March 2024: Washington Reviews and a Redesigned Site Taking Shape
In March 2024 we reviewed 66 of Washington State's 214 listings, checked your suggested changes and added a net 29 pools. This update also previews what will change on the new version of the site.
In our March 2024 pool listings update, we report on reviews in Washington State, the changes you suggested and our progress on a new version of the site. We added 43 listings and deleted 14, a net gain of 29.
Site activity
We spent March checking the changes you suggested with the Edit buttons on listings, following up on leads for new listings and working on the new site. We also reviewed and updated 66 of Washington State's 214 listings. We have just reached King County, home of Seattle, but have not yet touched the Seattle listings.
If a listing looks wrong or out of date, use its Edit button to tell us. On the new site, the button will be called Suggest Change.
The new site
Programming for the new site is about 99 percent finished. We still have to write the surrounding pages, such as About Us and the FAQ. The Stats section is done, and so is the Add-A-Pool section. It made sense to program that tool together with the Suggest Change feature on the listing details page.
At first glance the changes will not look significant. There is a face-lift of fonts and colors, and a few tweaks to the listing details page. The biggest change you will see is that the map fills in pins for the new area whenever you zoom in or out or drag it to a different area.
We have also moved the table of the 50 closest listings from the home page to a separate page that toggles back and forth with the map page. The data in the table will also refresh when the map changes.
Behind the scenes, we removed seven layers of background code that did not always work smoothly and often needed patches to keep the site running. We also moved the underlying data to a new database format that is more flexible and robust than the 2012 edition of SQL Server that the current site uses.
The new code and database will let us add features we have wanted for years. One of the first is a set of notes on listing pages about the swimming environment in cities, counties, states, provinces and countries. A note might link to a government site that shows where the seasonal pools we do not list can be found, or explain a local custom worth knowing before you go, such as the dress code for men at French pools, which does not allow boxer-style swim trunks, or the rule against wearing a watch in Japanese pools.
Database statistics
- March 2024 changes: we added 43 new listings and deleted 14, for a net gain of 29.
- As of March 31, 2024: the database includes 26,257 facilities in 211 countries and 14,690 cities and towns.
- Pools: those facilities have 28,865 full-size, year-round pools, as we define those terms in our FAQ.
- Websites: 24,876 listings (94.7% of all listings) have links to their own official websites, or to non-official sites that we think may be helpful to you.
The site's Top 10 countries have 19,306 listings, broken down as follows, with changes since February:
- United States: 7,756 (+6)
- United Kingdom: 2,207 (no change)
- France: 1,641 (no change)
- Germany: 1,569 (no change)
- Spain: 1,478 (+3)
- Italy: 1,178 (+1)
- Canada: 1,002 (+1)
- Australia: 954 (+4)
- Japan: 900 (no change)
- Poland: 621 (-1)