tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29101334013327053512011-07-07T22:22:57.129+01:00A blog for chatting about the development and running of the <a href="http://www.pubsgalore.co.uk/">www.pubsgalore.co.uk</a> websiteConradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.comBlogger591100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-45341976973276310332009-11-20T12:16:00.004Z2010-08-27T14:27:47.135+01:00

Having just got myself an iPhone I have been playing round with the apps on the app store, there is loads of fun to be had on there, and thank goodness for the various review sites that point out some of the goodies.One that particularly caught my attention was Layar (iTunes link)(Android Market), it is an augmented reality application. This is a category of application that lets you look

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-20927098369621447562009-10-13T13:26:00.003+01:002009-10-13T13:47:27.542+01:00

There has been a lot of publicity surrounding Twitter, with even the government jumping on the band wagon.We have actually seen a few pubs making excellent use of it though, and now we are showing the latest Tweet a pub has made where we know about them. These will also link out to the pubs Twitter feed. I think the best use I have seen for this is to allow the pubs to give updates of the Ales

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-34919001605592119622009-09-09T12:10:00.005+01:002009-09-09T12:17:52.144+01:00

Just a quick reminder to check out our forums.Historian is currently trying to get some life into them with what I would say is best described as an introductions thread.Our forums have suffered a lot from the lack of chatty users on the site, for forums to work they really need a critical mass of users who are willing to chat. For this reason we have not pushed them too hard. I think we are

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-22773599076936368602009-08-27T15:31:00.005+01:002009-08-27T16:08:33.469+01:00

Today we have removed the restriction on review size, so to all our verbose and artistic reviewers, go mad!We have recently had a complaint about the size we allow our reviews to be and also have noticed that a number of our members are struggling to keep under the letter limit (mostly pub owners promoting their service).To be honest I dismissed the complaint as it was a member writing an

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-31968300216742449402009-08-08T15:53:00.004+01:002009-08-09T01:21:38.804+01:00

We have finally improved the search on the site. It has long been a weak link on the site, and is still not perfect, but is at least finally useful.Previously if you wanted to find the Red Lion in Bristol you had to search for Red Lion and then filter by Bristol, Now you can just search for Red Lion, Bristol and the search will return all the matches. The new search will also do its best to

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-23966987297618992692009-07-29T16:47:00.003+01:002009-07-29T17:08:29.577+01:00

We have just released a new version of the Pubs web site.Key changes are that the pubs page is now under the new design, and a pictures page has been created.The new pub page is pretty much the same in functionality as the old pub page, but rather than having a stream of images down the right, we are just showing 1 from a randomly chosen contributor. This has been prompted with us now having

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-67363901863844451152009-07-27T13:10:00.003+01:002009-07-27T13:19:49.642+01:00

Following on from my last post moaning about some marketing tactics employed by Vintage Inns. We noticed that one of Pubs Galore's fantastic members has been to and posted a review of the Titchfield Mill in Fareham. He also gave it a very respectable review, and far more meaningful than the fabricated review previously posted in the Vintage Inn deluge.Well done to the Titchfield Mill for it's

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-56541914919059766352009-07-22T15:14:00.006+01:002009-07-22T15:41:57.135+01:00

We have just been watching an amusing pattern forming on Pubs Galore, and I thought I would amuse myself and possibly others by blogging about it.We regularly see Landlords review their own pubs, and the more credible ones admit in their review that they are the owners. We are happy for owners to review their pubs, but do hope they will say in their reviews they are the owners, personally I

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-69371488483392735142009-05-19T11:52:00.002+01:002009-05-19T12:27:02.246+01:00

We have just released a new version of the town pages. This is quite a major update that implements a lot of changes suggested to us. Firstly though if you spot anything that looks wrong to you, please let us know, with a change like this it is hard to be confident we have not made any mistakes in the release and we may need to iron some stuff out.This release follows the trend of adding Google

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-63132117584086066062009-04-21T12:46:00.004+01:002009-04-21T15:59:32.703+01:00

We have just released the new versions of the Country and County pages.They are quite fancy and have very tight integration with Google Maps. It looks very nice and we are quite chuffed with it, but if you are having any problems with it let us know so that we can keep improving it.Update:We have added some lo-band versions just in case your computer is having problems, on the town or county

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-53424978366750456542009-04-20T12:45:00.001+01:002009-04-20T12:46:54.782+01:00

Tomorrow (21st April) the pubs galore site will be disabled for maintenance for about 30 mins from 2 O'Clock.Sorry about any inconvenience caused.

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-20969060774850096932009-04-01T16:48:00.006+01:002009-04-03T16:40:01.081+01:00

Well I know I promised we would be rolling the new design out, but nothing new has appeared with it. I am working on it in my spare time but it is proving to be a devil.The next page we want to roll out is the country (England, Wales, Scotland, & N. Ireland) page, and with it a new town page. We have it in mind that we are going to do away with the very nice pictures of the UK that we are

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-38148912978093571712009-03-20T15:30:00.003Z2009-03-20T16:10:28.338Z

We are always interested to hear what people would like to see on the Pubs Galore site. And even more pleased when we see the site mentioned in a positive light (so please do that more often). We did notice ourselves mentioned in a topic on the CAMRA forums (dubiously under the title 'Bogus pub sites'), in general they have posted us in a positive light which is nice.Anyway we couldn't resist

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-3153827326278219052009-03-12T21:42:00.004Z2009-03-13T12:35:50.348Z

I have been quiet on my blog for a while now, part of this is because we have not done much with Pubs Galore. Although in the time I wasn't updating my blog we did release one big feature, listing beer festivals.The beer festival listings were suggested by one of the sites regular contributor's. It was something we had toyed with before but it kept getting sidelined, once it was requested

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-11560420985867323242009-03-05T16:39:00.005Z2009-03-06T14:04:16.063Z

If you are reading this you have hopefully seen our new page design on the title page. Please do let us know what you think of it as we are keen to correct it if it isn't right.For a long time now we have wanted a new design for the page. The previous design (still in use on most of the site) whilst being very pretty and holding a great deal of sentimental value has been reaching its

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-76560816778709699462008-09-22T17:40:00.007+01:002008-09-22T17:55:12.533+01:00

Sadly I have not been doing any development on Pubs Galore for a while, I have been too busy. Which is a real pity as we have had some excellent new contributors on the site to mention a few Graham Mason, Peter Ashworth and T Valtojos (but there have been many more and we appreciate you all) have all been contributing regularly since just appearing on the site, which is fantastic to see.I have

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-6794232922514169822008-09-08T16:30:00.004+01:002008-09-08T17:14:11.469+01:00

In the past we have put a lot of work into trying to stop the site turning into a complaints web site. Things like calling reviews recommendations to try and give them a positive onus. We have begun to relax some of these ideas to try and get more reviews as we recognise that this is an area where our site is less productive.Despite this we still require that users are members before they can

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-26931998066670289522008-09-01T13:40:00.004+01:002008-09-01T14:24:04.786+01:00

We had a regular contributor ask us this week why we had taken more than a week to approve some of their pictures and why we were rejecting so many of their pub contributions when they weren't being reported on postcode match.They were actually different issues but both demonstrate that work goes on after every contribution to the site. Pictures at their most basic level do need approving, way

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-17797070408027824532008-08-27T13:56:00.004+01:002008-08-27T14:04:01.052+01:00

I was a bit disturbed to read about this local pub in our local rag. I haven't actually been to this pub so can't comment on its merits. It is a pity to see that it is being closed down and sold on with a restriction on its use, apparently the pubco that owns it is concerned that it will compete with their other pubs. As if pubs weren't under enough threat already, they are now using this

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-4751973957194765242008-08-18T17:00:00.002+01:002008-08-18T17:08:58.251+01:00

Been a bit under the weather for the last week and seemed to have spent most of it sleeping. So really don't have much to write about, alough after last weeks rant I was amused by one of our members who let me know that the Isle of Man is not in England. They are of course correct, however redoing the Flash map of England and creating an International concept on the site are an equally big task

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-53471444127637114462008-08-09T18:27:00.003+01:002008-08-09T21:02:11.824+01:00

Time for a bit of a rant.We get a lot of feedback on Pubs Galore, and it is all interesting. In the last week we have had a couple that rake over an old issue though, county boundaries.The site has been through a couple of generations:Initially when it was created the towns and counties were purely maintained as postal counties in the same way as the Post Office did (and still does except that

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-50012008921243855402008-08-01T15:03:00.003+01:002008-08-01T15:15:11.556+01:00

Apologies, I have gotten really bad about keeping this up to date. I am really busy and sadly not finding as much time to work on Pubs Galore as I would like. I have done a few fixes to the bits of the site we use for administration, sadly it is not the sort of thing that would impress our regular users though.We are still seeing a steady flow of new users to the site, so thank you to all of

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-7111039580272971812008-07-16T16:20:00.002+01:002008-07-16T17:04:07.993+01:00

Sorry I didn't write anything before going away. I seem to be really busy and sadly just don't seem to have much to write about. I am in one of those phases where I seem to be getting a lot of work thrown at me from different directions and am finding little time for the pubs website.Happily the sites users continue to be busy. We have had some excellent new reviewers join and get going, so

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-734645675275578782008-06-27T17:53:00.002+01:002008-06-27T18:03:10.754+01:00

Well another week down, really not got anything to mention either. I have a holiday coming up in a couple of weeks, hopefully I can recharge my batteries and be a bit more imaginative about my blog after that.Whilst I am sadly not managing to show too much work on the site that is thankfully not slowing down our members, we are still getting a good flow of recommendations, pictures, links and

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-10013199330285514022008-06-20T17:08:00.002+01:002008-06-20T17:15:50.531+01:00

Sorry I haven't been posting, my personal aim is to do at least 2 posts a week, I have recently been at a loss for things to write sadly. So if anyone has something they want me to ramble about feel free to post suggestions on the pubs galore feedback, forums or on this blog.I have continued to work on the ability to add beer festivals, they are slowly getting there, although I still need to do

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-79515506978324518222008-06-13T16:34:00.002+01:002008-06-13T16:58:04.962+01:00

Been a bit of a boring week to be honest, so sorry I haven't posted on my blog.We got some nice feedback this week telling us that the new pub filters on the town pages are useful, it is always nice to hear where you are getting it right, and even where we are getting it wrong. Hopefully over time we will get more right.I have been continuing work on the idea of beer festivals, at the moment I

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-35817671969112286362008-06-06T18:35:00.002+01:002008-06-06T18:46:59.421+01:00

One of our members kindly let me know about this talk about the changes in pubs over the last 40 years from the National Archives. It is an interesting listen to hear about the changes pubs have gone through, quite a few of them for the better as well I feel. I hope that the current downturn in pubs will eventually just be seen as another change in the character of pubs as we come out of the

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-53495277609051892702008-06-04T18:32:00.002+01:002008-06-04T18:38:21.682+01:00

I have been struggling this week to think of something to write about, I seem to be struggling to keep up this week and have been doing very bitty work.I was just going through all the approvals on the Pubs Galore site though and was amused to see that Andrew Evans had taken up my challenge to find our missing Red Lion's.In one go he has successfully added 3 Red Lions in Warrington, along with

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-50072363314040932232008-05-30T18:35:00.002+01:002008-05-30T18:39:29.451+01:00

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.

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-56118268495831318982008-05-28T15:15:00.002+01:002008-05-28T15:25:14.063+01:00

I just uploaded a couple of minor changes that have been requested.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 quicklyThe filters are sadly a little slow on our larger towns and I am not sure how they will perform on older computers, hopefully users will just not use them if

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-53142659212990004812008-05-23T17:17:00.002+01:002008-05-23T17:37:54.363+01:00

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

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-80551838326737331302008-05-20T17:28:00.002+01:002008-05-20T17:35:00.206+01:00

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

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-31424264382721039872008-05-16T16:16:00.003+01:002008-05-16T16:29:11.002+01:00

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.

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-38738285278852764312008-05-13T17:51:00.003+01:002008-05-13T18:01:00.602+01:00

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

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-51019738337453155972008-05-09T15:44:00.002+01:002008-05-09T16:08:17.765+01:00

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

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-65639728457293963232008-05-06T17:45:00.003+01:002008-05-06T17:52:07.349+01:00

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

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-31342568813139786762008-05-01T17:46:00.002+01:002008-05-01T17:50:00.381+01:00

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.

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-12442379868478538212008-04-29T14:48:00.011+01:002008-04-29T21:48:35.053+01:00

Colin Spiller kindly sent us this article from the BBC via the site feedback. He thought I might find it interesting and he wasn't wrong, apart from anything else it gives me something to ramble on about here.I figured I would use Pubs Galore to analyse their report, this is in no way scientific as I realise that Pubs Galore has a long way to go to become an absolute list, but it is coming on in

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-67570198306266200282008-04-25T16:33:00.003+01:002008-04-25T16:55:07.149+01:00

Well the ongoing issues of server maintenance continue, I was due to have finished today and then some minor tweaks next week. Whilst putting on the finishing touches I noticed that we had not been provided with the server we requested off our service providers. Whilst it was not a major issue we were trying to prepare for the future with our choice of server, and the mistake meant the server

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-87257805042033061872008-04-22T17:22:00.002+01:002008-04-22T17:25:24.048+01:00

Another boring day I am afraid, the new live server is now prepped and waiting for me to set up all the sites on it, also I have been to the hospital to get my now regular bone marrow aspirate to ensure that my Leukaemia is not trying to sneak back.

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-68427541455847505092008-04-21T18:08:00.003+01:002008-04-21T18:20:05.422+01:00

Whilst preparing to migrate our servers to live a kindly tech at our hosts has spannered up and repointed our domain inaccurately.If you are trying to connect to pubs galore apologies, we are working to correct this as quickly as possible. Whatever we manage though for some of you the site is going to be unavailable for 24 hours.All fixed now, once again sorry to anyone that affected.

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-81342641552775118822008-04-21T12:57:00.003+01:002008-04-21T18:25:17.073+01:00

Sadly the server maintenance is ongoing, in more positive news it now picks up the pace as we have completed the development box, I now have to kick on by setting up a new live box, this is a lot easier though as I have done most things once and the documentation becomes a cut and paste issue, so we should be well finished by the end of the week.As part of this we are doing preparations ready for

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-43581201073812569442008-04-15T17:11:00.002+01:002008-04-17T18:48:25.909+01:00

Sorry about the lag of entries (I did actually write Tuesday's but was so incompetent I didn't publish it). To be honest there is not a lot to report anyway, the site continues to tick over and we are replying to all feedback, approving all pictures and pubs. In terms of the maintenance, it continues apace, we have a development environment again and are migrating all our sites and testing that

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-65344340644454734232008-04-14T17:14:00.003+01:002008-04-14T17:24:43.012+01:00

Well I had a nice quiet weekend to try and prepare for this week, I hate server work and this week promises to be a corker as we try and recommision 2 of our servers. Started off smoothly enough, but we will see how it all develops.Over the weekend I had a couple of pieces of feedback through the pubs galore site where members felt that other members were not using the site in an ideal way. It

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-83787634154257533982008-04-11T16:47:00.003+01:002008-04-11T16:56:39.499+01:00

Well after yesterday not a lot to report. I am pretty much entrenched in my admin role at the moment, we have been sorting out a replacement box today, that looks like it is about there so on Monday I will see if I can get it all installed correctly to make it our new development kit. As well as that I am working towards switching my office machine to Vista, something I am not sure about, but

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-22243113346748807882008-04-10T19:50:00.004+01:002008-04-10T23:31:11.680+01:00

Since I started doing this blog I have actually managed to remain fairly dedicated to development of Pubs Galore, but we do run other sites and do the odd bit of work with other independants. Also we control a few servers and the like.Well after that first paragraph you may guess that I became distracted today, sadly I blew up our development server and have had to nurse it all day, gradually I

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-78354494014359410972008-04-09T18:11:00.002+01:002008-04-09T18:18:36.819+01:00

Well another day learning about AJAX stuff, what I am doing should actually be quite simple, but I am learning on the fly, so apologies for my slowness, hopefully the results will be worth it.If you are as boring as me you will be watching The Apprentice tonight, I actually watch it regularly, I'm not normally a fan of reality TV, but I do find this one worth a laugh, although it does seem to get

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-33047034852354015092008-04-08T17:48:00.002+01:002008-04-08T17:59:35.388+01:00

Hi, firstly just a warning, this is a really boring entry and probably a but techy with no funny news in it, so possibly switch off now.Today I have been looking a little more at this adding links to towns, but as with all our work I am trying to take the opportunity to improve on what we have already done (sadly this is the bit I find interesting). In IT it has been the buzz for a while to look

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-90253839947697853612008-04-07T17:43:00.003+01:002008-04-07T17:51:08.865+01:00

As ever Monday involves the normal email trawl, a few interesting things to do and some feedback from the pubs galore web site to reply to.A lot of the actual work today has been to go through our error logs and check if the new site version released on Friday has caused any issues, remarkably I could only see 1 issue and that relates to admin related work, so is not a big worry.Having done this

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-21496201280138309702008-04-04T18:47:00.002+01:002008-04-04T18:50:40.121+01:00

Just a quick one today as I am working a little later than planned. I have successfully released the new version of the site. If you look at any pub where users have done anything (submitted photos, recommendations or reviews) then under the address is a small link saying see activity for this pub. Clicking on this will show a report with the timeline of everything that happened.There are a

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-83853761972840814082008-04-03T17:47:00.004+01:002008-04-03T18:07:18.208+01:00

Today has been another one that was a bit of a write off, ended up doing a lot more of my maintenance work than my development work. We were getting warnings off one of our servers that there could be an infection on it (thankfully it is all clear), but that will always take up time as you need to make sure that everything is secure if you get even the slightest hint.Also I have been working on

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-15550271864695494102008-04-02T14:44:00.003+01:002008-04-02T18:47:48.507+01:00

Not at all relevant to Pubs Galore but my car is being MOT'd today, darn those things are too expensive to run. Whilst doing this though my day kind of evolved into a day off, and on top of that I haven't spotted any interesting news to try and make it look like I have something to say.I did do a couple of bug fixes today and a bit of reading up on a few things, nothing particularly note worthy

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-29763384275062618372008-04-01T12:39:00.002+01:002008-04-01T18:02:31.472+01:00

Today I carried on chasing bugs out of the system, todays list:More picture fixes for the new pub activity screen, allowing older pictures to display.Fixed a weird one on the maps, if you move the map away from a pub so that no pubs are on the screen it tells you at the bottom how far the map centre is from the pub, at least that is what it is supposed to do (It does now).Put a warning on new

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-29585019202109213772008-03-31T16:37:00.003+01:002008-03-31T17:30:47.943+01:00

But don't worry I wont shoot the whole day down.Mondays always tend to end up being a day where I am left wondering where they went. Today I have come in, sorted out the remaining bits of weekend email (some I do during the weekend) and then found that I need to upgrade the servers with security updates to try and keep them secure.Also I have been involved in helping a friend out with one of his

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-36117773150491199242008-03-28T15:06:00.009Z2008-03-28T16:58:01.897Z

A day of bugfixes, we do just go through cleaning up bugs as we stumble across them and never mention them, a lot of them are the sort of thing that the casual user wont notice or worry about. Today I have dealt with:Logging of picture deletions - Recording picture deletions was inconsistent, if an admin deleted an image it was recorded that they had deleted their own picture, also other minor

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-76779321522681887792008-03-27T17:35:00.000Z2008-03-27T17:46:58.938Z

Well the major part of today has been simply designing the page which will show all the pub activity. I will never understand where designers get their patience from, I find this part of the job hugely tedious. Not helped by the fact that I am not good at HTML. Goodness knows it is terrible for anyone nearby as well, Dave has had to put up with me moving a button 1 millimetre across the screen

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-46076593976889804682008-03-26T18:39:00.000Z2008-03-26T18:54:23.564Z

Well today has been a slow one, I think I have now completed the auditing code, sadly there is a list of bugs as long as my arm (well alright 4 A4 pages in my notebook really) still to do, most of them found when I was putting in all this auditing code. Hopefully the work should go a little faster now though as all the bug fixes are a little more interesting. The auditing code has just been a

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-31874677646112881002008-03-26T08:11:00.000Z2008-03-26T08:12:23.331Z

Campaign to ban Alistair Darling from all pubs.

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2910133401332705351.post-86708710833334125702008-03-25T12:52:00.000Z2008-03-25T18:03:50.154Z

Hi all,I have been meaning to try and write a blog for a while to try and note more of what I am doing with my time. Not sure how it will go or even what I will write, but lets let rip and see what happens. I have been doing a lot of admin today, loads of emails over the Easter weekend and the like. But have managed to do a little of the auditing code that has been dragging me down for weeks

Conradhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10327644997420664890noreply@blogger.com0