Browse, Search and feedback

Well its been a productive day today with great new things and features getting created. I Started from scratch the search page which can be seen in the below to images. A simple textbox for the search pre-set to search by name but also allows for search by tab name and user. This will look for part names so if you type "will" like in the example image you will get results of "Williamson". This search at moment brings back only portfolios so if searched by tab name it will returns portfoliosI also have included a "must contain" section for images, video and links. This is not implemented but will be changed so only portfolios that have the checked items will be returned. For example you are looking for portfolios with videos on. As often a portfolio with no text/gallery or videos might not be of interest.

Now the search builds on the browse page which I had started to develop before the weekend but today again I have done a lot to improve it with the hover over the rows of results works like the forum for clicking anywhere not just the text of the links. The images and video results work nicely as well with the nice use of the jpg that is outputted in a small 100px size when the video converter is run for uploaded videos.

As you can see below this is a example of what it looks like when hovering one of the image links. This link takes you directly to the tab of the portfolio which this image comes from so you can see it easily and simply! At the bottom of the two portfolio sections there is currently a "view all.." button this is not implemented but the idea is to port this at a page which will get the appropriate portfolios ordered in the correct order and pass it to the search page to display as a set of search results. Making good use of a pre made page and lets the user then search and filter that result down with the search functionality.

So I went off to work at 5pm and managed to get a nice bit of functionality pretty much completed while there. This is the feedback form which lets users rate different sections of the site as seen below with the use of a star rating system and also post comments on the site or about bugs as they wish. At the moment it should send a email (though my pc doesn't have a localhost smtp server to do this) but I may change it to a database thing which I can then use in the admin behind the scene section which might be a nice thing extra to add.

It works by sitting in to top right corner displaying a image. When clicked on the below box appears and clicking on its header makes it return to a feedback image in the corner. This is on the master page so that it will be shown on every page across the site but can easily be removed when out of testing and beta stages. This is mainly for when I do live testing at start of march so users can easily contact me without any hassle.
As you can see there is alot of things needing fixing with this.

• The search must contain
• Browse "view all" section links
• Feedback email testing or change to database

But Still this is very good progression. And I have fixed the routing so I can now have

• www.domain.com/contact
• www.domain.com/about
• www.domain.com/feedback

All work nicely which means I can start to create these simple separate stand alone pages which have alot of static content on meaning they will take matter of minutes to create. These are only little things but a must for the live beta which I am planning. This will be as mentioned earlier in early march. (ideally 1st of March) I plan to spend the second half of march completely on bug fixing from my list I have so it is in a most workable state as possible before giving it to users as I don't want them to just be telling me about bugs I know. I want to find new bugs and changes to features they want.

Side note the logo has had a "Beta" tag attached to it for preparation of the beta launch in March.

So things are going good but really need to tidy up everything now!