Ongoing Site Improvements

[Lemming]

The former prototype has been live for a while now and, hopefully, working well for you.

I've made lots of minor improvements since then but the bit I'm most excited about is finally getting some of my photos on the site. I've now put new pictures on every shop on the main map. I've still got thousands to roll out but this is a good start.

I'm particularly proud of some of the night shots, such as El Guapo .

Just need you guys to get some new reviews on all of the shops now.

[Fat_old_dwarf]

Looking good. Love the timestamp as well.

[OneHighMofo]

Cracking shot that one of Guapo mate - that lens and body you were rocking over 4/20 was serious kit. Never did get a chance to geek out on that with you

Are you looking for new reviews by email submittal - or on the embedded forum thread?

[Lemming]

I think any impressive lens and body combo you saw was more likely to be in the hands of Bleak. He uses an SLR and a prime lens to produce depths of field of about a millimetre!

My cameras are all compacts these days but my favourite one, the RX100, is fantastic. It's only really useful at its widest angle of 28mm but then it has a maximum aperture of f/1.8. Combined with its relatively large 1 inch sensor this makes it very good in low light for such a small camera.

Regarding reviews, both methods are good. The more the merrier. The ones sent in by email are probably more authoritative. Forum topics tend to be rather conversational, which can be hard to follow from the shop pages. On the other hand the instant nature of forum posts means that they can be more up to the minute.

[OneHighMofo]

I think any impressive lens and body combo you saw was more likely to be in the hands of Bleak. He uses an SLR and a prime lens to produce depths of field of about a millimetre!

OOOOKaaaaayyy! I could have sworn I saw you with a kickass DSLR around your neck!

[Lemming]

I've now added loads more photos, e.g. Basjoe 2, so I'm getting there slowly.

I've also received a whole bunch of pictures from Jesscass - thanks very much, I'll get back to you soon.

The plan is to shift everything onto Hull DJ's server and unite it around the coffeeshopdirect.com domain name but I've been enjoying adding pics and so far, strangely, haven't reached any limit on FreeUK.

[Fat_old_dwarf]

I notice you've added some head shops as an extra category (or I've not noticed them all this time). Are you picking the best ones, or aiming ambitiously for all? I noticed that Rusland had opened a head shop (I assume same ownership, or at least some connexion, same name, same branding), but neglected to note the name of the street. Somewhere on the new side, off Oude Nieuwestraat perhaps, that rather imaginatively named street. Google is not being my friend; I suspect it's rather new.

[Lemming]

Since soon after I started in 1998 my objective has been to cover every coffeeshop, smartshop, headshop and growshop in the Netherlands. Initially I drew in data from every source I could find: existing websites, books, telephone directories and so on. It soon became clear that there was no definitive list. All sources tended to be incomplete, include spurious entries and be out-of-date. Hence, to this day, the ACD is incomplete, includes spurious entries and is generally out-of-date (this latter being more down to me!). I constantly add and remove shops as I become aware.

A lot of the corrections to the database come from people like you so thanks Fat_old_dwarf for the hint about a Rusland Headshop.