Mr Roomfinder goes Web 2.0

You’ve probably heard the term Web 2.0 quite a bit in the past 12 months or so, but just what does that mean in layman's terms, and how does it apply to a property portal like this one? Well, for those of you that don’t know, Web 2.0 is perceived as second generation internet. What this means is that the World Wide Web has become more of a social network. Sites are no longer the end product of one webmasters ideas put online for the viewing pleasure of others. Today's projects are being built by communities that share common interests and goals.

Mr. Roomfinder is kind or like this, or as close to it as a property related website can be. I don’t personally get involved with Tenants, Private Landlords, or Real Estate Agencies. Advertisers upload their own ads while home hunters perform their own searches and make direct contacts to those landlords or agencies who advertise on the site. Each advertiser is in full control of his or her own unlimited account. Here they can add new, delete old, or modify existing property ads at any time, from any place in the world where there’s a connection to the internet.

There are plenty of available options to contact me personally, or to leave open comments about the site in our Guest Book for all to see. Anyone can print off pages, save unlimited properties to their personal Wish List, and submit property related articles for publishing online in our articles section. As time goes on, so the doors of this popular property portal will open even wider to those who use it.

MrRoomfinder is not in competition with any of Thailand’s existing property agencies. This site was built for them to use along with private landlords, and should be seen as a valuable resource to their existing businesses. All contacts are directly between advertisers and site visitors. Now reaching 30,000 + unique visitors in a month and climbing steadily, this site, your site, is going from strength to strength, and this is why we’ve spent some considerable time and effort in bringing it in line with the times.

About the 2008 Updates!

Ok, so on with the updates. We have both modernised and simplified this project, based on monitoring visitor habits over time and listening to complaints and suggestions from those who patronise the site. A common complaint we were getting was about the slow speed when searching for properties, and especially when using the Detailed Search Facility for Bangkok Rentals. We’ve since upgraded to a much faster, more powerful, semi-dedicated server. You will now notice a huge improvement when navigating the site. In fact compared to how it used to be, most of Roomie’s pages now load faster than a speeding bullet, and when you’re going through the mundanity of searching for a new home, speed and ease of use, really is a godsend!

Ok, it’s not the purpose of this update to bore you with all the technical enhancements we’ve made to the site, so let’s cut to the chase and highlight a few useful new features which will benefit you the end user.

Property Sales (Replaces the old Free Ads)

The old Free Ads was a bit like a virtual ghost town and so we’ve done away with it. All the rental properties such as houses, office, and commercial units etc, can now go into the main Rental Database and be searched for from there. This means bigger more high profile ads, with added options to promote your property. All sales ads will now go into their own Sales Database which will display in a similar format to the rentals. We’ve also included a Mortgage Calculator on the sales pages on the request of some members. Check out the Mortgage Calculator here

If you’re not familiar with how free property ads are displayed on Mr Roomfinder, take a Look at this example!

New Image Zoom Feature:

If you've just looked at the sample ad above, you would have seen our new image zoom feature. Gone are those little popup windows of the past which could be notoriously slow to display photos in property ads. We now have this super smooth zoom feature where one click will zoom a photo in, and another zoom it back out again. You can also open as many images at a time as you like and arrange them around your screen. When you’ve finished, a single click anywhere on an image will send it back to its allocated slot. This is a really nice feature, I hope you like it.

For Advertisers: 

Private Landlords and Estate Agencies will be pleased to know we’ve smartened up the Add Property Forms. Apart for the general appearance being cleaner and leaner, we’ve also added additional dropdown options so you can better categorise your properties to synchronise with the new search options. There is also a progress meter when submitting your ads and images, which was another member request. This means you can now watch the development of your upload and not have to stare at a screen wondering if anything is happening or not!

Hotel Deals and Special Promotions

MrRoomfinder is all about finding rooms (of any kind), and so hotels are still with us. Like other pages on the site, Thailand Hotel Promotions and Last Minute Deals didn’t get seen as often as it could have done on the old layout. If you, or someone you know, is in need of a hotel in Thailand, then please just check us out first to see if we have what you want, when you want it, and at a price that you’re happy with. Any small commission to this free-for-all project helps us to keep MrRoomfinder fresh and updated for our visitors and members. Thanks in advance ;-)

Ok folks, so that’s about it for this update. As said earlier, there have been a bunch of technical enhancements too, but nothing that’s of any real interest to members and visitors. Please continue to help us develop MrRoomfinder into the best and most user friendly property portal in Thailand of all time. Still 100% free to use, no catches or clauses to watch out for, and open to everyone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year!

You can help by bookmarking this site, subscribing to our RSS feeds, and by contacting me personally with any questions, complaints, or constructive criticisms that you may have. All email is answered promptly (usually within the same day) unless I’m out of town.

Thanks for reading and good luck to all of Thailand’s Tenants, Private Landlords, and Property Agents who patronise this site.