nfmungard & I will be putting a new version of this website live today, so you may experience a temporary glitch here and there. We are stand-by to fix them.

Upgrades include:
- improved mobile lay-out
- new banner and menu
- improved quick access to individual WHS
- tables (for example at country pages) can be sorted multiple ways, just choose which way you're most interested in
- improved pages after login to maintain and add reviews

Fixes include:
- 24*7 maps are back again. We now use 2 different map suppliers, so we hope to maintain within the free limits of each of those
- no longer showing of (unclickable) reviews on your profile page before I have published them on the main pages

it looks nice, thank you

Short summary of what we did today. And what is more to come.

My original plan was to quickly migrate the website to bootstrap 4. Turns out, this was not so quick as Bootstrap 3 (prior) and Bootstrap 4 (now) are very different beasts. And when you start touching each page, I figured we could also apply a few new touches... With Els and me being quite frequently away this took way longer than anticipated.

Title Bar
* Most noticably are probably the new title images. I have to admit, I really enjoy just clicking through them.
* We also added a proper menu bar to the title bar to group all the different pages. This should give you a better idea of the all the content we have.

Maps
Ever since google changed their maps invoicing we have had to limit usage quite drastically. To deal with this we have made a few changes.
* Profile maps require a minimum contribution to the community. You should at least fill out your profile, rate a site or write a review.
* We use mapbox and streetview instead of google maps for all site maps. I still need to figure out how to apply the colors for the site type, but think this is good enough as is.

Ratings
* The ratings are now used even more excessively across the page.
* The user page will also ask for reviewing unreviewed sites with each login..

Reviews
* The layout has changed and the preview is a bit longer.
* Each review contains a link you can use if you want to share your review.

User Login
* The user area has changed. Buttons are at the top and a welcome message is written..
* It also nudges the user a bit more to write reviews, or rate.
* Performance was also improved.

We will take care of any findings, hopefully before Els departs on her next trip.

Small topics:
* Country ranking and recent rating list.
* Allow every user to see their own map from their profile page.
* Make fonts bolder.
* Make title image a bit higher.

Big next topics for me are:.
* Els only: Blog post handling
* Tentative thumbs up/thumbs down.
* Make the menu on a mobile nicer.

Great work! And looks perfect on mobile!

Thanks, Nan and Els! The updates are awesome, and they do work well on a mobile. I'm really glad you were able to work out the map issues so that they are available on site and profile pages.

I noticed that now you have to select the Community drop-down list to get to the link to the Forum. Do you think this will make it more difficult for visitors to the site to find the Forum? I ask, since I know I used to always use the Forum link on the front page.

Also, I very much like the photos on the title images. This is not particularly important, but do you happen to have any images from North America that could be added to the rotation, since every other continent is represented, and there are only two images from the Western Hemisphere?

Thanks again for all the work you put into this site!

I added one! And there are 3 from South America in the mix

That's awesome - thanks! I recognized the site as soon as I saw it. :-)

Great additions for the Southern Hemisphere, too, with Argentina and South Africa!

@Els: I think there are inconsistent entries in the JSON. Also, each image needs JPG as file extension thanks to the server running Linux.

@Colvin: The banners are dynamic, one per site, so more can be added.

Regarding access to the forum: We still have the recent topics on the front page. I will also add a link to the forum in general to the side bar. I do think most novices will not head directly for the forum anyhow.

There is a bug with creating new reviews from the user page. You can still create them on the site page itself.

Great - I think a link on the side bar would be helpful. Thanks!

I think the site looks better than ever. Nice work! (I wish I could work as hard on my own projects as Els, nfmungard, and the others work on this one!)

However, I am experiencing an apparent bug with the maps on user profile pages.

-Some profiles are showing only visited markers on both the the "Visited" and "Missing" maps;
-Some profiles are showing only missing markers on both the "Visited" and "Missing" maps;


My profile is one that shows missing markers in both cases:
239 Michael Ayers

And the cases of some random users I checked:
1 Atila Ege -- showing visited markers in both cases
8 Els Slots -- showing visited markers in both cases
18 Michael Novins -- showing missing markers in both cases
19 Zoe Sheng -- showing visited markers in both cases
49 Nan -- showing missing markers in both cases
54 Tsunami -- showing visited markers in both cases
94 Ian Cade -- showing visited markers in both cases

121 Watkinstravel -- In this case it seemed like I was originally getting visited markers in both cases, but when I hit the "back" button on my browser, it changed to missing markers in both cases

The presence or absence of a marker on Wrangel Island makes it easy to see if the wrong set is being displayed, since no one has visited that WHS (yet).

I have seen this behavior in a few different browsers (every one that I have).

I wish it were true that the 932 "missing" sites I have on my map now were actually my "visited" sites, but sadly that will never be the case...

was a bug. gave els a full clean release that will have to go through some testing.

fyi: maps will be hidden for inactive users, so some will remain blank. we will offer the map though for logged in user from their own profile for planning purposes

Issues as described above should be gone now. Let us know when you discover any (new) bugs.

bug fixes:
* reload button works again
* writing reviews works again
* banner toggling should work better.

new stuff:
* top image even large. love those.
* manage profile page shows you what reviews would help.
* it also notifies you if your map is hidden, your profile blank, you havent rated or reviewed a site.
* there is a country ranking page. still beta.
* in the best sites ranking you can see who voted how in the last week to track recent changes.

continues to be an issue:
* missing map. probably .htaccess related. will fix tonight.

Great job, guys!