| Good evening everyone, I just wanted to update you all on the website, as I’ve had a fair few emails about it. I’ve also had quite a bit of useful feedback about the booking system not being very good anymore, and I’m explaining what has been done to rectify that for you. I thought it’d be easier than emailing people back individually! Website: You will have been aware that our security has not yet been updated on our website. To access our website currently, you have to follow the steps I sent on WhatsApp a while ago to ignore security concerns. I just first of all wanted to reassure you that doing this does not compromise you, your information, or our website. It’s only a certificate that has expired, nothing fundamental about the website is causing a risk. It is safe to use. Obviously, this is far from ideal, and it’s getting resolved by the end of October. The problem has been with our previous hosting platform, but the end is now in sight! Booking system: I’ve also had reports that our Covid-19 basic booking system has become a little problematic and isn’t coping anymore. It was built to serve a short life purpose, not expecting it to be still used 3 years later and now needs replacement. I promised a year ago there was a new system in the works, coded in higher quality and a more robust and sophisticated manner. The new system is aimed to be upgradeable, updateable, more featureful and reliable. I’m really pleased to say this has now finally launched! Obviously, I have only had the ability to test this on my own in a closed environment, so as always with new software there will be some issues. I haven’t noticed anything huge, but with more use the little niggles will come to light. Please do report these issues to me at webmaster@wmac.uk or use the IT support ticket system or even WhatsApp me so I can address them straight away. The new system takes up more space on the screen as before, and this is currently being addressed to make it far more compacted for use on mobile phones. Another is you can currently delete other people’s bookings, this is being fixed ASAP so please be careful which booking you cancel! This will all be done by end of October. Placing a booking is essentially the same as before, removing a booking has changed. You click a little gear cog on your booking, and there will be two rows. The top row is what you have booked, the bottom row shows time slots available with capacity to book (if we went back to limiting numbers if another pandemic struck). Soon you’ll be able to edit a booking, instead of needing to cancel and rebook. This will be done by end of the year. To remove your booking, click the time in the top row to remove your time, thereby deleting your booking. Your booking will be deleted, and if you reload the booking form you’ll see it’s vanished. It will automatically reload in a future update, due end of the month. A feature of this system is it clearly shows if another booking will affect your visit to the field. At a quick glance, you can see if there is going to be someone training or someone mowing with icons and colour coding on each booking. You can also spot if a committee member will be present, so you can arrange your booking to meet or chat to us if you needed to. There is a key to see what this looks like, and I will leave 3 example bookings up for you for Christmas Day to see how this appears. A PDF guide is available when clicking “Booking Help” on the main booking page, and click on the Visual Guide button, or by clicking here. If anyone needs any help, please do get in touch! All the best, Sam Booton Webmaster, Membership Secretary & Treasurer |
