Sorry about the lack of updates this week, been running round doing various small jobs that suck away all my time, so I don't really even have anything interesting to report.
What little work I have done has been making some of our features a little more stable and look at speeding up the site. Hopefully I should have more to report next week though.
Friday, 30 May 2008
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
Too many ideas too little time
I just uploaded a couple of minor changes that have been requested.
On top of this we have the ideas for beer festivals, users able to mark pubs closed without having to send us feedback, a complete rewrite of our recommendation stuff to make it more useful to users (especially since we just had a really fun review of a pub which is just too long for our current system and really demands the ability for people to comment on it).
Hopefully one day it will all be done, please be patient with us we do try and take on board all your suggestions.
- Show/Hide closed pubs will now remember the last setting for a couple of days.
- Village names are shown in the search.
- Filters on the town pages to try and find pubs more quickly
On top of this we have the ideas for beer festivals, users able to mark pubs closed without having to send us feedback, a complete rewrite of our recommendation stuff to make it more useful to users (especially since we just had a really fun review of a pub which is just too long for our current system and really demands the ability for people to comment on it).
Hopefully one day it will all be done, please be patient with us we do try and take on board all your suggestions.
Friday, 23 May 2008
A few little bits
I haven't had a lot of time to look at the site. I have been selling myself to see if I can get a little more consultancy work on the side.
The little bits of work I have looked at are not released, but we have addressed a couple of the requests on the forum. One requesting that we make it clearer in our search that a pub is in a village not the town nearby (or a long way off in some cases). And the request that the system remembers closed pubs. I have also been playing with an idea to try and make the town pages a little clearer, I have put filters on that you can type a word in and the list reduces to only pubs containing that word. It works fantastically and really enhances the site if you are using the Firefox web browser, sadly though in the more popular Internet Explorer the performance isn't as good. I have tried a few tricks to try and improve it but haven't succeeded, it is only really a problem in the larger towns, but all the same it may be prohibitively bad on old machines. We are going to give it some thought and see if we can make it more robust, but hopefully will release all these changes at the start of next week.
The little bits of work I have looked at are not released, but we have addressed a couple of the requests on the forum. One requesting that we make it clearer in our search that a pub is in a village not the town nearby (or a long way off in some cases). And the request that the system remembers closed pubs. I have also been playing with an idea to try and make the town pages a little clearer, I have put filters on that you can type a word in and the list reduces to only pubs containing that word. It works fantastically and really enhances the site if you are using the Firefox web browser, sadly though in the more popular Internet Explorer the performance isn't as good. I have tried a few tricks to try and improve it but haven't succeeded, it is only really a problem in the larger towns, but all the same it may be prohibitively bad on old machines. We are going to give it some thought and see if we can make it more robust, but hopefully will release all these changes at the start of next week.
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Busy week
A busy week planned this week and sadly not a lot of time for the pubs site. Tomorrow I have a day off, and Thursday I am out visiting a client looking at some potential consultancy work, so will probably not post until Friday now.
We released the new version of the site yesterday that allows members to add links to towns. As an improvement it is lacking in excitement, but it should allow some of the excellent sites we are told about a little extra visibility that they deserve.
I have started thinking about how to put beer festivals on the site. To get them going they should have an address, but we will not constrain them to a postcode in any way. They can have 0 to many pubs involved in them so they should list the pubs that are taking part. They have a start and finish date, that may be the same day. They should have a description, and members should be able to comment on them. On top of this we need some sort of calendar view to show when the festivals are. All of that may seem a strange way to describe a beer festival however it is sadly the way I have to think about things before coding them. I will hopefully get a chance to get started on it come Friday, I suspect as a change it may take a while though.
We released the new version of the site yesterday that allows members to add links to towns. As an improvement it is lacking in excitement, but it should allow some of the excellent sites we are told about a little extra visibility that they deserve.
I have started thinking about how to put beer festivals on the site. To get them going they should have an address, but we will not constrain them to a postcode in any way. They can have 0 to many pubs involved in them so they should list the pubs that are taking part. They have a start and finish date, that may be the same day. They should have a description, and members should be able to comment on them. On top of this we need some sort of calendar view to show when the festivals are. All of that may seem a strange way to describe a beer festival however it is sadly the way I have to think about things before coding them. I will hopefully get a chance to get started on it come Friday, I suspect as a change it may take a while though.
Friday, 16 May 2008
Looking around
And todays amusement when looking at another site comes from beer in the evening, on their forums is this post, well we have managed the scrolling map, admittedly not got the cash points and petrol stations, but I will keep the ideas in mind. Sadly bite will remove posts with other sites links on (in the true spirit that the Internet was built with), and I wouldn't post our site up there anyway. It is nice to see someone suggesting that with the feature we have our site is 'above all other review sites'.
I have finished off the fixes I wanted to do, so will be posting an update on Monday. Whilst the changes we have done are minor the site will also be moving across servers so will need to go offline for about 30 minutes. Due to the server change things can go wrong, hence the decision to wait till Monday.
I am hoping to start work on allowing members to list beer festivals, not quite got my head round how that will work yet. Hopefully it will come to me over the weekend though.
Hope everyone has a good weekend.
I have finished off the fixes I wanted to do, so will be posting an update on Monday. Whilst the changes we have done are minor the site will also be moving across servers so will need to go offline for about 30 minutes. Due to the server change things can go wrong, hence the decision to wait till Monday.
I am hoping to start work on allowing members to list beer festivals, not quite got my head round how that will work yet. Hopefully it will come to me over the weekend though.
Hope everyone has a good weekend.
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Australians wouldn't give a good advertising campaign for anything else
Well today's silly news is about the aussie who strapped in his rack of beer whilst leaving the 5-year old unstrapped. I have to admit my initial response is I can just about believe I would be that stupid (the kid can hold himself in), then when I realised that the car had 4 people in it just got painful. I mean come on, if one of them held the rack then it would be less likely to fall and get shaken, and then the kid could of belted in.
Before I get too lambasted for this opinion, anyone who knows me knows I never want kids, and if they have sense they will also now never let me babysit theirs!
Work continues on pubs although it is being slowed a little by the intrusion of other projects. This sunny weekend though has clearly been a good one for pub visiting, we have had a lot of people contributing to the site, and some of them new visitors or returners after a long time away. Thankyou to you all, it good to see the site being enjoyed, let us know what you think of it, we welcome all contributions on the forums and we do try and listen.
Before I get too lambasted for this opinion, anyone who knows me knows I never want kids, and if they have sense they will also now never let me babysit theirs!
Work continues on pubs although it is being slowed a little by the intrusion of other projects. This sunny weekend though has clearly been a good one for pub visiting, we have had a lot of people contributing to the site, and some of them new visitors or returners after a long time away. Thankyou to you all, it good to see the site being enjoyed, let us know what you think of it, we welcome all contributions on the forums and we do try and listen.
Friday, 9 May 2008
Scrambling for things to chat about
We do keep an eye on our competitors sites to see what they are up to, whilst doing this I noticed an interesting post by Dale on the pubutopia forums. He mentions a Sunday Mirror article claiming that pubs are losing out on sales of 50 million pints of beer every month now.
The article suggests there are 58,000 pubs nationwide so that is somewhere short of a 1,000 pints a month that an average pub is losing. It blames the cheap supermarket beers and smoking ban. Which sounds reasonable, after all you can smoke at home and get cheaper drink, it is less sociable, but arguably so is the smoking ban. It really is no surprise that pubs have to find a gimmick to try and make sure they make up for these lost sales and pretty inevitable that we get so many gastro pubs.
Because I feel obliged to mention Pubs Galore at this point, if you know of any good gimmicks that a pub is using, make sure and put it as a recommendation for the pub on pubs galore. Really though it is just sad news to see the pressures pubs are put under.
I have gotten back to developing the town links, it is nearly there, but it is going slowly as I am learning how to use new (on me anyway) AJAX methodologies to do it. It is clearly better in a lot of ways, but I need to put more thought into the presentation as it could get very messy if we were to set up the whole site in the way I am playing with. I also have a couple of bugs to iron out from the last release (nothing to worry about, but one or 2 audits are making no sense, editing recommendations rather than creating them and the like.)
Hope you all have a good weekend.
The article suggests there are 58,000 pubs nationwide so that is somewhere short of a 1,000 pints a month that an average pub is losing. It blames the cheap supermarket beers and smoking ban. Which sounds reasonable, after all you can smoke at home and get cheaper drink, it is less sociable, but arguably so is the smoking ban. It really is no surprise that pubs have to find a gimmick to try and make sure they make up for these lost sales and pretty inevitable that we get so many gastro pubs.
Because I feel obliged to mention Pubs Galore at this point, if you know of any good gimmicks that a pub is using, make sure and put it as a recommendation for the pub on pubs galore. Really though it is just sad news to see the pressures pubs are put under.
I have gotten back to developing the town links, it is nearly there, but it is going slowly as I am learning how to use new (on me anyway) AJAX methodologies to do it. It is clearly better in a lot of ways, but I need to put more thought into the presentation as it could get very messy if we were to set up the whole site in the way I am playing with. I also have a couple of bugs to iron out from the last release (nothing to worry about, but one or 2 audits are making no sense, editing recommendations rather than creating them and the like.)
Hope you all have a good weekend.
Tuesday, 6 May 2008
Servers are well again
Well I finished off the servers last week and upgraded the forums on Friday (not had time to check it all out yet, but apparently there is some new stuff there).
Today I have been trying to get my head round coding again, having left things alone for a couple of weeks I have had to try and pick up where I left off which is always fun. I seem to have found my groove again though, I am guessing we will probably need to put the site into maintenance mode for half an hour next week, will let you know when I know more.
I am on holiday tomorrow, so will not do a post, but will get another one in before the end of the week, hope everyone enjoyed the frequently warm bank holiday weekend (and very wet Sunday).
Today I have been trying to get my head round coding again, having left things alone for a couple of weeks I have had to try and pick up where I left off which is always fun. I seem to have found my groove again though, I am guessing we will probably need to put the site into maintenance mode for half an hour next week, will let you know when I know more.
I am on holiday tomorrow, so will not do a post, but will get another one in before the end of the week, hope everyone enjoyed the frequently warm bank holiday weekend (and very wet Sunday).
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Smoking Ban
Anyone who has seen my posts on the forum knows I support the smoking ban, so I was particularly sorry to see 100 pubs closing in Ireland.
I still believe that any pub closing has more problems than just the smoking ban, but I can see that it doesn't help them keep their old business.
I still believe that any pub closing has more problems than just the smoking ban, but I can see that it doesn't help them keep their old business.
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