There are many new features or enhancements within our business area. Our primary goal: give the businesses the tools they want and need to enlarge or establish their business in the community.

We still do have much more ideas which we want to implement in this portal. But of course we are very happy about each additional idea which you (the members) will send in. Feel free to contact us about every feature or function.

Categories

Within the next week the categories will be inserted into our business directory and set into operation. The currently used standard category "General" will be kept for another week and then be removed. All entries which reference this category at this point will get a category assigned manually by the team. Certainly the entry could be edited by the owner again to assign a different category.

After setting the new categories into operation an index of categories will be shown on the business directory main page. Entries will then only be shown within their assigned categories.

Public Access

One week after establishing the new categories for our business directory it will be set to public access, so not only members will be able to view it. We ask all owners of entries to check if their currently entered contact data should be accessible by the public.

According to spam and unwanted contacts we will soon be able to offer a contact form for entries in our business directory, which could be filled by a customer and then then system sends it via e-mail or fax to the owner of the entry.

Text Banner

The text banner, which are shown in the head of every page, have been expanded. Now the field summary, if enteres, will be shown additionally to logo icon and title. Only entries which have set a logo icon are shown. Here again some hints about the logo icon: In the creation of the text banner the logo icon is automatically proportional resized to a height of 60 pixels. This means that if using a very wide logo icon there will be not enought space left to show the text. The logo icon then should be made smaller or the relation between height and width should be adjusted. To get better visual results it is recommended to use transparent logo icons. The best format for doing that is PNG.

Normally the text banner links to the business directory itself. If an entry includes a description, the text banner links directly to the entry.

Sponsors

Now it is possible to book a new status for a business directory entry, the sponsoe status. The results in a direct link to the website of this entry (if set, otherwise the entry itself will be used), which will be shown using title and summary within a small box at the bottom of every page.

Facebook Fan Page

Entering the Facebook Fan Page within a business directory entry will show the "Become Fan" button on the detail page of this entry, so all members will be able to directly use this function.

Event Calendar

All owners of business directory entries_(*1) are invited to use the category "business" in our event calendar to submit their business events. For such events it is recommended to enable the registration feature so all members will be able to register their attendance.

Videos

For videos there is a category "business" too now. All owners of business directory entries_(*1) will be able to upload videos about their business or their products into this category (Please note: the video section is not moderated directly; wrong submitted videos will be removed afterwards, for example commercial videos of members without a proper business directory entry_(*1)).

Groups

As it is for our event calendar and videos, there is a category "business" for groups now too. A group could be used to better bind the communication between the business and its customers, so customer feedback could be heard faster and more effective. All owners of business directory entries_(*1) are enabled to open up a group for their business or products.