The new Landlord Law site is built in an open source software called Drupal. It is a powerful software but not easy to use. Lists and indexes are created by a module on that software called ‘views’ and that is also a bit of a nightmare to get your head around, if you are not a programmer.
This weekend I decided to get a grip on views and spent quite a lot of time watching screencasts on the internet, reading up on it and playing around.
I experimented using my Local Authority directory and, rather to my surprise, managed to create a really cool index page. In fact I have decided to use it as the main index page to the service.
The Local Authority directory was compiled many years ago (about seven or eight I think) and is now a bit out of date, as I don’t have the time to keep it up. However every entry (and now the index) has a link to the relevant local authority’s own website, so if my information is wrong you can also find out all you need from there.
The new index page also uses the pictures which I have put for each local authority (some were taken by me but most are from the excellent Geograph site). So it looks really pretty.
Go and have a look and see what you think. And if you are from a local authority, please feel free to update me if my directory page for your authority is wrong! (And also why not sign up for Ben and my Frontliner newsletter while you are at it?).
You can see the new Local Authority Directory page here.
