I’m getting ready to head down to Mesh right now but I thought I’d take a moment to introduce the first comercial website built on the BlogMatrix platform: Get Going Canada.

Things to note that are directly related to the BlogMatrix Platform:

• all the “destinations”, ads, notes on destinations and comments are all “blog” entries in the system, tagged to create relationships (i.e. the comment is approved/not approved and belongs to this destination)
• maps (+ province), maps (+ province + theme), maps (+ full-text search), maps (+ full-text search + themes), and maps (+ destination)
• it uses “structured blogging”—add-on form elements to “normal” blog posts—to specify additional information, such as geographic location and approval workflow, for the destintaion entries
• “facets”. What are facets? Well for example on this page see how it knows that there are no Food, Rocks or Structures destinations related to this search. That’s facets. It’s subtle but it really increases the usability of the site (and it’s moderately hard to do!). Read more about facets here and here.
• it’s multi-language
• admin-wise, to the people maintaining this site, it looks like a blog—we use tags to narrow down entries into their type (English + Comments + Not Approved, for example) so it’s simple—“blog easy”—to use
• lots of great sponsors for this product: Royal Bank, Esso, Hilton, Toyota, Delta and Fairmont Hotels.

We’ve also custom coded a lot of stuff in here, such as the contest, but this builds up upon parts of the product such as our e-mail management tools.