Some enhancements

Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

I have added a couple of new features to the searchforsites website.
Sites close by
When you view a page for a particular location, there is a new drop down list for the 20 closest other locations.
This may be different to the main search page where you may have searched based on a fixed radius.

The idea is to give you an idea of how popular a location is, for example if the 20 closet are all within 3 or 4 km you know that there is going to be plenty of choice os stopovers, if however the 20 closet are 30-40 km away then the location is quite isolated.

It also shows the bearing N,S,E,W, etc and the distance (as the crow flies) plus if the site has any phots, reviews or a link to a website.

Access the list by clicking on the sites close by link under the small map.

Heres an example
Panoramic - Annecy

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Pitch Surfaces
I have also added icons for the pitch surface types available (where known)
This can also be seen in the example above.
Hover the mouse over the icons to see the descriptions (or place finger over on an ipad)

Attachments

example_1.png: You don't have permission to download attachments.; (192 Kb) Downloaded 3 times

Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

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Posts : 259 Join date : 2012-11-20 Location : West Yorks.

Brilliant resource - thanks for keeping us up to date with development.

Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

madeinyorkshire wrote:: Brilliant resource - thanks for keeping us up to date with development.

No problem

Next on the hit list is the ability to add your own reviews and pics.
Just need to finalise how I am going to rate the reviews.
At the moment it is just a one of out of ten score for each site, but I think that is too vague.
So I am going to use the following

Rate the price
Rate the facilities
Rate the location
Rate the view

So a free France Passion site may score 10/10 for price but would probably score lower for facilities

Then use the average of those four to give an overall rating for the review
The site will get an overall rating based on the average of all the reviews.

Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

Some more enhancements...
Reviews
Reviews have been updated with a broader ratings range...
Reviews examples

Weather Layer
The default zoom level for each site has been set so the weather layer is displayed by default. (weather layer does not show on high zoom levels)
Click on any weather symbol to see a 5 day forecast
The weather layer is provided by google via weather.com
The small map shows the current weather over a much wider area which is usefull for chasing the sun!

Subject: Re: Some enhancements Fri 11 Oct 2013 - 16:26

Looking good, can I request we can change the weather, now that would be handy Very Happy

_________________
Keeping Leapys boat sailing [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Subject: Re: Some enhancements Fri 11 Oct 2013 - 16:49

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]	Service and night stop
	Seine-Saint-Denis [93], Île-de-France, France, 93440
	Latitude: 48.94272; Longitude: 2.42029 N48° 56.563' E2° 25.217' Approximately 5447km from your current location

Just started researching my winter trip route and find that the Approximately mileage from current location is not correct as you can see from the inset box, them co-ords are from Southport UK to near Paris F and same too Caceres ES

Cáceres Camping

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]	Independent Campsite
	Cáceres?, Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain, 10001
	Latitude: 39.488609; Longitude: -6.4127 N39° 29.317' W6° 24.762' Approximately 4439km from your current location
	ACSI website
	NULL

Is it something I have wrong or just a glitch

Thanks for a great site and so useful.

Bob

Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

Did you allow searchforsites to use your current location?

Subject: Re: Some enhancements Fri 11 Oct 2013 - 16:59

Yes, when I open the home page it shows a RED marker directly over my home town, I cannot see anywhere it requests me for current location scratch

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Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

If you have accepted location in the past it shouldn't ask again. c
You can check distance by using the directions service , use the 'find me' button (below the small map) to get your current location and click calculate route.
I have seen this happen occasionally with IE but just refreshing the page usually corrects the distance.
I'll add it to the list of things to do.

Subject: Re: Some enhancements Fri 11 Oct 2013 - 17:33

Job sorted know and all running perfectly, I use MAC not IE. Thanks for you time and effort.

Subject: Re: Some enhancements Fri 11 Oct 2013 - 18:14

Is it possible to download these files onto a TomTom ???

Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

I'll have a look.
Is there any particular country your after?

Subject: Re: Some enhancements Fri 11 Oct 2013 - 19:54

At the moment it would be Portugal and Spain, but we do cover the whole of Europe at certain times every year.

Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

whistlinggypsy wrote:: Job sorted know and all running perfectly, I use MAC not IE. Thanks for you time and effort.

I think I have spotted the problem with the distance from your current location.

It works correctly if you select a site from the fullscreen map

Full screen here >>>

But dosen't work if you first visit from the map on the home page.

I'll have a play tomorrow (seeeing as it looks as though its going to rain all day)

Subject: Re: Some enhancements Sat 12 Oct 2013 - 17:38

Funny that as it seems to be an intermittent fault as it happened when I 1st went on yesterday then after talking to you it cured itself, until I logged out then logged back in this morning when the error reappeared.

Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

That's correct it uses session cookies to store your current lat/lng so can be intermittent depending upon how you interact with the site.
Intermittent faults are always the hardest to find but I think I know what it is now.

Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

Following on from another thread, I have added another search method:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It allows you to select a country and then type of site
As an example this will allow you to show all France Passion locations in France or all Independant campsites in the UK
You can also sort by name, region or district.

Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

Another couple of enhancements added:

Display search radius boundary
On the ful screen version a redline is drawn on the map to show the current search radius
<Full Screen version here>

You will notice the circle can be dragged and resized - toying with making this to update the map
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Keyword search
I have cleaned up the search page to include a keyword search with highlights for the keyword and icons for reviews, imags and web link
<Search page>

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
The highlighting of the keyword has a few bugs with special characters but the search results are good.

Hope you enjoy and as usual if you have any feature requests just let me know.

Subject: Re: Some enhancements Fri 9 May 2014 - 20:12

Not sure Ian whether its me or a glitch but as you can see bt the picture when I expand the circle it do not give me the information I require but only around my location ??

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Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

HI
Yes there was a technical c^*k up!
Any previous set of markers was not being removed before displaying the next set, so your pic should only show one cluster of markers not the two as shown - this hsould now be fixed

Re the red circle, at the moment you can drag and reposition the circle but it has no effect, do you think that would be a better way of searching?
I can fire an event after the centre of the circle changes in relation to the map or the radius changes or both.
I need to test that the circle can be dragged and expanded on different devices/browsers first.
So far I have tested on:
Firefox 29
Chrome 34
IE 10
Safari IOS7

Subject: Re: Some enhancements Sat 10 May 2014 - 9:29

It is not expanding the search area for me on my mac with google chrome. Sad

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Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

It shouldn't yet, but do you think it should?
What it does show is that you are able to resize the circle which is what I am testing
One problem I can forsee is there should be a maximum radius for the search or the map will take too long to load the markers
Your screen shows a radius of about 100km and results would look like this....
I dont think it is of much use having a search area greater than this
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

Update:
There is a test version here of the full screen search that allows the circle to be dragged and resized with the results updating automatically.

Click here for Full screen search with drag

It should do the following:
On first page load or refresh find your current position and show site within a 20km radius
When you either drag the red circle or change the radius (using the white 'nodes' on the circle), it should remove existing results, re-draw new results within the circles bounds.
If you exceed 100km radius (you can see the radius in the blue header bar) it should pop up a warning, resize the circle to its 100km max and redraw the markers.

If you drag the map (without dragging the circle) then press the search icon(to p right hand corner) the circle will move to the centre of the map and update the search results

If you type in an address to find, the circle will move to that point (providing it can be found!) and update the results.

Known bugs:
If no results are found, the loading image persists

Subject: Re: Some enhancements Sun 11 May 2014 - 10:33

Ian, that works perfectly and warning of exceeding the 100 km radius works fine, thank you for all the work.

Posts : 173 Join date : 2013-09-23

More of a fix than an update but since I changed the search to a proper radius search the filter wasn't working. This is now sorted.
To access the filter click on the green + in the top right hand corner and this will open the filter panel. Any type of site with a tick will be included in the search