Massive Updates at WCD

Here is a brief update on what has been happening recently at World Casino Directory.  First, I want to say if you have an outstanding email with me, or never received a response from a correspondence I will be getting back with you soon.  Things have been very busy and I have been pressed for time.  OK!  For those of you who do not know me, my name is Bernard Richter (Bernie) and I run the site that this newsletter resides on.  My fearless programmer Scott does most of the magic around here.   If you are new to World Casino Directory you may not notice the major changes around the site, but older members can assure you that this site has taken a major shift in direction and professionalism.  While the most noticeable changes are graphical in nature, like the new design with white background for easy reading, and the revealing  of our long awaited logo, there are also some very functional additions and changes to the site as well.

Content: Our content is slowly being combed by Scarab Casino Management. You will see an increased level of accuracy and much more current information on all of our articles. We are starting with continent level articles and moving our way into the country articles currently. Many other bits of information are being looked at for accuracy. Feel free to let us know if you find any mistakes.

Maps: Our map data is up and running and you can easily find maps for most locations in the world. The mapping data has been supplied from Google and the accuracy of the maps is pretty good, but not guaranteed and in some more remote locations on the globe there is no city level mapping.  We hope they will fix this in the near future.  If you get to a map that is not working, try zooming out a level or two, this sometimes works.  Most maps have markers indicating all the casino in that region. Clicking the markers gives you basic casino information and you can also use the link in the marker to visit that casinos website. We will be adding maps to the hotel properties as well.  From the casino property pages you can easily tab between maps, property overview and hotel booking. 

Weather: While looking at most maps, you will see a weather checkbox. Clicking this will display icons of the current weather conditions in the area you are viewing. Look for extended five day weather forecasts soon. You can view the weather from any location in the world by clicking "weather" on any geographic page of World Casino Directory. We will be focusing on the U.S. first due to the ease and availability of securing the weather reports. If anyone can tell us where to find raw weather data for Europe, Asia or elsewhere, please emails us this information so we may integrate that data immediately. admin @ worldcasinodirectory.com

Hotel reservations are in-house: Visitors will no longer leave World Casino Directory to book hotel rooms. All of the action will now take place on World Casino Directory. We have also brought in airline tickets, car rentals, tickets to entertainment, cruise bookings and more. If your casino / hotel is not listed as available for reservations, please email us at admin @ worldcasinodirectory.com for instructions to get setup with online hotel room booking. We are very excited about this feature as booking times should be cut down, prices will be lower and our inventory of world wide hotels will go up.

Search Engine: One of the most useful additions you should notice is the new search engine that appears at the top of every page, including this one. It is the best place to get a lot of information on about any subject you can think of. If you type in 'asia casinos' you will find pages with information on Asian gaming, or if the word 'Asia' is in the name of a hotel or casino, links to that property will show up. We will show you available jobs in Asian casinos. We scan Google for news related to your search and we even includes Youtube.com videos. Give it a shot, we think you will like it. We will be introducing a PPC (pay per click) advertising feature soon for companies to pay for sponsored positions on search result pages.

Website Acquistions: Perhaps the biggest news of all is that World Casino Directory has just made a deal in which we re-acquired a network of over 100 land based gambling websites that were sold in order to make the purchase of World Casino Directory. This will give us a much broader reach instantly. We are in the process of incorporating the search engine into these sites to allow people to find relevant pages quickly. Interested in what some of these sites might look like? Try www.coloradogamblingforum.com or www.californiacasinos.com, while this is not what we have in mind for the final products, it should give you an idea of the caliber of sites we are talking about. This all means more traffic for WCD, and more advertising exposure per dollar you spend with us.

There are certainly other minor changes and additions, poke your head around the site after you finish reading this newsletter. Feel free to send us your suggestions, too. And don't worry if you see any blue pages still remaining, we'll be converting them over to the new template soon. Until next time...

Bernard