Right then! In an attempt to sort out all the other threads with ideas and comments, here's what I want to do to the site over the coming six months or so.
Now the site is sat on it's new server, and at an ISP that as far as I'm concerned it can live permanently, I think it's a good chance for me to have a look at all the features and review everything in general; what doesn't get used, what could be done better etc. It's also a massive relief for me that it's with a service provider now that I can trust to help if anything goes wrong - so I'm all keen to keep developing again.
A lot of the following list is simply admission things aren't perfect as they are, it's probably grown a bit too organically as things have been requested, so a tidy up and some improvments are a good idea.
First thing, please don't be put off using the site because new stuff is in the pipeline. New features will only improve things. All the data will still be there. :flowers: :flowers:
So here's my list:
Home Page - try to de-clutter and simplify a bit, make it faster and easier to view at a glance
Mines Lists - I have an idea for making these work together. So you could start by doing A-Z then refine by mineral. Or start by mineral then refine by country. And keep drilling down. Improve the display and make the list of only mines with content much, much faster
Mine Searching - combine with above so you can use keyword searching in conjunction with drilling down. I think that'll make a very powerful list / search
Mine Geographic Searching - integrate a map view where you can input a Landranger or lat/long and range and it'll show everythign on the map, I've been playing with this for a while and it looks fairly easy
Adding Mines - finally add the code to check for duplicates on adding, also make it easier to add new producct types and classifications, and give capability to input a 'non-standard' product as free text (which I'll try to make searchable), provide a toggle to include or not include the product in the description
Adding Mines - allow multiple additional (as in addition to main) product type to be added
Uploading Photos - long overdue, provide an input for copyright attribution, for example for an open source photo is uploaded under the creative commons licence so the photo isn't copyright attributed to the uploader
Batch Uploading Photos - provide a photo by photo step-through of the batch to allow names and captions to be entered
Mine Info Pages - improve layout, fix (finally) the bug in the mines near and integrate the revised mapping showing (finally!) mines near
Forum - a few minor tweaks, speed things up where I can, fix the issue with the B I U Quote Img Centre buttons etc., in Firefox, improve the forum home page and integrate standard forum img and url handling so links can be copied in from places like Flickr. The forum is pretty simple, I was encouraged to write it from scratch by a few people, but I'm quite happy with not being able to have full HTML editing in messages and the like - never really felt the need to add it.
Beyond that it's ongoing maintenance and speed improvements, optimisation etc. A few never-used sections like Mining Articles and Mining News will likely get ripped out as well.
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In looking through the data while looking at the various search features it made me realise just how much data there is on here, and what a lot of knowledge and time people have contributed in building it up.
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While I'm squirrelling away building all this if anybody wants to help with any areas of site content they'd be very welcome; trip organising, gear reviews, book reviews, news via the forum etc., and one or two areas have probably lost their regional editors over time (I know which areas most definitely haven't - don't worry editors reading this!).
my orders are to sit here and watch the world go by