belodged.com - The Travel Blogs

You are reading this travel blog… hope we can offer some interesting stuff to you ;o)

If you want to gain insight in the ‘inner world’ of belodged.com with all its moods and rumors then just follow the twitter messages from the core team. Please note: These are no official company news! Team members are free to post what ever they feel like - sole exception: it has to be g-rated ;o(

http://www.twitter.com/belodged

Well, this feature is going to be tested for a while before being integrated within the belodged.com community … Anyhow, we’ll keep you in the loop…

Members of belodged.com are now able (optional) to choose their interests and hobbies. For what? If user is looking for a free accommodation he/she is getting sometimes (for example in Germany, Berlin) a huge number of contacts. We implemented a sort algoritm who is taking care, that every contact will be shown as often as the other.

But now - additional - you are able to filter the results by looking for interests. Attention: (more…)

We just finished the technically implementation of the adress book. In your inbox (Member Menu >> Your Profil >> Messages) you are now able to add contacts into your adress book. This allows you in an easy way to remember contacts and add a personal note to each contact.

The personal note is only visible for yourself.

So - whats missing? The translations ;o). Our team will finish this work as soon as possible. Until this you will find some english or german text in the adress book even you have selected an other language in your profil.

As noticed and discussed in the user forum we implemented after the “Reachability” function the “Reminder” today. These features will help to get rid off inactive user accounts. Remember: For belodged.com it’s not important having as much members as possible (and thousand of dead accounts) but a really “vital” community.

More work will follow up to improve the quality of this travel portal. We will keep you up to date.

To improve the quality of belodged.com and really have a “vital” community we will implement a new function until the end of this week.

You send a user a request/message over the anonymous messaging system. Nobody is bond to provide you an accommodation. But to get an answer is just friendly. You will have the possibility to send a reminder to the user. If the user is not logging in within the next 4 weeks - his/her account will be disabled.

But what is when you are on holiday? Remember - we have implemented a “absence” function. Please use this.

For us it is not important having as much user as possible - like in other portals. For us and especially for you it’s important having really active users to start your travel adventure - and not just dead user names.

Any comments? Disussions?

On belodged.com you will find in the mainnavigation “links” . We will implement a full text search. So you will have the possibility to make a ful text search (for example: “China”) and will get all information provided by other users for China.

We will keep you up to date.

As discussed in the member forum and requested by our users we implemented an “absence function”. This means: You can deactivate your account for a limited time frame (holiday, ill, not reachable etc.) . Result: In the search for accommodations you will show up as “away” and user do not try to contact you for nothing.

In the system we are working with maps too. This is a mix of handmade ones and google maps. To show you the regions (states, kantone, bundeslaender, bezirke) etc. - we are using handmade ones. An kml file from google to display the border of the regions would be too large (too long loading time of the single map). Step by step we will integrate the handmade “region maps”. After germany you will now see the maps for austria and switzerland. This is because of we have in europe the european championships in soocer (EURO 2008).

Already designed and only has to be technical implemened is the “region map” of the US - with alle the states.

For all other countries we need from you a list of the regions within your country and a map as an example. Feel free to get in contact with us. We are not that rich - but we do not let you participate for nothing ;o).

Ok - you can search for the accommodation be using the maps:

or using the city full text search:

or - if you have the user name - search for this one:

Then you are using the anonymous messaging system for contacting each other:

You exchange personal details for your self. You have a great time as a guest or as a host. But now? We are just in front of finishing the confirmation of an accommodation - the real guestbook. Here the first screens (german - the english translation will be made after having the ok from the team).

Arghhh - today we want to launch the full text search. But yesterday we made the error installing Adobe updates. Never do this! Now dreamwever was crashing during start up. This took hours.

But finally we have the fulltext search for accommodations (cities) implemented. We are waiting for the english translation. (My english is too bad to shown up on belodged.com). So the search should be online tomorrow.

What we will do more today? We will take a look through the bugs, which where mentoined during the testing process as a “suggestion”. There are about 30 of such “friendly bugs”. Here a small screenshot:

We are awaiting your input, suggestions and comments on the discussion board on belodged.com !!