Changelog

All notable public-facing changes to this project are documented in this file.

[Unreleased]

[0.1.9] - 2026-08-10

Added

Venues that have permanently closed can now be marked as such. They still show on the map with a red closed marker and a "Permanently closed" notice on the map popup, venue list, and venue page, so you know not to turn up — until the site is taken over, at which point the new business gets its own fresh listing. Closed venues automatically drop off the map (but keep their reviews and history) six months after being marked closed.
The map now encodes its current view (centre, zoom) and active filters in the URL as you pan, zoom, and filter, so the address bar always reproduces what's on screen. A new "Copy link to this view" button in the filters panel copies this shareable URL.
Some venue tags can now be shown as explicitly not applying (e.g. "No Wheelchair Access"), not just present or absent — shown as a red, struck-through chip on the venue page's Tags card so it's clear the venue was checked and confirmed not to have it, rather than the tag simply being unknown. Only a handful of tags support this so far; most tags are unaffected. The "Suggest venue edits" form now lets visitors propose this too for the same handful of tags. The main map now also correctly leaves a tag marked this way out of a venue's tag list, marker icon, and the tag filter counts, rather than showing it as if the venue had it.

Changed

The nav "Sign in" prompt is now "Register free" so it's clearer that new visitors can create an account, not just returning users signing back in. The sign-in and register page now welcomes both, explains it's the same one-click email link either way, and lists what you get for registering (tracking visits, leaving reviews, saved preferences, a public profile).

Fixed

Map markers are now announced with the venue's name by screen readers and other assistive technology. Previously each marker was an unnamed button. The pulsing "your location" dot is no longer a focusable button, as it is purely decorative.
The map search and filters panel now uses valid markup for its dialog role, so assistive technology announces it correctly.
The map controls are now grouped as a labelled toolbar, so their "Map controls" label is valid for assistive technology.
Clicking a map cluster that can't zoom in any further no longer "spiderfies" the venues (fanning them out in place). Nothing happens now instead.

[0.1.8] - 2026-07-10

Added

Public user profiles now display a role badge (Editor or Admin) next to the display name for users with elevated roles. Regular users see no indicator.
Venue pages now show external review scores from Google, TripAdvisor, Just Eat, and Deliveroo where available.
Venue pages now show a Menu highlights section listing a few popular dishes and their prices (cheapest first), with a "prices may vary" note. This is the first step towards comparing venues by dish price.

Changed

The Surprise me dice button is now Grub Roulette. It still picks a random venue from your current filters, but now prefers a venue that's currently open once enough opening-hours data exists to trust it (opening-hours coverage is still being built up). If your filters leave no matching venues, a playful message appears instead of the button silently doing nothing.

Fixed

Map markers now show the correct icon for venues tagged as both a primary type (e.g. Restaurant) and Takeaway. The Takeaway icon is only used when Takeaway is the venue's sole tag.
All venue pages incorrectly showed the "✓ Visited" button state for signed-in users due to a PHP 8.1 behaviour change (mysqli_fetch_assoc now returns null instead of false when no rows are found). The visited state is now read correctly.
The green tick badge on visited map markers is now always visible on visited venues; previously it was hidden when zoomed out without a filter active.
The green tick on visited map markers now stays correct as you zoom and pan. Previously, visited venues that started out grouped inside a cluster (or off-screen) could lose their tick once revealed, so only some of your visited venues showed one.
The user account dropdown on mobile now opens in front of the page overlay rather than being hidden behind it. On desktop, nav dropdowns (user menu and admin navigation menus) now appear above the map zoom/locate buttons rather than behind them.
The Editor Rating card on venue pages is now readable in dark mode. Previously it kept its light pastel background regardless of theme, making the rating text and icon nearly invisible against dark-mode's light text colour.

[0.1.6] - 2026-06-10

Added

Venue pages now show an Editor Rating card in the sidebar when a personal rating has been set, colour-coded by rating value.
Gallery on venue pages now has photo type filter buttons when more than one type of photo is present.
Tags and Photos sections now have headings.
Signing in from a venue page now returns you to that venue after authentication.
The Filters button now shows a count badge when filters are active.
Returning to the map from a venue page now restores your previous filter state.
Added a "Copy link" button to venue pages for easy sharing.
The map/list view preference is now remembered between visits for signed-in users.
Public profiles now show a clear message when a user has not yet visited any venues.
News unread indicator — a dot appears on the News nav item when there is a post you have not yet seen. The check runs once on sign-in and is cached in a browser cookie; no database query is made on subsequent page loads. Visiting the News page marks all posts as read and clears the dot.
Visited tick on map — when signed in, venues you have marked as visited now show a small green tick badge on their map marker. The badge scales with the map zoom level.
Visited filter — the filters sidebar (when signed in) now includes a Visited section showing counts of visited and not-yet-visited venues, with checkboxes to filter the map to either set. Filter state is preserved in the URL.
Gravatar profile image — your account page now shows your Gravatar profile picture. If you have one set up, it appears wherever profile images are shown. You can disable this in your account settings at any time.
User profile page — users with a public profile have a shareable profile page showing their display name, Gravatar, bio, last 10 visited venues, and a mini map of everywhere they've been.
The welcome tour has been refreshed with updated content covering current features. It is now remembered using a cookie so it will not reappear after you dismiss it, even across browsers on the same device. Signed-in users have it remembered across all their devices.
The car parks layer toggle is now synced to your account. Turning it on or off on one device is remembered the next time you open the map on any device you are signed into.

Changed

Venue pages redesigned — a new sidebar layout surfaces hygiene scores, your editor rating, and data sources at a glance. Opening hours now display when set, shown as a compact grouped summary (e.g. Mon–Fri 09:00–17:00). A stale-data banner appears when information has not been refreshed in over 90 days. The hygiene card now flags when a rating drop has occurred since the previous inspection or a reinspection is pending.
Sign-in emails now match your colour theme preference. Dark-theme users receive a dark email; light-theme users receive a light email. System-preference users receive an email that adapts automatically in supporting mail clients (Apple Mail, iOS Mail).
Display names must now be unique. If the name you want is already taken, you will be prompted to choose a different one.
Account page now shows a nudge banner when a display name has not been set, to encourage users to add one.

Fixed

Report and venue suggestion forms now show "Something went wrong on our end. Please try again." when a server error prevents the submission from saving, instead of showing a misleading validation message ("Please add a message before submitting") or silently appearing to succeed. Affects the contact form on the map and about pages, and the venue suggestion form on venue detail pages.
Submitting a venue suggestion that fails due to a server error no longer counts against the per-session rate limit. Previously a failed submission would consume one of the five hourly slots.
Session sign-out buttons on the account page now briefly show "Error – try again" if a network error occurs during sign-out, rather than silently resetting. Rapid re-clicks while in the error state no longer cause the button label to flicker back to the wrong text mid-request.

[0.1.5] - 2026-05-22

Added

Sign in — create a free account using just your email address. No password required: we send a one-click sign-in link that expires in 15 minutes.
Account page — set a display name, choose your colour theme (light, dark, or follow system), and view or revoke active sessions on other devices. Theme preference now saves to your account and follows you across devices.
Visit tracking — mark venues as visited from the venue detail page. Visits save to your account and sync across devices.
Car parks layer — toggle car parks on the map with the new P button. Footprints are drawn as soft blue polygons; tapping a car park shows its name, type, capacity, and rough pricing where known.
Get directions — Waze, Google Maps, and Apple Maps links now appear in venue popups and on venue detail pages.
Surprise me — the new dice button in the map controls picks a random venue from the current filtered set, pans to it, and opens its popup.
Travel-time rings — the bullseye button draws colour-coded walking and driving rings for 5, 10, 15, and 30 minutes. Rings centre on your position if location is available, or fall back to the map centre. Uses real road networks when an OpenRouteService API key is configured; otherwise approximate circles.
Open now filter — hides venues confirmed closed at the current time based on stored opening hours. Venues with no hours data remain visible. Filter state is shareable via URL.
Hygiene rating history — venue detail pages now show every inspection on record, penalty-point sub-scores (Hygiene, Structural, Confidence in Management) with plain-English labels, the inspecting local authority, and a consecutive-inspection streak when the same rating has been held across multiple visits.
Added an FSA link and Crown copyright notice to the About page, crediting the FSA as the source of hygiene rating data under the Open Government Licence.
Added an OpenStreetMap attribution notice to the map that fades out after 15 seconds. Full licence information remains accessible via the About page.

Changed

Settings menu replaced with a user dropdown pinned to the right of the navigation bar. Shows your display name (or "Sign in") with quick access to your Account page, sign out, and — on the map — the list view and car parks toggles.
Venue profile page redesigned: tags appear as compact chips grouped by type, the BGG rating badge sits alongside the hygiene score, and the address is shown inline under the venue name.
Venue logo images now appear in the image gallery on venue profile pages rather than as a raw path in the additional details section.

Fixed

Fixed a JavaScript Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected end of input on the map page caused by json_encode silently returning false on invalid UTF-8 sequences and a missing closing brace in the sort-select event listener.
Fixed review dates resetting to the current time whenever any venue field was saved, causing reviews to appear out of order in the news feed.

[0.1.3] - 2026-04-10

Added

Added a pulsing blue location dot to the map when the "Locate me" button is used, making it easy to see your position at a glance even when the map is busy with markers.
Redesigned the About page with a centred hero section featuring a large icon with a glow effect, a site tagline, and dedicated cards for site description, creator credits, tools used, policies, and contact. Credits Charlie as creator and clarifies the approach to ratings (personal but honest).
Map tiles now dynamically switch to a dark tile theme in dark mode for better visibility and reduced eye strain, with adapted marker borders and overlay contrast throughout. Tiles revert to the standard light map in light mode.
Map venue markers now scale with zoom level — icons shrink to small dots when zoomed out to city-wide views and grow to full size around street level, keeping the map readable without obscuring the underlying geography. Overlapping markers also stack in a random order each render so no single venue is always hidden beneath others.
Venue tag icons (Font Awesome classes) now render inside map markers when a marker icon class is set, making venue types identifiable at a glance on the map.
Redesigned the news overview page with featured and upcoming card treatments, hover lift effects, and an accent left border on the latest post. Future-dated posts automatically appear as dashed "Coming soon" cards above the published feed and move into the main list when their date passes — no manual changes needed. Added a "Latest" badge to the most recent published post.
Added a BGG Rating filter section on the public map so visitors can narrow venues by the site's own personal ratings (Avoid / OK / Good / Amazing Rare Gem), with a per-rating venue count shown beside each option.
Search, tag, rating, and area filters are now synced to the URL so filtered map views can be shared directly via link. Filters are restored on load and "Clear all filters" also removes the URL parameters cleanly.
Map venue list reworked into a server-rendered venue directory sidebar with crawlable venue links, address context, alternative names, and business-type and hygiene descriptors that stay in sync with search and filters.
Added JSON-LD Map structured data to the public map page and BlogPosting metadata on news detail pages (including canonical URLs and per-post author overrides) so search engines can better understand and index the site.
Venue detail links now load by internal venue ID with an optional readable venue-name slug in the URL for cleaner sharing.
Map filter groups now show active-state highlighting with a selected-count badge per group and a per-option venue count beside each filter choice for quicker scanning.
Public top navigation simplified — admin link removed from the public menu, theme switching moved into a native Settings dialogue (gear icon), and the experimental map/list toggle moved into the same Settings dialogue to reduce map-control clutter.
Map zoom and Locate me controls consolidated into a single top-left control stack with Font Awesome magnifying-glass icons; the report flag action also moved into the same stack.

Changed

Corrected UK spelling and grammar across key public copy in the site UI and documentation (for example, "colour", "behaviour", and "dialogue") to keep wording consistent.
Updated the public menu brand icon to use the same 32x32 site favicon asset for consistent branding across navigation and browser tabs.
Improved news card typography — larger featured title, better line-height, and subtler date sizing. News detail header updated with a bottom divider, larger h1, and better meta spacing.
Filter modal on desktop now keeps the map interactive while filters stay open; on mobile the modal still closes from the backdrop tap or the ✕ button.

Fixed

Fixed news feed review cards showing blank venue titles when a review has no display_name by correctly falling back to trading_name.
Fixed markdown links and tables not rendering in the documentation viewer — text links now produce clickable anchors and pipe-delimited tables display as proper HTML tables.
Added stylesheet cache-busting query strings (?v=filemtime) to all remaining local page CSS includes so style updates propagate without requiring a hard refresh.
Tightened CAPTCHA token retention to a strict rolling limit, reducing stale-session edge cases during repeated form submissions.
Hid the floating Filters button whenever the filter dialog is open, preventing duplicate close/open controls appearing at the same time.
Prevented browser Ctrl/Cmd + scroll wheel from zooming the page — this gesture now always zooms the map, even when the cursor is over map UI controls.
Fixed a dark-mode map tile loading flash by forcing the map background to black while tiles are still rendering.
Fixed dark-mode rendering of venue subtitle text and tag pills by replacing hardcoded hex colours with CSS custom properties, and improved contrast for unrated map marker borders.
Corrected the About page contact email to hello@blackpoolgrub.co.uk so the listed address matches the active site domain.
Fixed mobile map layout top spacing so moving the navigation menu to the bottom no longer leaves an empty bar above the map.

[0.1.2] - 2026-03-10

Added

Published the March 2026 release post with a fun user-facing update covering the new Locate Me headline feature, experimental list view, user submissions, and Blackpool Restaurant Week event filter guidance.

Changed

Updated the new list-mode control to appear as an experimental floating action next to report tools, and moved desktop list results to the left side for easier map/filter scanning.
Added a map/list view toggle on the public map with a synchronized venue list so search and filter results can be browsed as cards or pins.
Improved venue data freshness by refining OSM sync normalization (including cuisine/opening-hours handling) and adding admin controls to re-run syncs in manageable batches.
Updated venue detail page wording for visitor clarity, including friendlier section titles and suggestion guidance while keeping unavailable values clearly marked.
Edited the public roadmap wording for clearer grammar, consistent capitalization, and more professional feature descriptions without changing planned intent.
Enhanced venue detail pages with a top hero image and filtered image galleries (food, menu, opening-times signage when opening hours are blank, and other published photos) while excluding receipt images from public display.
Simplified sitemap.xml entries to list only canonical public pages, removing the admin login route and fragment-only documentation URLs that crawlers cannot index as standalone pages.
Updated the map filter panel UX so the page no longer dims when filters open, desktop starts with filters open, and filter groups start collapsed.
Reworked the public news section into a true overview + detail flow with fully clickable summary cards, improved tag chips, and dedicated post pages that continue rendering markdown content.
Expanded sitemap.xml generation to automatically include every published news detail page slug so crawlers can discover individual news posts.
Removed news source URL metadata from public post pages and aligned news links with extensionless routes used by site rewrites.
Refined the news overview layout so page intro copy is separate from the post card container, preview text renders apostrophes correctly, and tags reuse the site's shared pill styling.
Added a clear-all control in the map filter panel so visitors can instantly reset search text and selected filters back to the default full map view.

Fixed

Improved mobile dropdown reliability so navigation menus remain tappable in portrait orientation, including on installed PWA sessions.

[0.1.1] - 2026-02-26

Added

Added location freshness badges and stale-data warnings to help visitors quickly judge listing reliability.
Added onboarding tour guidance and smarter map search behaviour to improve first-time discovery.
Added manual verification date display and explicit source badges on location details.
Added tag-suggestion chips in search so visitors can discover venues by category faster.
Added a food hygiene rating filter on the public map so visitors can quickly narrow venues by FHRS score.
Added a new "Locate me" map control that requests geolocation only when pressed and recenters the map on the visitor's current position.

Changed

Changed location pages to display tag icons alongside tags for clearer visual scanning.

Security

Added CAPTCHA validation to public contact and suggestion forms to reduce automated spam submissions.

[0.1.0] - 2026-02-24

Added

Public interactive map with Leaflet markers for published restaurants, including FHRS hygiene ratings, personal ratings, and tag-driven marker icons.
Mobile-friendly map search and filter panel so visitors can quickly narrow results by name, company, and tag categories.
Public location detail pages (/location?id=<fha_id>) with venue profile data, hygiene badge rendering, grouped tags, metadata links, and related company information.
Public company explorer graph (/company-explorer) that visualizes ownership links between companies and their published venues.
Public news feed (/news) powered by markdown posts in content/news/ for launch updates and announcements.
Public about page with project background plus a contact form for non-map feedback and correction requests.
Public map issue reporting flow that captures optional coordinates from the map and stores visitor messages for review.
Public documentation viewer for policy pages (privacy and cookie policy) with hash-based navigation between docs.
Dynamic XML sitemap (/sitemap.xml) that includes core pages and all published location detail URLs.