If you are updating the program. Would it help to add spaces for the date when opened and closed and also the owners. This would permit more information to be added.
ICLOK alsp brought up the idea of the parent mine to group several mines together. If you do this you loose the chance to put a second name if the mine is known localy with a differant name or if the owners rename it.
This would add another box for when inputting, is it worth it? when upgrading.
Just thinking!

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It sounds as if what we are looking for here, if we consider all the wishes so far, is a full-blown Content Management System. (The death of professional translators - the more you translate and add to a CMS, the less you have to translate in the future)

Something of this ilk would certainly bring advantages like reducing duplicate/multiple entries and automatic or semi-automatic tying in of alternative data, eliminate redundant data and would attach relevant input from multiple users to existing entries with very little user-effort.

Anything like this in the pipeline?

I'd like to see it as a searchable database of mines with content.

It isn't searchable enough and lots of roads seem to lead to a zillion mine names with no information.

I tend to use google to get me to the right piece of information here.

It has the potential to be an awesome website and it's getting there, but you have to wade through some crap to get to what you're after!

It sounds as if what we are looking for here, if we consider all the wishes so far, is a full-blown Content Management System. (The death of professional translators - the more you translate and add to a CMS, the less you have to translate in the future)

Something of this ilk would certainly bring advantages like reducing duplicate/multiple entries and automatic or semi-automatic tying in of alternative data, eliminate redundant data and would attach relevant input from multiple users to existing entries with very little user-effort.

Anything like this in the pipeline?

Er...

The whole data structure already sits in a massive Content Management System that was developed especially for the site. There would, I suspect, be no other way that the site could operate.

AditNow thus comprises about 250,000 individual pages generated on-the-fly by the CMS, including the forum and the events calendar etc..

Mines exist as data objects, with all their data attached to them, i.e. locations, descriptions and so on, *plus* the albums - which may be tagged to more than one mine for the (rare) occasions where an album might straddle two mines (for example, Croesor-Rhosydd trips and Foty/Bowydd).

Users are similarly data objects, as are albums, photographs, events, documents and so on.

All these can be inter-related, for example, photographs belong to an album, which belongs to a mine.

All primary data objects (ie mines, albums, photographs and forum topics) can be set to a security level, which governs who is able to view them.

As might be imagined, this is monstrously complex and given the amount of inter-relationships between various data objects, it's not necessarily possible to make any big changes as this could have unintended consequences.


Turning to your penultimate paragraph: yes, it's possible to create a duplicate entry, thus the responsibility rests on the user to check that the mine is not already in there. Whilst there is the possibility for duplications, these are usually picked up on quite quickly.

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I'd like to see it as a searchable database of mines with content.

It isn't searchable enough and lots of roads seem to lead to a zillion mine names with no information.

I tend to use google to get me to the right piece of information here.

It has the potential to be an awesome website and it's getting there, but you have to wade through some crap to get to what you're after!

You can search for mines with content.

The quickest way I tend to find is to click on the first letter of the mine name (search box top right).

Then click in the box:

Show mines starting with: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Click here to show all mines with or without content.

This will take a little bit of time to search through but it will narrow down to what's actually in the database, eg.

Cwt-y-Bugail
Slate
SH
4 albums, 180 photos and 10 votes cast. 0 Documents and 0 notes.

The one thing you can't do is to search the forum *and* the database at the same time - and for reasons of keeping SimonRL sane, I don't see this as being a viable step to take.

As you suggest a site-specifc Google search should do the trick, i.e. something like:

Cwt-y-Bugail site:aditnow.co.uk

Which will bring up virtually every data object that exists for Cwt-y-Bugail on the site (i.e. forum topics, the mine entry itself, photographs, albums and so on), albeit this might take a while to wade through.

Finally, what about if you don't know the spelling of a mine?

Go to the search box at top right, select the 'Mine Names' tab, put the name into the box and then tick the box to the left of "'Sounds like search' (useful if you are not quite sure how to spell the mine name)".

For example: 'coomorthyn' returns 13 mines including the elusive Cwmorthin. That, to me, is rather impressive!

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Unless I am being a technical spazz, it works very well until I get to page "2" and then the whole thing goes haywire....

It is mildly frustrating.

Page 2?

If you get the mine listing by letter, it should be one letter per page, no?

http://www.aditnow.co.uk/list-international-mines-quarries/ 

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Er... Indeed

I got the impression from what was being asked for on this thread that this was not quite as sophisticated as it turns out to be - silly me - sorry!

I like to start my entries off with a composite image in the album (reasonably easy to do in Photoshop or similar) containing the basic information and an extract of old map data, so anyone looking can get a potted version of where and what each mine is (and please, everyone, let me know if you have anything to add or correct), like this:

[photo]Sowden-Pit-No-4-New-Farnley-Coal-Mine-Archive-Album-Image-71344[/photo]

Wahaaay, it's fixed!

Unless I am being a technical spazz, it works very well until I get to page "2" and then the whole thing goes haywire....

It is mildly frustrating.

Sorted ;)

I always start here:

http://www.aditnow.co.uk/mines/ 

For example, in order:

Country (e.g. United Kingdom)

Zone (e.g. OS Sheet SH)

Mineral (e.g. slate)

Order (e.g. A to Z)

Results per page (e.g. 20)

Show only mines with content (e.g. ticked)

That gives me 148 results over 8 pages.

This is where the bug Stuey referred to was.... when you clicked page 2, page 3 etc. it 'forgot' you had "Show only mines with content" ticked and defaulted to all slate mines, with or without content.

That's fixed now so hopefully the search is a little more usable.

One of the problems with this site, if that's the right word, and I'm quite open to constructive criticism (!) is that in the early days (i.e. the first few years) I coded just about everything everybody asked for. Literally... "I want to search this way" so I coded it.

That's arguably ended up with some sprawl and some duplication of the ways mines and sites can be listed.

What's needed IMO is a new search (with integral mapping) facility and some rationalisation of some of the features.

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