New Feature Release: Galleries

Improved Image Gallery

We have been working hard recently improving our current enhanced listings image support by adding a new gallery page and tab to all enhanced listings allowing home owners to upload five 1Mb images from their browser.

Currently the feature list is as follows,

• Support for main image which is displayed on all enhanced listings tabs.
• Upload five images of your home
• High resolution 1Mb images
• Dedicated gallery page for displaying gallery images
• Spotlight image support for displaying large versions (provided by lighter)
• Aspect ratio preservation on all images

Gallery and Editor

We plan to add support for converting assets into high resolution, medium resolution and thumbnail by using the ImageMagick PHP module.

Gallery Page

You can sign up for one year enhanced listings which costs £50+vat by completing the short form and making payment using Google Wallet all major credit and debit cards are accepted.

Image Spotlight

On a closing note our integration of Double Click for Publishers is progressing well and we hope to be releasing it in the new year, we feel our website has some good placements to offer advertisers and by using DFP we can offer these direct to potential customers.

Dropping Support for Internet Explorer 7

Browser Support Changes

Recently we decided to stop supporting Internet Explorer 7 due to it displaying our markup incorrectly and constantly needing work arounds. This applies to Enhanced Listings users and more recent features although the main directory still displays fine.

One thing that lead us to stop support was implementing a pure CSS drop down navigation which works in every other browser apart from IE7 so the decision was made to stop doing work arounds.

With Internet Explorer 7 having 4.47% of world browser usage, according to this page, we feel this would be an even smaller number for UK only visitors so it makes business sense to end support as well as technical.

If you still use IE7 you should really consider upgrading it to a newer version which supports modern web standards better and please remember IE7 was release in January 2006 which is a very long time in our industry and the most recent Internet Explorer is 11 which you can get here.

Internet Explorer 7

New Feature Release: Modify Provider via Panel

Change Your Directory Entry

Enhanced Listings users are now able to modify their listing in the main directory directly from their browser giving them full control over their profile on our website.

You can now add even more data because now we have added support for displaying your social media icons, home activities, care specialisms and more.

Edit Listing Form

New Feature Release: Social Media Buttons

Going Social

We are proud to announce another new feature release which allows care and nursing home owners to add links to their social media pages from our enhanced listings control panel. 

Once you have signed up you can set your social media URLs and they will be displayed as icons on your listing page.

This allows visitors to your listing page to connect with your home via social media which opens communication for your home to the public and our visitors.

Social Media Icons

New Feature Release: Home Activity List

List of Activities

We have a new page for our enhanced listings where they can edit a list of activities which are provided by the home for residents.

This is available to all Enhanced Listing customers and we also hope to allow providers to edit their activity list for free in the future.

Our hope is to slowly build some extra data from our listings with the aim of giving even more information to our visors and in turn improving their experience.

You can sign up for a 12 month enhanced listing for only £50 +vat using our new sign up form which includes support for Google Wallet making payment convenient.

Once you have logged in you can access the edit provider page this is were you can control your homes activities, specialisms, social media and other data.

Activities Screen Shot

Simplified Enhanced Listing Signup Form

Making Signup Easier

Recently we had to move over from Google Checkout to Google Wallet for our card payment processing so we decided that it would be an ideal time to review our enhanced listing sign up form.

We feel that our new form is simpler, quicker and easier to use allowing our visitors and customers to apply for their enhanced listing with the minimal hassle, combined with our new Google Wallet integration we feel it is a vast improvement.

Once you have purchased an enhanced listing you can add further ones direct from your panel via a browser making adding more establishments to your account even simpler.

Enhanced Listing Sign Up

New Feature Release: Site Wide Search Widget

Make Search Site Wide

The Care Homes Directory has made a new feature release with the aim of improving our website search by making it site wide.

Our new search widget is now live and being displayed in the top right corner of all pages we have applied some styles to the form so it looks a bit better than a native form.

We hope by providing a search function across all our pages it will allow our visitors to find what they want easier and more quickly.

Along with adding a new search widget we will be improving upon our search algorithm and attempting to speed our search up even more along with providing the most relevant results for your query.

Search Widget

The Care Homes Directory Google Wallet Support

Card Payment for Enhanced Listings

We are happy to announce the completion of our Google Wallet integration meaning we now have improved support for credit and debit card payments.

You can sign up for a single years enhanced listings for £50+vat using your credit or debit card allowing instant access to your listings panel.

Google Wallet Payment

Once you have signed up you can access our listings panel to edit your listings description, upload an image and more. Below is a screen shot of our online editor which is similar to a word processor that many users are familiar with.

Listing Editor

In the coming months we plan on adding gallery support for multiple images of your home, a job listings section for you to publicise any jobs vacancies. We get quite a few emails regarding jobs so we felt this might improve their experience on our website.

Conclusion

We feel Google Wallet is a vast improvement upon Google Checkout and by porting our platform over to them for our card processing will allow us to handle payments with the minimal of hassle.

Implementing our Double Click for Publishers integration has begun and soon we will be able to offer our customers customised site wide or specific advertising using a familiar system (DFP).

This will also allow us to sell our ad space via Google adwords and other advertising networks. We are excited at the possibilities and opportunities which this will offer our customer and users, especially when tightly coupled with our existing advertising platform and card handling systems.