Behind the Scenes
With our latest release we have been cleaning up some under the hood bug fixes and working on improving our administrative features to try and make our site admin jobs a lot easier.
Major improvements have also been made to the custom CMS system we have allowing us to manage our content better as we all know content is King.
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| Content is King |
Testimonials is going into the final stages of development now then it will be tested and released to the public and we also have the job board coming up.
Better Implementation
We have made some recent improvements to our API by refactoring some of the classes, adding a JSON output writer to complement the XML writer this allows us to use either format for API output by changing the URL suffix for the request.
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| JSON Output |
The old map XML code has been ported over to a new GeoApi module for handling all our map data requests such as the "other homes in this area" feature or local amenities map markers which is used to display local places of interest.
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| XML Output |
Along with these changes we have created some new DTDs which go with our XML API output, there have been multiple bug fixes along with removal of some unneeded code which has been deprecated.
Our hope is that by implementing these changes we can provide data to the public via a uniform simple to use API. This will be ideal for when we release our new testimonials feature which we plan on opening up for public use.
New Homepage Section
Our supplier directory is slowly being populated so we decided to run a promotion on our homepage by adding a new section to the bottom.
We thought it would be beneficial to both us and the supplier to promote the work they have done by adding a quality listing to our system.
You can view Andy's Gramophone Classics supplier listing and we hope to drive contacts to his page. They also have a Facebook page here which shows some pictures of his old records and such so, check it out!!
Simple Site Feedback
For our latest release we have implemented a basic feedback system on a global level so it is accessible site wide rather than using our contact form. We feel that having the link to the top left of the screen will encourage our visitors to help improve our website by leaving some feedback.
We hope to integrate this feedback system tightly with our systems over time in an attempt to improve these systems using genuine user feedback and other data we collect. We are also coupling it with our error reporting system to help improve our website even more.
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| Global Feedback Link |
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| Feedback Page |
Going biz
The Care Homes Directory can now be accessed using a new domain name which is www.carehomes.biz this should redirect to our main domain using a 301 redirect using the Apache rewrite module.
