We're introducing pocket guides.
They're quick and simple guides to other areas of Manchester. We're starting with the South, and will add more as and when we can.
If you think your area should be next... please get in touch!
We're also open to guest writers (who love where they live) to write them.
We're starting to roll out our new You Lev stamp.
The beautiful, blue You Lev stamp can't be bought. This stamp is strictly for places that have earned their place as one of Levenshulme's most popular destinations or events.
We give them to places, events or independents that attract the most views and attention on Lev You Lots. And occasionally we'll run polls on our social media accounts to determine who gets to hog the stamp for a bit!
As Lev You Lots continue to grow, both in number of listings and people using the site - it takes more time and money to maintain.
To help, we've created a breakdown of a basic listing, so you can see what information you need to submit a place or business on Lev You Lots.
Basic listings are currently free. And we think they're still a great way to get your name out there.
We've also launched what we're calling Professional Listings - a juiced up listing with more tailored information. By upgrading to a professional listing, you get a more personalised experience.
You can choose between a range of additional features, and completely decide what you want to feature. Some of them are:
We're also able to provide photography services, to improve the quality of the imagery on your listing.
Overall, we think they're a great way to boost engagement for your business. They'll help you stand out, and help us pay to maintain the website.
This might not sound that exciting. But it is.
Now, when you submit a place, event or independent on one of our contact forms, your listing actually creates itself in the background. All it takes is for us to add some images, write something nice and approve it.
Up until now, creating a listing has been a very manual process. It takes a human about 30 minutes to get all the information and pictures together, write something nice about it, check it and finally, post it.
The new process takes about 6 minutes. Which might not sound like a big difference, but it means we can get more places up on Lev You Lots faster - and prioritise businesses and makers who want to get on the site first.
Happy days 🥳
You can now sort, search or filter our longer lists, like our list of all the food and drink places in Levenshulme. Swanky.
Looking for somewhere dog friendly? Filter it. Can't quite remember the name of a place, but you know it starts with a 'T'? Search it.
This help finding a place to go easier than ever, especially as we add more and more places.
You're at the start of this little developer/design blog! Ain't that exciting?
Here, we'll share updates on what we're working on, and the changes and improvements we make to the website.
It might seem like we've been a little slow getting more places added to the site after the initial flurry.
But we've been squirrelling away rebuilding our listing page templates to be much, much smarter.
As a result, we can add things faster in the future, and people might even people to add things themselves (they'll still need to be approved by a someone on our end).
It also means that all of our listings: places, events, independents actually use one, single template. And the template is clever enough to hide and show information depending on whether it has a time, location, or needs directions.
It also gives us more flexibility to add features the templates across the whole site at once, rather than updating each page one by one.
Every existing listing has now been migrated from the old template to the new one. And we're just checking that everything is working properly.
