A few updates and lots-o-progress

The accomplishments since my last post have been rather noteworthy. Or at least I think they are.

Package Listing Levels

We have created a solution that deals with Package Listing Levels. What is a package? Each listing within the system will contain basic components, like name, address, contact information and a short description. This is considered a basic/free listing. In addition to these basic components, we will offer things like interactive maps, calendar listings, photo/media galleries and more. These are all upsells to a location, and are connected to different package levels. This will help out the system grow over time.

New Module: Related Content

The initial development of a new module within ProjectBill has been started. It is called "related content". This module will provide a way to connect a calendar listing to a location, a location to a town and more. It also allows us to categorize a location. Is Allaire State Park a restaurant? A park? Does it have a basketball court? Related Content will also allow this type of categorization. Later, it will also handle all the searching within the system. So yeah, I would consider this noteworthy :)

New Module: ZipsAndTowns

I purchased a Zip Code and Town database from a large vendor a few weeks ago. I was able to setup all the database tables and logic to connect zip codes to towns, towns to counties, and counties to towns. This will prove to be VERY valuable over the next few weeks, especially since the entire system is based on finding X location within X city/zip.

The big update.. Locations can now be added

We can now add new locations into the system. This may sound like something that should have been done months ago, but it is one of the most complicated and important pieces of the system. There are no bells and whistles, and you can not yet see the location data being displayed (like in our demo from 2009), but it is a BIG start. Over the next few weeks we'll be finalizing the categorization module, connecting cities/zips/towns/etc to a location, and working on an actual page (the layout and the programming behind it) that will display one locations data. After that we have.. well too much to write.