Help

Things you might need or want to know...

FAQs

Does it really work?

Yes. Try adjusting your profile and selecting different things as 'essential' and see what happens.

How does it work?

See below.

Are you doing it for anywhere other than Edinburgh?

We'd love to and are open to offers

Accessibility

Screen readers

Screen-reader-users can use the 'Skip navigation' link to go straight to the content section of each page. Additionally, pages are structured using header tags in a logical hierarchy to help you find your way around.

Access keys

Press the following keys while holding Alt (you'll also need to press Enter afterwards if you're using Internet Explorer):-

0 - Skip navigation section and go to main content

1 - Home

2 - Help

Sliders

The sliders on the profile form can be used without the mouse: just tab through them and set them with the arrow keys. Alternatively, you can enter values directly into the boxes.

How this thing works

This is a group project by students on the postgraduate Software Technology for the Web programme at Napier University, Edinburgh.

The central idea is not drinking, or crawling, but matching. The whole site is built in PHP, but there are two main scripts which together form the 'engine room': the one to build your profile and the one to match it with appropriate pubs.

The profile script takes the values from the form and stores them in a database, along with your username, password and so on. Now, every preference has a numerical value between 1 and 10. The second script, which is triggered when you press the crawl button and which generates the map, goes through a database of pubs. It checks each attribute for each pub, and if it finds that a pub has that attribute, it adds the value you assigned to that attribute to the pub's score. Then we take all the pubs, rank them by score, take the number you wanted in a crawl off the top and plonk them on a map. There's a bit more to it, to do with what day it is and so on, but that's the basics.

The creators are Parul Bhatia, Stephen Gray, Lisa Moffat and Laura Stewart and the project was undertaken from February to May 2006. Email [05012804]at[napier].[ac].[uk] if you'd like to know more.