At some point in the next 24 hours we will do a new release of the Pubs Galore main site, it will probably require us to offline the site for about 30 mins as this is a significant release. I am expecting to do it late morning on Friday, but we will see how it all works out with the various preparatory steps,

Basically it will just include the new area code and a look and feel redesign. It will probably take a little getting used to but please be patient and hopefully you will find it an improvement. Also with a release this long in coming and this big, there are bound to be bugs, just report them and we will look and see what we can do.

The current site is based around location, with a hierarchy as follows:
Country, County, Postal Town, Surrounding Area (Optional)

Where a pub is in a surrounding area it is sort of hidden away on the Postal Town (but still there).

With the new release we are removing the surrounding areas as a constraint on the pub (read on they are not lost).

So going down through the site it will have the following changes

Country pages are unchanged

County pages now show all the Postal Towns as before but also show all the new areas more prominently than before, we have also removed a tiny bit of the Google Maps functionality.

Town pages are now Postal District pages to make it clearer, these pages no longer have the map on them as it won't help and will slow down an already slow page. The top of the page will just be a list of all the areas in the Postal District as you will hopefully find the new area pages more useful. Below this is the latest activity as usual, which can now be minimised, and then a list of all the pubs in the postal district in alphabetic order, the pubs will be listed as you are used to, but will have a list of the new areas they serve as part of the list (multiple areas may be served, solving some of the issues like central London bunching).

Area pages are a new addition, they are basically the old town pages, latest activity shows at the top and can be minimised. Then there is a list of pubs alongside the map.

You will be able to set the areas, and ultimately we expect every pub to have at least one area, so where where a pub is in Bristol city centre then it should belong to the Bristol Central area.

To set up the areas go to a pubs page and click on the "Correct details" button, there will then be the new option "Setup pubs locations". Click on this and you will be provided with 4 types of option.

Areas currently listed will allow you to click on an area that the pub is listed in and ask for it to be removed.

Other areas nearby will allow you to click on an area that is near the pub but not in the pubs list of areas and ask for it to be added.

New area will allow you to add an area to the pub that is not already listed in the locality of the pub. Just type the name of the area (taking care of the spelling please) and click on Add area.

Main area allows you to add one of the areas to the address. This one is a little confusing, it should be used where the town is in a different town to the postal district and allows you to add the area to the pubs address. It is rather like the behaviour when we previously added pubs to a postal towns surrounding area. If the pub is in the central area of the town and should use the postal district as its town then set it to be the postal town and no area will be added to the address, it should never be set to the central area (eg. Bristol Central).

And just click on "Finish area corrections" to close this panel.

Any existing surrounding areas will be set on the pub and added as the main area for the pub.

We are expecting a bit of deluge when this goes live as people get the hang of it and sort out their favourite areas. Whilst this is happening we will not be approving pub links in order, we will prioritise licensees adding their own pubs, but leaving the chain links that regularly get added. This is because these take us a significant time to approve and we need to prioritise the work we complete, sorry about that.