My grand plans to launch new features before and during the Christmas Break were curtailed by a combination of what Americans call "honey do's" and a house full of alcohol that needed working through.
Now that we are in to the New Year it's full steam ahead and I'm caught up on the most important feature...
Reporting
Users can now message the person who submitted the slope soaring site and make suggestions to improve the information. I currently also receive a copy of the message so that I can manually folllow up on it for now. As it gets used I'll get a better understanding of how the feature can best work, and make changes to better automate the process.
What's Next?
With reams of excellent content invaluable to slope soarers, Soaring Club Websites are a valuable asset, and making sure they are valued is critical to the success of Weather Permitting.
Clubs can also play a big role in the accuracy of slope data. Where pilots may take breaks or retire from soaring, clubs have significantly more staying power. As an example, my own club Rivington Soaring Association has been around since 1973 and has a stable, reliable committee. Embracing clubs, and enlisting their committee's help, is critical to ensure data is accurate for the long term.
The most immediate addition, will be for Flying Site maintainers to be able to add links to club content on the Site pages. For instance, a club already has a webpage on their main southerly slope, the Weather Permitting site page could link back to the original content, which in many cases would be more indepth and contain additional information.
Additionally there will be an entirely new section called (you guessed it) "Clubs"
Clubs
- Add your club to Weather Permitting or join an existing one.
- Clubs link with slope soaring sites to create a list for their members.
- Clubs can maintain sites they are associated with.
- Clubs manage (add/remove) their members.
Newly added clubs, will be owned by their creator initially, with the aim to have a club committee's take over ownership. Contact details for committee members is a requirement when adding a club, and they will be contacted to ask that they create an account in order to take over ownership of their club on Weather Permitting.
I imagine in time I'll add some provision for club owners to give other committee/trusted members rights to manage the club on Weather Permitting. If that's important to you, please let me know and I'll speed things up.
I've not started any of this yet, and I'm off to a wedding this week, so progress will be a little slower than previously. I hope to have it done by Monday, so if you have any thoughts or suggestions, take advantage of the slower pace and give me a shout.