http://www.theleisureguide.co.uk

Bigfreeguide.com has always been more than just a campsite directory,  we want to build connections to places, and visually build up a picture of an area. The leisureguide was produced shortly after bigfreeguide, but has spent the last few years with little development as we have been concentrating on this site. This update has brought it up to speed, with lots of great features, we will now be developing the site and hopefully we will soon list over 5ooo tourist attractions. Of course, these listings are displayed next to each campsite.

We have also redeveloped http://www.places2b.co.uk

A great and very unique feature of bigfreeguide.com is the PDF generation built into each page! Click on the bar at the bottom marked “downloads” and it rolls out with some great printable documents you can use for free. They can take 1-2 mins to process as they are generated live.

Unfortunately some issues arose with the service and they have been unavailable for about 2 months. We made a big effort to get these back ready for the season, and now you can downlaod 4 flavors of PDF reports (more added shortly)

1) “quickbits” - local contact numbers, village info, taxi services, pubs… the essentials in a short simple pdf download 2)”local campsites” - based around the current campsite your viewing, we will grab and format all other sites within 20 miles so you can do some research on one handy page.
3)”local tourist attractions” Downlaod things to do once you have chosen your campsite
4)”hotels” see local hotels.

Long live this awesome feature!

GEORSS

Re-Release of the feeds. This allows other websites to display bigfreeguide listings, from a simple click and paste interface to some really neat georss feeds you can integrate into mapping, or even use the site images we have. We are sure youw ill think up some amazing ways to use the data, we would love to see all your great new uses for it!

We have made a large improvement to the campsite search page, we will now be slowly phasing out our radius search and town searches as they have all been rolled into one handy page. You can now search for every facility AND location at the same time. If you want to find a campsite within 30 miles of Aberystwyth, that has wifi access and nearby fishing then this little feature will save you lots of time!

You can either select a location by dragging the marker around on the map… or type in a postcode in the box above the map to quickly center to a location. If your visiting an area its unlikely you know a postcode, so the same box also works with place names (although we have many place names duplicated, so make sure it selects the correct one - you may need to drag the pointer if it selects a different town to the one you wanted)

We have reached over 1100 campsites, still not close to being the biggest directory but we are sure we have the most information! Out of these 1100 we feature a massive 1002 links to the campsites website, 850 direct email addresses (checked - and corrected every 4 months) over 1000 photographs, and of course access to thousands of local attractions and photographs from each page.

♦ TopTip!

Did you know we also offer a great “virtual brochure”? if you sign up for an account (its free) and then click “my account” you can create a “shortlist”. Call it something like “holidays \june 2008″ you can make as many lists as you like, so maybe next month you will be going on a holiday with some friends to Devon, you dont need to delete your old list - just create a new one called “devon holiday with jeff and sue” Once the list is created visit the listings as usual. If one catches your eye click the “add to shortlist” button at the bottom of every listing, you will then be asked which shortlist to put the listing into. In our example above you could choose “Devon holiday” or “holidays June 2008″

The great thing about this feature is you can log back into the site, go to “my account” and then view all the campsites you are considering. This list could then be sent to friends (simply click the “share button”) so if others are going on holiday with you they can see the campsites and you can come to a decision together at which ones you like best.

We hope you enjoyed the easter break, Dont forget to review where you stay and help others with warnings or recommendations ( please be reasonable with the warnings though - complaining about noisy wildlife is NOT a good reason to mark campsites as 1 star )

Matt, (webmaster)

Update  27th March :
We have now speeded it up and made it more accurate, we have also redone the campsite review section and updated all screenshots.

All you need to do is visit a campsites listing, then click the “add start location” link that is under the calculation heading. You will be taken to a map where you can either place your position using the pointer or type in a postcode to set the map position quickly. Click the button. You will be returned to the last listing you looked at, complete with distance (as the crow flies) from your start location to the campsites location.

Once you set a start location you are also given a link which you can use to find other local campsites. This, although a small feature currently is the basis of further improvements we plan to add soon, including driving times, and route planning.

Firstly, this blog! Its going to be used for reviews on products, interesting articles and site anouncments. I used to use the forum for this but its been a little quiet over their, these new posts get announced all over the site. While im on the subject of the forum, you should all get posting - This site gets 1000-5000 visitors per day but no action on the forum. If we had a few people posting I think it could really take off. Its stuck in a little bit of a rut at the moment sadly - I know you all love to chat, so come on tell us something!

Availability checking is now available to any participating campsites, if the opt-in you can now see when they are full to avoid unecessary phone calls. Its a free service, so I really hope campsites take us up and begin using it.

We added the ability for campsite owners to update listings via fax and email, we hope this will mean more updates, and more accurate data across the site - we send out loads of emails a year bugging campsite owners to check everythign is correct and to update the listings - Im passionate about getting this site as up-to-date as possible because accurate dat helps everyone out. On the subject of accurate data, we cleaned out some listings added more photos and identified 40 incorrect email addresses this month.

Gallery - We love this little feature, a super little gallery that moves around the pictures. We really think this is going to show you exactly what the site is like. It supports upto 50 photos, and because we make it for each individual campsite it requires an “opt-in” so not all listings will have this.

Im also working on some really nice little add-ons, like nearest train stations, taxi services and super markets - I also have plans for members to choose a home location and each listing giving a “distance to travel” and “find my nearest sites” options.

25th Feb
Refined all of the detail pages, they are now 60% quicker to load. With these changes in place we can now ad further features to these pages without the worry of painfully slow page loads. We will add “nearest” Golf courses shortly - provided by another of our sites http:/www.geogolfcourse.co.uk