First Look at Updated Housing Guide

(The beginning part of this is technical and could very well bore the crap out of you. If you just want to see the new features and some screen shots, please hit the Continued link.)

The BG Views Housing Guide was one of the first things we started working on, along with the Events Calendar. At the time we had not decided to manage the entire site in Movable Type yet, but that is for another reason entirely (which is a long story, not for this post). I settled on what I thought was the best solution at the time, Joomla and jReviews. The more I use Joomla and the more I use jReviews the more frustrated I get -- either by limitations or unneeded/unwanted complexities. The more I used Movable Type for other parts of the site, the more I knew I could do it better in Movable Type.

This fall we will be relaunching the Housing Guide, this time in Movable Type. The actual overhead to recreate the entire housing guide in MT was not as bad as you would think. Total time from start to finish, I would peg at about a month when all is said and done.

There are a couple reasons for moving it to MT, other than my frustrations with Joomla and jReviews.

I don't like requiring rental agencies to have a Joomla account for one thing, and a Movable Type account for otthers.
RSS is Joomla is a joke, an utter, complete joke. It is not just "there" like it is in MT or WP. I have gone through three RSS plugins to find one I like, and it is not ideal.
The UI of jReviews, while nice, can be confusing to site visitors. Lets take for example the search. Click search. Click on the drop down and select Housing Guide to show (via AJAX) the search fields for the Housing Guide. jReviews gives no way of linking directly to the Housing Guide (I had Joomla and jReviews setup to handle all of our guides -- a task that MT is now handling).
Possibly the deal breaker, I cannot format the data in more than one template. Meaning I cannot have a layout for a desktop browser and one for a mobile browser.

All of the above combined, plus the fact that I have developed so much of the site in MT already, made the decision to switch gears that much easier. Before this summer started I had already planned on the move, and basically got a lot of the "behind the scenes" work out of the way.

So far John, our summer co-op, and I have the Entry template done, that is the individual listing page -- for both mobile and desktop browsers. The mobile version has been tested, like I do with all the other BG Views Network sites, with Android G1, Blackberry, and iPhone, all passing with flying colors.

You can search on the mobile version of the site, too. The other main item to address was the layout. Since we switched gears midway through development, the layout of the current Housing Guide never reached its fullest potential, and it was a little hard to navigate. We have taken feedback into consideration and think that the new site will be easier to use. The information is a lot easier to digest at a glance.

Features for Desktop:

Main image at upper right. This will be the image used in the search results and category list displays.
Prominent placement of a floor plan. One nice thing about using Lightbox is that once you click on the Main image, you can cycle through the floor plan, and the four other images in the rental profile without even scrolling down to see them. You can try that out on this page, too.
Prominent placement of a Rental Agreement or Application, as a PDF download.
Up to four more photos of the rental unit. If more are requested, I can add them later.
While the current Housing Guide has Google Maps, now there is an overall map that displays all the pin markers in the area. Clicking on one will take you to the listing in the Housing Guide.
Small detail, but we now include a link to get driving directions to the rential unit (again, using Google Maps).

Features for Mobile:

Direct integration with Google Maps on iPhone, and supports Google Maps on Blackberry and Android G1. The pages work fine on other phones, they will just perform better on smart phones. For example, the page renders on my LG enV 2, but is much better suited for my iPod Touch.
Similar clean layout of fields from the Desktop version, formatted for the smaller screen.
Includes all the images, as well as a quick way of cycling through them, just tap one to advance to the other.
Tap email and tap dialing on the iPhone. Email should work on other phones as well.

There is still a bit of work to be done, including the Advanced Search page, Category Listings page for both Desktop and Mobile. If we get this completed before fall semester starts, we will make it live and take the current Housing Guide site down.

Please click on the thumbnails and let me know what you think of the screen shots. If you have any questions or suggestions, please add them too!