More Than Salad

posted June 17 by Dan F.

More Than Salad has gone through a number of changes in the last few months. As of today there is a new interface to the search engine. A lot of people have requested greater ability to filter searches, and now, you've got it. Look around, check things out, and please let me know what you think!

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posted April 28 by Dan F.

More to come, but look around and enjoy!

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posted April 25 by Dan F.

Well, not just More Than Salad...of course we're still here, and in the next few days there's going to be a new version of MTS with a whole lot of interesting changes that I'm excited for everyone to see.

The main thing I did want to mention is that I have heard from several concerned restaurant owners that MTS is listing their restaurants as closed. MTS actually keeps track of restaurant hours and when it says that your restaurant is closed, it just means because it is 3am or some other time outside of your operating hours, not that you are closed permanently. This enables users to actually search for restaurants that are currently open which is helpful for those of us who are looking for food during the late-night hours. I have taken steps in the new version to make this more clear to users and I hope it will eliminate the confusion.

If any of you have thoughts or questions about this feature or anything else on the site, please feel free to contact me and keep your eyes open for the new version coming this week!

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posted July 13 by Dan F.

More Than Salad is looking for a talented web programmer to build new features and expand functionality of the site. You can check out all the details right here.

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posted February 19 by Dan F.

Well, it doesn't mean nothing is happening. I uploaded a new version today which has mainly performance improvements. Hopefully when searching, browsing, and viewing restaurants things should be a bit faster now. I still have plans to continue to speed up the site. Also, the code that tells you if a restaurant is open or closed and lets you search for only open restaurants should work much better and more consistently now. We still need more data on restaurant hours, so if you see a place without hours and you know them, punch them in! Oh yes, and image uploading should all work ok now on all browsers. If anyone has any problems with that please let me know.

A lot is happening behind the scenes and there will be more communication about this soon including heading towards being a true non-profit organization. I have heard all of the feedback about this and the terms of use which are really just a placeholder for now. I know people are concerned about the usage of the information they submit but I think going forward everyone will be very happy. Thanks as usual to everyone who has been contributing information and pictures and writing reviews.

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posted July 13 by Dan F.

More Than Salad is now up and running and the basic functionality of the site is there. The important next step is to aggregate useful information into the site about all vegetarian restaurants all around the world. This process is ongoing and help is necessary to build the database up and to make it complete, and then of course to keep it current. Here is how to contribute:

1) Find the name and location of a vegetarian or vegan restaurant somewhere in the world. Restaurants that are not completely vegetarian are ok if they provide exceptional vegetarian or vegan options, especially in places where there are no completely vegetarian restaurants.

2) Search for information about that restaurant. Google is obviously the first place to start. Often a search for a restaurant name and a city or country name along with it will reveal tons of sources that have listed that restaurant elsewhere. Often by checking out a few different sources including the restaurant's website if one exists will yield a fairly complete picture of what sort of restaurant that is, what type of food they have, and all the other useful information necessary to make a complete listing.

3) Check if the restaurant already exists on More Than Salad. If it does, the record can be updated by anyone by clicking on "Update restaurant information" from the restaurant's page on MTS. If it does not, it can be added by anyone with an MTS account by clicking "Add a new place" from any page in the site. If you are a regular contributor, your new information will go directly into the database without being reviewed. If you are just getting started, your new information will be reviewed within 24 hours before being included in the site.

4) More Than Salad gets better!

Thanks to all of you who have started to contribute information. I promise to continue improving MTS and making it a complete resource for finding great places to eat all around the world.

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posted July 12 by Dan F.

Though nobody has complained about the speed of the site, perhaps you're all just being polite. More Than Salad is going to be moving to a cluster soon which means multiple servers at the same time running the site which means hopefully noticeably faster performance. There should be no downtime when the move occurs.

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posted June 24 by Dan F.

Well, after another round of improvements to the code, MTS is up and running. The major change is the system for adding restaurants which is now a much nicer page than it used to be. I've begun the process of adding tons of content to the site. My goal is to make MTS the most complete and up-to-date resource for finding vegetarian meals wherever one happens to be. Anyone can submit information or pictures. If you have any problems or questions please ask on the forums or let me know!

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posted March 26 by Dan F.

Well, here we are. I've started to roll out various improvements to MTS. The initial version was uploaded a few months ago and I received a lot of good feedback. I am going to continue to work on improvements and especially focus now on the content and building the database up from the myriad of sources I've gathered over the years. As usual, comments are welcome.

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