Blog

*Faster pages* You might have noticed admin pages loading faster in the last couple of weeks. The best example is the “Listings” page, which loads about 12x faster now. Also speedier now: data export times. For StudyStays sites that have been around long enough to accumulate lots of listings, data exports were taking around 2 ½ minutes.

As StudyStays administrators, you can now choose to receive emails when new listings and student registrations need your approval This will send you a email with a few details about the new listing or registration as soon as it's added, with a link that you can click to follow up (it might ask you to sign in first).

About 5 months ago, I redesigned notes <http://blog. studystays. com/notes-redesign>. Then I added notes for students <http://blog. studystays. com/notes-for-students-other-updates>. But I held back on adding notes to providers.

In addition to the built-in reports in StudyStays, Google Analytics <http://www. google. com/analytics> can give you a lots of detailed information about how people use your StudyStays website—like where they're from, how they got there and what pages they visited.

Your web browser is the program you use to access web sites. Some examples of web browsers are Firefox and Internet Explorer. You might not know it, but *you could be using a web browser that's 10 years old*.

This is a round-up of some stray updates that have gone unmentioned over the last couple of months. *Making notes about students* You can now write notes about students, the same way you do for listings <http://blog. studystays. com/notes-redesign>.

I've just finished redesigning notes for listings. The goals for this redesign were: 1. Make notes nicer to use 2. Show them alongside lists of listings, so that you don't have to click the listing to see the note. So here's *what notes used to look like:* And here's *what they look like now:* Here's *what they look like o...

*Update: Now there's a new, better way to email students and providers, right from your admin website. Check out the **Mailouts feature here* <http://studystays. com. au/help/mailouts>*.

An easy way to highlight a listing is to give it a star rating. The more stars a listing has, the higher it will appear in search results. *How to rate a listing* Once you've approved a listing, you'll see some greyed-out stars under the Approval heading on the right-hand side of the page. Click on the stars to give the listing a rating.

Good news! You can now export all your listing data. *To export listings* 1. Go to the listings tab in admin 2. Choose the listings you want to export (choose *All* to export everything) 3. Click From there it's up to you what you want to do with the data.

*EDIT: please see the **updated instructions for forms* <http://studystays. com/help/forms>* on our website* We recommend using a website called Wufoo <http://wufoo. com/> to manage your forms.

Scott Helfrich tells <http://thesabloggers. org/2010/12/debunking-the-myths-of-privatized-housing/> how he used to work in an on-campus accommodation service, and viewed privatised housing companies as the "Dark Side" of student housing.

Your listing form can be customised to collect details that are relevant to your students. Studystays gives you standard form fields like address, number of bedrooms, and rent amount by default. To collect other information such as included bills, parking, or internet access, you use *Categories*.

It's a safe bet that you often communicate with providers via email. It's also a fairly safe bet that a lot of this communication is written by different team members, and it's difficult to keep track of what each team member has written, and to whom.

.

Your listing will close automatically after a while – once this happens you can re-list it through your dashboard. Here's how: *1. Sign in to your provider account by clicking the "Sign in" link at the top of the page* *2. Go to your dashboard by clicking your email address at the top right of the page* *3.

As you may know already, our software handles both rental properties and shared housing. Up until recently, people adding listings were asked the same category questions, regardless of whether they're listing a rental property or shared housing.

Password problems are probably one of the most common difficulties people have with web applications. With StudyStays, we've tried to make it so students can resolve password problems on their own when possible by using the "Forget your password?" link on the sign-in page, but there are times when that's not enough.

I've just added a new *Students* tab in admin. This area lets you look up students in the same way you can look up providers. 1. The new *Students *tab 2. Use this box to search students 3.

Here's a summary of some small-ish updates from last couple of weeks *New quick search box* Previously there was a little "Go to listing ID. . . " link on the right hand side which you could use to go to a specific listing.

We get lots of requests for new features.

If you've tried downloading full-size listing photos you've probably noticed it's not a simple copy-and-paste operation.

Here's a summary of some of the updates this week. . . New logo This logo was designed by Dominique O'Leary (graphic designer, artist, film director <http://www. imdb. com/name/nm2283213/> and co-owner of Visual Eyes Creative). It does a great job of capturing some of the core goals for StudyStays: simplicity, friendliness. . . . and houses.

I've just added some new features around providers extending their listings. *Automatic email reminder when a listing is about to close* Providers will now receive an automatic email 5 days before their listing is about to close. Here's an example email using the default template: Dear Elizabeth H.

*This post is from a technical perspective, so read on if you're an IT person helping to set up a new StudyStays website for your uni. Others might want to skip it. * New StudyStays websites allow students to register using any password they choose.