July 2009 Entries
Well, we had a fantastic time in the USA and we are now back to reality. Actually, we are ALMOST back to reality - with 20 hours of travel under our belts we are now ready for some serious sleep.
We've got some new projects lined up for the coming weeks and, of course, the relaunch of Jobs In Lanzarote - but sleep really is needed for now...
Later :-)
Well, it's done ! The new version of Jobs in Lanzarote is now complete and sitting on our staging server ready to roll. However, unlike previous upgrades I won't be publishing this until I return from my holiday. With over 3,500 registered users I suspect that I'll need to be around to help out with any password recovery issues and general support.
When I come back, we'll be upgrading Property In Lanzarote and populating it with properties from some of the estate agents we host sites for and then beginning the roll out of Cars In Lanzarote - so lots more...
I really get quite annoyed when I spend a significant amount of time and energy revamping a site and then someone thinks they can just copy the idea and, even worse, try to charge businesses on the island a stupid amount of money to use a site which isn't even as good.
It came to my attention today that a company has launched "the only interactive maps of the island" - erm, sorry boys but I think you'll find that Lanzarote Maps was first and is still faster, sleeker, and more user friendly than your effort. Also, with respect, charging clients...
Today, the new Job Seekers section of the new jobsinlanzarote.com is finished. The new system allows a very detailed profile for job seekers and also now allows them to upload a CV in PDF, Microsoft Word 2003 (and earlier), and Microsoft Word 2007 formats. We have a very large number of registered users (over 3000) and we'll be contacting them all to ask them to log in and update their profile.
We are now working on the employers section of the site and we are going to add a quick post facility for jobs so that we can manually add jobs...
The upgrade of Jobs In Lanzarot is <erm> coming along. I've decided to use an AJAX interface - so the huge form for profiles for jobseekers is now broken into multiview controls which change as information is added. This particular page is now 17 panels which only appear when questions are answered, watermarks in text boxes to provide examples, in line error checking, numeric only text boxes with automatic euro currency formatting, and partial page updates using AJAX. Oh - and the whole thing is written on BETA 1 of the .NET framework v4 using the preview of Visual Studio 2010...
We got a bit of a shock today to realise that Jobs in Lanzarote is fast approaching 2.5million hits with an average of 3000 visits a month and over 3000 registered users. However, we ARE going to rebuild it, rebrand it, and delete the database to make it bigger and better than ever. We'll be contacting the existing users and asking them to complete a new profile but, as it's number one in Google (and has been for SIX YEARS) we have no doubt that it will continue to attract new Job Seekers and Employers.
Obviously, this site has great potential...
Phew ... another day, another rebrand! Lanzarote Property Services was put under the knife today and rewritten using .NET and given the new Lanzarote Business Network branding. Old adverts for businesses with invalid contact details have been removed and we are now gearing up to market the site to every tradesman and improvements company on the island.
We have made a basic listing (address, contact information) free of charge but any business listed can upgrade to a Premium Account (call us for prices) which allows them to add a photograph or logo, get an email address, include a paragraph or two...
I got fed up with all of our blogs being in different places and with different addresses so from today they are all going to be on www.jaculate.co.uk. Why the name? Well, first of all I tried HUNDREDS of domains with the word BLOG in them and couldn't find anything suitable so I got the dictionary out (well, an online one anyway!) and look for cool words. Quite apart from the very slightly sauciness of the name the word jaculate actually means:
Jac´u`late
...
Our Boggle Platform has made it to Lanzarote with the launch of Lanzarote Search - the only dedicated, intelligent search engine spider for Lanzarote. It's free to add your business and we have a number of sponsorship opportunities available.
Features include:
A "Did You Mean?" function to help people who make spelling mistakes.
Intelligent Auto Suggest which uses a drop down list to reduce time to search.
Free to include any web site whether we host it or not.
Sponsorship and Banner Advertising opportunities.
Heavily...
With the closure of our store in Costa Teguise due to ill health we have decided to take the UK Computer Services web site offline. The address now points at www.niscoweb.com as we see little point in maintaining two web sites and brands when one will do! Of course, customers needing English copies of Microsoft Office or Windows can continue to order from us. Contact us for pricing and availability.
After serving us well since June 2003, NISCOWeb has been rewritten using the .NET Framework with a dash of AJAX to make the contact form a bit more interactive. We would usually refresh a site much more regularly but the old site worked really well for us. We've removed a lot of the technical content as people were asking us the questions anyway so it seemed a bit silly to have a page dedicated to the SQL Server and getting the balance between over technical and simple enough to understand.
We hope you like the new look - it's at www.niscoweb.com...