The Present (11/4/10)

We have 2 geographic database tables at the moment:

- Area, e.g. 'BS'

- Locality, e.g. 'BS7'

Each Locality belongs to an Area.

Clubs (e.g. BONN) have the same code for both Area and Locality.

Each search can be done on either Area code or Locality code.

When a member registers, they enter a Locality code, from which their Area is inferred.

When a member has logged in, the default search location is their Area code.

The Future

Each US state (e.g. 'NY') can be added as an Area with a single Locality, much like a club.

There is some ambiguity, e.g. 'CT' represents both Canterbury and Connecticut.  When registering, a Canterbury person should put their postcode as e.g. 'CT5', but what if they were to put 'CT'?  They would end up in Connecticut.

(Searching isn't so bad, searching on 'CT' could return everything in both Canterbury and Connecticut.)

But a better solution is to introduce a 3rd geographic table, Country, with each Area belonging to a Country.

When registering, a user selects a Country and enters a Locality code.

This raises some questions:

1. Clubs: Are clubs in a country called 'Clubs', or are they assigned to real countries. I think it is better to assign them to real countries.  e.g. someone joining the Buddhist Centre DVD Club, would probably select 'UK' as their country, and not look for a country called 'Clubs'.  Hopefully there will not be too many international clubs before clubs are properly implemented, after which international ones will be OK.

2. The first countries will be UK, Ireland and the USA.  Should a 'Rest of the World' country be included as well?  If so, what is their Locality?  I think better to not have a rest of the world country, but to add all other countries of the world soon-ish(!), preferably with meaningful areas, and ideally meaningful localities.  Or if not, have a single area for each country which covers the whole country.

3. Searches would have to include the country being searched.  This would require a redesign of the screen layout as country couldn't fit into the current search area in the top right of the screen.

4. Where a member has to enter a Locality, this is currently labelled on the screen as 'postcode'.  How will this be presented when new countries are added ?  Is 'postcode/state code' sufficient, or is more explanation required? 

Maybe the label could be modified depending on which country is chosen, though:

a) this would be a bit of a learning curve for the website development team

b) it wouldn't work if Javascript was switched off.

Maybe label it as 'postcode/state code  more info here', with a link to more detailed information.