One for Steve to consider

[Marc Jones]

How about listing the restaurants according to location?

maybe a drop-down so you can select where you are staying and get the restaurant details according to distance?

I know you have lots of time on your hands and could do with a challenge

[Joe King]

I would imagine that to be a huge undertaking Marc, even though it is a great idea!!

Steve, if you do decide to take on this challenge I would be more than happy to help on my return home in May.

Joe

[Steve Wooler]

Hi Guys

You're absolutely spot on Marc. That is one of the projects in the pipeline. The restaurant section is still in it's infancy. I intend to expand it dramatically, but we're still very much in the stage of gathering information. Trouble is, the vast majority of restaurants do not use email so I don't have good communication with them. However, I most certainly will be be listing by "area" rather than simply alphabetically. Keep posted.

[Marc Jones]

If you need a hand with the code side of things just shout. I'm a web designer (as in look and feel) and so have some nifty dev contacts - all of whom owe me favours

[Steve Wooler]

Hi Marc

Thanks for that Marc, I'll certainly bear it in mind. It would make sense to swing the whole site over to a MySQL database, given that's what I use for the forum. That would allow all accommodation/restaurant information to be listed in a variety of user-determined ways. Trouble is, it would also mean I couldn't provide copies of the site on CD-ROM, as at present. I'm torn two ways, to be honest.

If you have time to spare, I'm well up for a new graphical theme for the site. A redesign has been planned for six months, but I simply don't get the time to work on a new design. I did one specifically for myTobago, but then promptly used it on a client's site. I've also been waiting while I collected a big enough library of high quality photos for illustration. We're getting there rapidly. The site's original design concept was thrown together from various bits of clip art, while I determined how popular the site might be. Last year - our first full year - we served up the equivalent of 18 web pages for every visitor physically landing on the island. Based on that, I think it deserves some serious attention, particularly as the current navigation structure is now sadly lacking as we add more and more articles. All the navigation and coding side is no problem, but I welcome the input of graphic arts designers as time prevents me giving enough time to get a suitable "look and feel". If you want to have a chat, contact me on [email protected].

[Marc Jones]

To be fair Steve the functionality is fine and even the look works well enough.

At the risk of this sounding like a mild insult this site is a champion of "content is king".

All I'd do (if I was asked to spruce it up) would be to rework the nav a bit in terms of look (it's has shades of front page at the moment). I think as designers it's easy to lose site of the fact the 99% of your users won't give a fig for such frivolity.

The MySql switch sounds a good move, the rest IMO is just window dressing. I've been at the game since 1998 and not a single problem have I seen on this site regards being a heavy user.

Keep on keeping on IMO!

Feel free to call on me for any image manipulation etc I could assist with, I know what a chore some elements can be when a big picture is being considered. More than happy to give some time back for what is genuinely probably one of THE most helpful sites I've ever used in over 6 years surfing.

[Steve Wooler]

Well spotted, that man! Yes, you are quite right, wanting a quick and easy solution I modified a standard FP theme. Yes, I am a great believer in content over appearance (my background is systems analysis and Cobol programming, not graphical arts).

Anyway, thanks for the offer and interest.