StudyStays Blog

Featured listings

You can now feature listings on the front page of your StudyStays site by awarding the special 'featured' badge to listings. This allows you to promote listings that deserve special attention.





To use Featured Listings you might need to check that you have Badges enabled first. You can find this setting through Admin > Settings > Listings.

To feature a listing, you award the 'featured' badge when you're viewing a listing in admin. If you want to feature all listings from a certain provider, you can award the 'featured' badge to the provider instead of awarding it to individual listings.

Once you've awarded the featured badge to at least one listing, StudyStays will show up to 2 random featured listings on the front page of your site. Students can click "More featured listings..." to see all the featured listings.

Featured listings will also rank higher in search results, the same way awarding any other badge makes the listing rise to the top of search results.

So featured listings should get a lot more attention from students compared to regular listings. Maybe it's worth considering charging providers for this extra value? Just something to think about...

Updates to future student expiry

This update only applies to universities that choose to expire future student accounts after a certain time period. If you're not sure whether you expire student accounts or not, you can find the setting under Admin > Settings > Student approvals.

With this update, StudyStays now retains more data about students after their account expires. Students with expired accounts still won't be able to sign in, but you can now search for and view expired accounts through admin and re-activate them if you need to.

Also, reports on student registrations will now be more accurate as the expired accounts can be counted.

In case you missed these small changes...

Here's a list of small improvements and additions over the last few months.

Map region indicator for listings with a hidden address

Instead of showing a marker icon on the street, these are now shown with a pink circle indicating the general area of the listing.

Email tracking for students
You can now track emails to students as well as accommodation providers.

Provider search and filtering
In admin, you can now search for providers by their phone number, of by the address of their listings. In addition, you can filter and export providers by their type (Private provider, Real estate agent or Student).

Photo uploads
With help from a couple of very kind and patient university people, I've fixed an error where providers would see a message that .JPG files weren't allowed. This was a difficult error to track down because it only appeared when the web server restarted while someone was uploading a photo—which happened often enough to cause problems, but rarely enough to make it difficult to find. So if you have noticed this error in the past, I'm very pleased to let you know that this it's fixed now.

Also, in the past you might have noticed more photos being uploaded that seemed to be rotated on their side. There should be less of this now—StudyStays can now understand orientation information used by many newer cameras and will automatically rotate these photos when they're uploaded.

Providers can re-try rejected listings
Now that it's less severe to reject a listing—the provider goes on a watch list instead of being blacklisted—it's now easier for providers to make changes to a rejected listing and re-submit it. After the provider receives instructions on what they need to change to meet requirements, they will see a "try again" link next to the rejected listing on their dashboard.

Search
Now when you search listings by categories where the provider can choose more than one option, the search will match all your selections rather than any of them. It's a subtle change, but you should find searches just work more like you'd expect now.

Set badges and tags while reviewing changes
For all universities using the new-ish Badges feature, you can now set badges and tags while you're reviewing changes to a listing.


The Watch List, and Blocking Users

Up until now there's been the concept of a blacklist, where providers were automatically flagged once they have one of their listings rejected. I think it's fair to say that the automatic and apparently-harsh nature of the blacklist has caused some concern and confusion, and it's time for a redesign.

So I've replaced the blacklist with a Watch List. It's similar to the old blacklist, but it takes into account that people sometimes make mistakes when they list and it just keeps a closer eye on them until they show that they understand the listing requirements. StudyStays will watch providers on this list in case they attempt to list under a different account, and alert administrators at the approval stage if that happens.

So now when you see a listing that doesn't meet your website's requirements, you can safely reject it and tell the provider what they need to do differently next time.

The main change with the Watch List is that rejecting a listing no longer puts a provider straight into a blacklist with a permanent black mark next to their name. Instead, the Watch List takes into account each provider's full history of approvals and only watches providers who have had less than 2 approvals for every rejection.

So now a provider can get off the Watch List with "good behaviour"—by getting new listings approved. Once a provider has at least 2 listings approved for every previous rejection, we can assume they understand the basic requirements and we don't need to keep such a close eye on them.

I chose this 2:1 ratio so that once you get on the watch list you have to try a bit harder to get off it. Two wrongs don't make a right—but one wrong and two rights do!

As with the old blacklist, providers on the Watch List will still be highlighted in the automatic approval checks. The "pirate flag" 

 next to blacklisted providers is gone though. Instead, you'll see this warning on some provider's records:



If you're thinking the Watch List is too lenient for cases of consistently bad behaviour, there's also Blocking.

Blocking a provider (or student) means they will no longer be able to sign in to your website with this account. You can manually block someone by clicking the "Block access" link on the right hand side when you're viewing their details.

Like with the Watch List, StudyStays will also try to flag blocked providers if they attempt to list under a different account.

Un-Impersonating Providers

As you probably know, impersonating a provider lets you see your StudyStays website they way the provider sees it.

Previously you had to sign out and in again to get back to admin after impersonating someone. I've just added a small button that makes it much easier to stop impersonating and switch back to admin.



Also, I've removed the flashing animation which was probably a bit more distracting than it should have been.