full schedule. So if you notice a listing that's out of date or inaccurate, please help by reporting errors.
I'd like to thank fellow Portland Webslingers Wendy Clark, who created the logo, and Jen Ecker, who in the past has helped me with the legwork on the interface design from time to time. Sheila Reiser gets a big, big thank you for putting some time into proofing the listings.
I appreciate good food as much as the next guy, but I wouldn't dare to call myself a foodie (yet). I welcome your ideas for making this site even better. I hope you enjoy this little experiment and find it useful!
Rob Landry
Chief Bottle Washer
Pemaquid Communications
