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Show HN: Find days out near you in the UK

daysoutnear.me

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Re: Show HN: Find days out near you in the UK

#2
Now with much more data!

I submitted my hobby project Days Out Near Me a few weeks back. I've tried to take on a lot of the great feedback I've had and I've made a number of big improvements to how it works. The site's goal is to aggregate a lot of events & venues for days out into one searchable database. It now grabs data from National Trust, English Heritage, The Forestry Commission, Cadw, and National Museum Wales. I'm working on support for people to submit their own events/places (which is one of the primary goals of the site).

I'd really like some more feedback and advice from people; what I've had so far has been great but I want as much as possible to help me improve the application and provide a great service to users. This is the first personal project I've launched and I'd be incredibly grateful for any/all feedback.

Re: Show HN: Find days out near you in the UK

#3
All places: http://daysoutnearme.com/places seems to return results in a strange order - it's not alphabetical?

UI: Items with 'August' in their date make the panel break onto a newline

Items with an email could auto mailto: link the email http://daysoutnearme.com/events/simply-walk-2012-05-03

Print button on item: print preview opens with the body copy overlaying the map (print media query?)

Browsing around on the map doesn't reload pins for the area you browse to, they stay as the /hubs/city you selected

UI: All events http://daysoutnearme.com/events could use a lick of paint.

Bravo! Finding it hard to fault, hence the nitpick comments above. :)

Re: Show HN: Find days out near you in the UK

#4
post #3

All places: http://daysoutnearme.com/places seems to return results in a strange order - it's not alphabetical? UI: Items with 'August' in their date make the panel break onto a newline Items with an email could auto mailto: link the email http://daysoutnearme.com/events/simply-walk-2012-05-03 Print button on item: print preview opens with the body copy overlaying the map (print media query?) Browsing around on the m…

Ah yes, I (slightly) forgot about the /places and /events pages, as they were mostly added in for SEO purposes. They're next on my list to tidy up, however!

I need to figure out a better format for the dates, as there are a number of possibilities that will cause it to wrap. I was thinking about truncating the month name if it's too long.

In theory they should have maintained the links/email links from the source copy but I think my HTML filter is a bit too strong (also note the lack of paragraphs). It's on the to-do list :)

Print stylesheet is on its way soon!

Browsing around the map is a work in progress; at the moment it shows the places currently shown in the list below, but I definitely want it to list everything and pull them in as you browse.

Thanks for the feedback!

Re: Show HN: Find days out near you in the UK

#5
Can I suggest adding data from Historic Scotland - I'm sitting looking out my office window at a huge castle sitting on an old volcano and it's not on your list:

http://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/

Also, might be worth adding the five Scottish ski centers to your list of things to do - they generally need all the help they can get regarding publicity. The Winterhighland site is excellent:

http://www.winterhighland.info/

Re: Show HN: Find days out near you in the UK

#7
post #2

Now with much more data! I submitted my hobby project Days Out Near Me a few weeks back. I've tried to take on a lot of the great feedback I've had and I've made a number of big improvements to how it works. The site's goal is to aggregate a lot of events & venues for days out into one searchable database. It now grabs data from National Trust, English Heritage, The Forestry Commission, Cadw, and National Museum Wale…

just a design point - i find the black on dark green background quite uncomfortably hard to read on my screen!

Re: Show HN: Find days out near you in the UK

#8
You might want to filter your gazetteer search results better: searching for "Ipswich" gave me a town in Australia, and searching for "Norwich" gave me a town in the US...

To reproduce, click the "Ipswich" link on the homepage, then put your cursor in the location box at the top-right and hit enter.

Nice for the places that have data, though :).

Re: Show HN: Find days out near you in the UK

#9
post #2

Now with much more data! I submitted my hobby project Days Out Near Me a few weeks back. I've tried to take on a lot of the great feedback I've had and I've made a number of big improvements to how it works. The site's goal is to aggregate a lot of events & venues for days out into one searchable database. It now grabs data from National Trust, English Heritage, The Forestry Commission, Cadw, and National Museum Wale…

This is a great site, will likely be very handy for me over the summer.

Couple of things that immediately jumped out as useful additions for my particular use case: 1) A 'family friendly' filter on places 2) A 'kids' filter on events 3) A filter based on distance 4) Even better a filter based on how long it takes to drive to the event or the place (maybe using Google Maps directions estimates?)

I'm definitely going to use this over the next few weeks.

Re: Show HN: Find days out near you in the UK

#10
post #5

Can I suggest adding data from Historic Scotland - I'm sitting looking out my office window at a huge castle sitting on an old volcano and it's not on your list: http://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/ Also, might be worth adding the five Scottish ski centers to your list of things to do - they generally need all the help they can get regarding publicity. The Winterhighland site is excellent: http://www.winterhighland.i…

Historic Scotland is the next source I'll be pulling in; I was up in Stirling last year and there's some seriously nice castles up there to visit.

Ski centres are something I hadn't considered but would fit very well with the idea of the site. Thanks for the suggestions! :)

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