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Welcome to the carboot archive.
We offer information on local car boot events, including where they are, when they are held, and what to expect. If you are new to visiting carboot sales, or wish to set up a stall yourself, please poke around, find advice, hints and tips.
We rely on information provided by visitors, whether regular or not. If you know of an event which we have no details for, we encourage you to list it. Doing so benefits the community, and the event in question. Any publicity is good publicity, right?
This site will continue to grow as time goes by, both in information and features - our goal is to create the most accurate, comprehensive catalogue of events and information, whilst benefitting those who help us. Anyone can give their opinion on an event, list an event, vote on content, and even add their own photos from an event - but in the interest of accuracy, we keep a careful eye on new content. In short, we put trust in the general public to not require registration, but bring order to a potential chaos of mistaken, or duplicate information. You will also never be required to hand over any money to use our site in any way.
Site News and Updates
Still Alive
Thu Oct 29, 2009 1:09 pm
This is a quick update to re-assure people that things are still going well - it's been a busy few weeks, but we have certainly not abandoned you!
In development at the moment is the promised features to make registration worthwhile, primarily to people who organise events, and those who sell at them. That's still all the detail we are willing to give until the features are ready. Anything that is currently anonymous-accessible and usable will remain - these features are additional ones which do not suit anonymous access.
A few apologies too - We have noticed some people have been using Internet Explorer 6 to view the site. This site was built primarily with Internet Explorer 7 and above, and other browsers which support the web standards more accurately. IE6 is HEAVILY out of date, and far more limiting than it's successors. We are trying to support IE6, but this does add to the length of time it takes to develop the site, as very careful attention has to be paid to the design side of things to ensure that it works for a browser that seems to want it's own rules.
Another mis-anticipation is that people have been viewing the site through Sony mobile devices and iPhones. We did not anticipate such traffic so early in the site's lifetime, but with the rise and rise of mobile products, we should have expected this. The smallest device we can test on is a 10.1" Asus Eeepc, which is large in comparison to an iPhone. Perhaps users of smaller browsers should be provided with a "mobile" version of the theme so they can see the main content more easily.
Another Internet Explorer related error - the various help bubbles around the site are supposed to display a message when someone hovers the mouse cursor over them. This has not been happening in Internet Explorer, and should be fixed with the next update.
The final observation is that every event listed so far has had a number of repeat hits. For the sake of the events, I am pleased each event has _some_ interest, especially as this site is not widely known about. I hope it is an indication that events are running rather successfully.
Thanks for the interest!
Colour The World
Tue Oct 13, 2009 10:42 pm
...One site at a time.
The theme has been overhauled and modernised. Not much has really changed considering - corners are no longer sharp, and details have been thrown in. A few colours have been changed, and overall, the new theme is a bit more lively than the old one which had a more dull feel to it.
The old theme has been kept around in case anyone who registers wants to use the 'retro' theme. If we see that people are fond of the old theme, then we will strive to keep them both updated as the site develops further.
This is not the major feature development I mentioned before - that it still recieving the heavy graft. All I can do is promise (and hope!) it will be useful. It certainly won't be the highlight of the site, but will compliment the functionality very well.
Registration is still currently disabled - I am aware of a few people who tried to register - sorry for the delay! I honestly thought any interest would not come this way until another month at least. The site is still poking around a few search results and no effort has been made to make people aware of us. There are just a few problems with the user functions, but certainly nothing we cannot sort out. The 'new features' will be a big part of the registered user experience, so the idea is to factor this in before people can register.
The problem so far is that users, registered or not, cannot interact with the site as much as the final plan. Whatever your interest is in boot sales, we want you to have something to do here - something important. Something worthwhile. No one knows a boot sale better than the people that attend it - other than the people who organise it...
More updates
Wed Oct 07, 2009 3:57 pm
The UK's county situation makes it hard to correctly organise the locations of towns. With this, the town/city, and county system was overhauled. This also saves someone data inputting hundreds of towns across the country, and making sure they are in the correct county.
With the new system, when someone adds an event, they specify, as text, a town. They also select a county. When the event is submitted, the system checks whether the town exists, and uses that. If it doesn't exist, the system provisionally adds the town. The site's staff must then check the city actually exists where specified. This is then accepted, or, if the user made an error, corrected, before the event is accepted.
The result is that events are organised into the correct towns, whilst saving considerable problems.
As for counties - so far, the idea is to stick with the historic counties. People in Swansea will find their events under Glamorgan rather than Swansea county, but note this is not the only way to find an event, and not likely the most efficient way anyhow. It is only a guess due to lack of evidence, but people are possibly going to search for events via their town, or even the event name.
This does not mean this problem is entirely sorted, just that the priority is a lot lower than other features. One day we will have a system in place smart enough to solve the problem for a location between any system of counties.
There were numerous other changes, a lot of which were to do with admin functionality. An important change was the use of "unknown" in feature drop-downs of events. Previously, I assumed people would know for sure whether, say, dogs were allowed, or where to park. It is better to specify "unknown" than to specify incorrect information.
A couple of updates
Sat Oct 03, 2009 10:10 pm
A few improvements have been made since the launch. These are mainly bug fixes, and feature includes which should have been here since the launch. It did not seem absolutely vital at the time considering that, as I type, this site is yet to be discovered by the masses.
Here's the changes:
- Drop-down boxes for City now also displays the county in which the city was added to.
- Anonymous submittable forms now requre a CAPTCHA test.
- User markers for maps can now be set to the most accurate for the event.
- Maps which load markers for a particular event will now focus on "accurate" markers if one is available.
- Fixed bug with cookies where cookies would not set path-wise.
Note that a large feature update is planned to be included soon. This will make it vastly more worth while to register (note that currently registration is disabled).
The Launch
Wed Sep 30, 2009 11:14 pm
Hello, world! More importantly, hello visitors. Welcome, at long last to the carboot archive. After a few months of development, the site is finally launched.
It's been a busy few months - mistakes have been made, and fixed. Risks have been taken, but I am yet to see the outcome. The result is the most powerful, comprehensive, yet usable and friendly website dedicated to an old British tradition, where people of all ages gather to de-clutter, or pass their treasures to willing buyers. It is an event that gathers people - likeminded, or curious, both for the time out, or to raise money for a good cause.
So find an event local to you. Check where it is, when, how to get there, where to park, and whether to bring your dog. Notify a friend too if you like. Take pictures, and by all means, add them to our galleries. Let us keep one of Britain's friendliest gatherings going strong - perhaps stronger.