0Cneal<P><a target=_blank href="http:www.IQnetsys.com ">http:www.IQnetsys.com <A>ddMMyyyy0Falseen-US<P><a target=_blank href="http:www.IQnetsys.com ">http:www.IQnetsys.com <A>True

Valid points indeed, I think after reading your comments that the search page I described would be the best of both worlds. Search by whatevr enters your mind, or select form actual site content via drop-down lists, leaving the user free to use whichever method they are most comforatble with. I can make searching options very specific or very flexible, and let the user choose. For example a specific search for Fishing will return Fishing, wheras a fuzzy search for Fishing will return Fish Fishes Fishing etc and even a few other things too (if I could think of fishing related words). It uses a thesaurus, and a word endingings dictionary.

Brooke, Before I forget....just looked at your website - fantastic view!! dynamic database indexing ..... Works like this, every page is multi categorised by anything and everything that is on the page or can be derived form what is on the page (even if it's hidden from the source). Here's an example (forgive the tired old design and dodgy transalted French - it's all getting a revamp soon). http://property.iqinternet.co.uk/ (it's a very simplistic version but hope you get the idea) Ignore the bulk of the site, have a look at the links half way down on the left under the heading of Property Directories. They all show exactly the same properties (in this particular case) - it's just a demo site, nothing real. In rality there would be a lot more content and so, many more properties in each category and multi level categories too. And of course there would be a search page - more about that later So, for example the visitor to this site is looking for property in the Folkestone area, just one click on the "Sorted by Area" button, will show there is just one in Folkestone itself and  four more in surrounding areas, without having to search for every single village name in the area. Not a great example, I know. In reallity it should have multi level categorisation so our visitor can decide that they are looking for a detached property, under £400k, in a rural setting, within 10 miles of Folkestone. This could be found starting at Sorted by Type and drilling down until the right set of proeprties are found, likewise, it could start at Sorted by Setting, and start with rural, and you will have guessed by now that the search could start using any element of the criteria. Why is it dynamic? Well, the directories can change themselves, for example a gite could add itself to the directory in May and remove itself in October, and out itself back again the following May, if required by the owner, or it could always show the current price based on the date. Also, another aspect of the dynamic natire is that if the gite owner changed the information on the page, let's say the number of bedrooms has been increased and the price has changed. As soon as the page is posted to the site it will remove itself from some directories or categories and put itself into other directories and categories. This site should have a search page, never got round to putting it back, but basically the search page has the usual type what you like box, plus a bunch of other sleections like area, type, setting, features, cost etc. and each of the avialble choices are actually based on what is currently available in the directory - For example a seletcion of features will only include "Swimming Pool" if at least one of the peoperties has a swimming pool, so you don't get that annoying scenario where you endlessley try to gues what is available, and because the search form is also dynamic, it will remove seimming pool from the features list as soon as the property with the swimming pool gets removed from the directory. What do you think? I will have a look at the other forum could be useful

Brooke, Some excellent thinking there, I have to agree with all of it. Some feedback on your individual points 1. Allow me to link to my own property website Of course, this is such simple thing to do. 2. Allow me limited ability to format my descriptive text Again this is simple enough and I would intend to do this. To me this amounts to distributed processing. It's easier for me to manage if every gite owner looks after their own entry, and is responsible for their own information, images, prices etc. 3. Don't charge extra to update text and pictures! Honestly, it matters little to me how often you update it so I have no need to charge for that 4. calendar on holidaylets.net vs calendar on rentors.org Agreed HolidayLets looks very slick whereas rentors.org's entire site looks home-made. I am with you to some extent in thinking that an availability calendar is not so important. Here's why I think that. In my experience registered users are quite lax about keeping information up to date, so from a customer viewpoint, I would rather get in touch and ask if I can book the first week in august and be told it's not available than to have the website tell me it is available and allow me to book (or at least get excited about my holiday), only to be told it's not going to happen. You obviously see the same point as you touch on this in point number 7. 5. Never ever post my email address on the web Don't need to. I would provide a contact form that emails to you (your mail address is never available not even in the source). 6. Keep track of how many people visited my page in a given week/month and allow me to compare that information (anonymously, or with averages) to that of other properties in my area. Keeping a page count is simple, as is adding in a third party hitcounter, but I prefer a discreet hot counter that the visitor cannot see. This would allow me to provide comparisons against other directory pages. Not entirely sure I understand what good it will do to see how many hits you got compared to someone else though? 7. Randomise the way people are listed on initial search results so that everyone has a chance to be at the top of the search results I use a sort of dynamic database indexing which although sounds grand means that the visitor to the directory does not need to guess what search for. I hate it when I go to an real-estate site, fill-in a big form with all my preferences then watch it wurr away for five minutes just to tell me "no results match your criteria". The way I approach this is to provide multiple categorised "directories". So for example there may be a categorised directory called "All by region", which itself maybe sub categorised by "Setting" (rural, coastal, city etc). Or maybe a directory categorised by price, or by availability, or by sleeping capacity etc. The visitor just clicks a category and gets the sub categories, then more detail, so finding the right place is simple - if it exists, it's in the list. So, to your point everyone has an equal chance of being found as all gites/B&Bs etc are available to ALL directories, all the time. 8. Don't spam people who inquire through your site I have no interests in that, nobody takes any notice of spam anyway, I have no idea why spammers waste their time filling email trash cans.    

John, Thanks for that well thought out response. It seems that almost any topic, commercial or otherwise is swamped with various attempts and this is no different. I understand your point about teccie or sales (I have been doing both for many years). The thing I have found about sales on the web is that people are generally quite lazy and even if you offered the world with gold plating for free they wouldn't make much of an effort to have it. It's a strange world. Having said that there are of course many successful directories out there, but personally I can never find what I am looking for "as a potential client". So, this thread was really to ask if Gite owners have the same point of view. Can you get what you are looking for already? Is there room for improvement? Does anybody really care. Are you more intersted in other functionality that you can list elsewhere. For example, is it more beneficial to have the ability for potential clients to book on-line so you get the money with the booking, or what about a booking pool, so that when someone wants to book the first week in August and it is already full, they get the selection of other gites in the pool that have that time free. Is it more important to ahve a good web site that can be found by customers than another diretory? Lots of questions I know, but opinions are valued. As You pointed out, John, there seems to be only two models, Pay to advertise or Commission on booking, not a very imaginative world. I am more a fan of pay for what you get, that is, if you think it's good pay for it, if you decide later it's not so good, just stop paying for it. All views and comments welcome 

Hi everyone, I am thinking about creating a web directory for Gites and Holiday Homes, with a basic listing free, and various optional selections at a small cost. Before I go headlong into this, I would like to get some feedback from you all regarding your opinion of this. For example you may think there are too many directories already, or you would never pay for anything, or it's good to have more exposure but there are things you would like to have in a directory. Whatever your thoughts, let me know.

How easy is it to find this stuff, and can anyone tell me the French for "Gluten Free"

It's hard to know which things are scams and which aren't sometimes. One thing for sure is that if they want your money, and it's too good to be true, it's probably a scam. My reccomendation is  - if you're supicious then do without it.  

If anyone tells you that language learning is dull, then send them to visit this site. I found it to be great fun, and rather useful too. Didn't know I could remember so many words. http://www.wordprof.com/ Have fun - it's impoosible not to Regards Chris

This is great fun for testing your French http://www.wordprof.com/   Have Fun - I did   Chris

For those of you that believe your computer is safe think again !! If you notice your computer seems to be going a bit slow sometimes, or you see your hard disk flashing for no apparent reason, then be suspicious. There are these nasty little things in the world of viruses and trojans that detach themselves from emails and web pages and find there way onto your computer without you knowing. One of the scariest in my opinion is the password banker. There are loads of them but what they have in common is theft. If one of these gets onto your computer, it will just sit and wait and do nothing until one day "the trigger" is activated. The trigger could be anything, including receiving a command via the Internet or accessing a particular URL - like your bank. Then it takes-up it work collecting your user-name and password and mailing them out to a database somewhere on the net. Now the rouges that sent the banker virus out can login to your account. So, what can you do? 1. Get virus checking software - INSTALL IT AS PRESCRIBED else any self mutating/morphing virus will work around it. If you don't have a virus checker you can stick check your C: drive by going to www. Mcafee.co.uk where you can register free and run the latest virus scanner. It won't fix the problem (unless you buy the product) but it will alert you to any nasties under the bonnet. 2. Get a firewall - you can get that from Mcaffee too although there are free firewalls available on the web. These little applications warn you if anything is trying to write to your drive or more importantly if anything is trying to send info out from your computer. The firewall stops it. Don't ignore it - it's becoming a major problem Happy computing   Moved from FAQ by Russethouse (Forum Moderator)

LAST EDITED ON 09-Apr-04 AT 08:24 PM (GMT) Hi, I have read that cats need a rabies vaccine and a chip, can anyone tell me how long it takes to get the pet passport? Is it a one-off injection, and chip implant and that's it? or does the vaccine need to be increased over several months?

mmm.... SO many conflicting viewpoints, some say "no way" some say "it can and has been done" well maybe I should throw in some extra info here. Someone suggested I chuck-in the job a month early and enroll on a course in French speaking. Actually I don't need to chuck in the job at all, I work form home as an Software Developer, and y wife is an Artist. In england we don't mix with anyone much, don't speak to people other than at the shop counter, where converstaion is limited to "Thank you" as I get my card handed back to me. I shop with plastic, I buy from the Internet, I go into self-service supermarkets, I do my own house repairs, I deal with he bank on-line etc... When it boils down to it, apart from my boss and family phoning me, who do I speak to anyway. I suspect you can see where this going.... Now here's the difficulty. My wife is badly dyslexic. Just about any word over four characters long is like a barnd new word never seen before. Like a child learning from Janet and John books, she has to try to gather the word together, decide how to pronounce it and where the emphasis goes etc - so basically for her english is also a foreign language, and conversations often take on a humerous twist. I take on board how hard and frustrating it can be at times - for example I get calls from people trying to sell me windows and cheap electricity or sometimes just the wrong number. I guess that will be hard to decide if it's in French, whether it is a junk call or the phone company threatening to cut off the phone because apparently I haven't paid the bill? Can get hard I know, but in general if I learn as much as I can before arriving, then spend a year not getting into too deep a mess by shopping at hyper-markets and using the internet, using software translation for more formal issues, etc as in england, it shoudn't get too rough I hope. I don't want to avoid speaking French I just don't want to wait to become a linguistic expert first. A little analogy... I happen to be a computer expert. Have been working in IT even before the PC was invented, and Apple and Macintosh were two seperate companies - Phew tha's a long old time...Anyway my point is how many of you bought a computer before being expert? How many spent a year on a course before getting a compter. I suspect like the vast majority, you got your computere and learnt on the way, and I doubt that you will be as expert as me, but it doesn't stop you having good fun with it, and making very good use of it, does it?

Thanks everyone for the advice - better get swatting then.

Hi, We are planning to move to France later this year, however, my wife is a little concerned as we cannot speak French. Are we mad? Can we learn as we go? Tell it like it really is

Hi, When I was looking for a property in the UK I would check out the areas using http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/subjects/flood/351186/ for flooding information and http://www.homecheck.co.uk/ for all sorts of info like crime rate, pollution and mining etc Does anyone know of French equivalents to these (preferably with English language info)?

Hi, When I was looking for a property in the UK I would check out the areas using http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/subjects/flood/351186/ for flooding information and http://www.homecheck.co.uk/ for all sorts of info like crime rate, pollution and mining etc Does anyone know of French equivalents to these (preferably with English language info)?

Hi, Ther's a lot of information about various forms (all starting with E), but I cannot seem to find the simple stuff. All I want to know right now pleae, in simple terms. If I live in France, but continue to work for a UK company, can I, or should I discontinue paying National Insurance and start paying whatever is the French equivelant? Does France have a National Health service or is it all Private Healthcare? If you can help it would life so much easier to understand Thanks