Hi all, It has been a demanding period. Id like to first offer my sincere thanks to everyone for being supportive over this time. As promised I will now give a detailed update on how things are after the Builder upgrade, what we are doing now and our plans for the future.
First thing to discuss is the ratings into the builder. We were inundated with requests to introduce backdated ratings as a criteria to the System Builder. We believed this had been achieved, however the ratings created for the past were not calculating correctly and unstable in a live environment when using temporary tables etc and as such we have had to remove them. It is going to be a huge task to resolve but we will be find a way. I regret that we have to take them off but there is no other choice. If you did save a system using the ratings, I apologise for any wasted research time.
We have increased the number of races in the Ratings Machine backtrack area to 750 and there is also a new area within My Systems where you can apply Ratings specifications to daily qualifiers. As an example you could set up system criteria for Top Weights in Handicaps and then request to be shown only the Top Rated for any of your ratings sets who also match this criteria.
The rest of the Builder is now functioning fine and we have got all the pre 03 races back in there for users of the Major Races area. The increase in Fullset Extra will hopefully keep going, it now stands at 10. The digger will soon be in line with the rest of the Builder and go back to 03 as it now goes as far as 2004.
There is a new daily report based around official ratings, for anyone interested. I mention it as we receive a lot of requests based on this type of research.
As things now settle down, we are going to perform a complete review of the site, in relation to layout, user-friendliness, help and maximising potential. At each stage we will be adding in upgrades that are pending. It is worth noting this will not cause anywhere near the amount of hassle as upgrading the System Builder does. In fact it should all progress without any disruption whatsoever.
The way the site has developed over the past year or so, is that I have received requests for functionality, added it in where possible and in all honesty neglected to maximise the site set-up to ensure everyone is fully aware of what can be done and how to do it. I should be spending far more time making the site illustrate to users how to make the most of the facilities, how to investigate potential angles effectively and setting things up to suit their needs. This will now become a priority.
The approach I have taken till now of responding to user requests for the benefit of all will continue as that is what HorseRaceBase is built upon, but it is utterly obvious to fully realise the potential of the site we must make these things easier to reach for the benefit of all.
As an example we have received numerous mails from people asking where the next days cards are. This is my fault and the site should be set up in a way where such a common request is immediately identifiable. The point really I am making is we have so much stuff available and so many options, it just needs to be laid out better and more user-friendly.
Our other priorities for the near future include the Ratings backtracking functionality, finalising some very important new data and introducing a way of easily combining different areas of the site.
Over April you will hopefully see a dramatic improvement in the site, please do continue to offer feedback, requests and suggestions.
Cheers Chris
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