The new website – what has changed and why?

Why is there a new website?

The main reasons lying behind the decision to reconstruct this website are (in order of importance):
Security

Security

Ever since this website came into being, it has been a target for hackers. In order to increase the level of security of both its users and the website itself:
  • an SSL certificate has been added,
  • account passwords have been strengthened,
  • the password has been encoded with stronger encoding algorithm,
  • the mechanism for activating accounts and e-mailing confirmations of registration has been altered,
  • the logging system has been changed,
  • most of the scripts on the website have been rewrited,
  • the third-party libraries used on the website have been updated.
Responsive Design

Responsive Design

The previous version of the website was created for display on a monitor with a minimum resolution of 1024x768 pixels. Nowadays, more and more people are accessing this website via smaller devices like tablets or smartphones. The new version of this website has been designed to be displayed on any device, regardless of screen size or page orientation (horizontal/vertical). When the new website is activated on a small device, the least important elements are kept hidden so that the rest remains readable. In order that touch screens can be used, some of the form controls have been specially adapted for touch screen use instead of being mouse-activated.

Standardization

Standardisation

Some of the information available on the earlier version of the website does not conform to current norms or has become outdated since it came into being (e.g. new administrative divisions). On the new website all these aspects have been modified and conform to ISO norms. This applies in particular to:
  • names of countries and regions,
  • country and regional codes,
  • names of languages.

structure

Database structure and performance

During the development of the website's new version, it turned out that the database designed 15 or so years ago is no longer optimal and has a great many limitations. This applies, for instance, to the number of countries, local names and similar species. As the structure of the new database has been designed from scratch, the only limitation will now be the size of the database and the power of the server that runs it.
Because the database itself is now very much larger and consist of much more tables in structure, the data search may appear slightly more slowly than was the case with the earlier version.

internationalization

Internationalization and localization

The new website has been constructed in such a way that it will be very easy to add another language. All alphabets are supported, including non-Latin ones like Cyrillic or Greek. Languages that are written from right to left, like Arabic and Hebrew, will not be a problem either.
The creation of a new language version usually takes about a week and can be done by a person with a good working knowledge of the new translation language and of entomological terminology. No knowledge of informatics is required.
If you would like more information on how new language versions are created, please get in touch with the website administrator.
As most of the texts on the new website have been changed, the location packages produced for the previous version cannot be used directly. Once the beta-testing period is over, all the previously available language versions will be gradually added.

What is new?



Areas

Areas

By expanding the new website's range to include the whole world, so-called areas had to be introduced. All the functions on the website, e.g. search, operate within the area selected by the user. By choosing the area Europe you get a website similar to the one in the previous version (Butterflies and Moths of Europe). Species from outside Europe, e.g. from the Nearctic or Australasia, will not be shown. By choosing the area World, you gain access to all the species in the database.

Search

Search engine

The quick and advanced search that the previous version used have been replaced by much more modern ones. The quick search, available directly from the menu, allows you to search among Latin and vernacular names, and the results are shown together with thumbnails. The advanced search shows results in the form of icons and photographs of any developmental form. Responses to questions can be narrowed down by filtering the preliminary results.

Upload

Upload files

The module for upload files has been replaced by a completely new equivalent. Here are some of its basic features:
  • graphic progress indicator to show sending progress status, a preview, and the possibility of deleting photographs already sent directly from the server
  • more than one file referring to the same locality and the same species can be sent simultaneously,
  • except of normal images also archives (ZIP, RAR) and PDF files can be sent,
  • a drag-drop option is available in the browser.
Recording

Recording module

The recording module has been substantially reconstructed internally. Records from any country in the world can be added, and displaying results does not have to be limited to any particular country.
Very detailed filtering of your own records will be possible, as will the export of results in Microsoft Excel format.
At the moment only the basic set of functions is available; the recording module will be expanded over the next few months.

Gallery

Galleries

The option of displaying galleries for any developmental stage (imago, larva etc.) has been added.
Photographs sent to galleries do not have to be of any particular size anymore. You can send photographs of any proportions and orientation, e.g. square or vertical.

Preparate

Genitalia preparations

Many users have asked me whether photographs of genitalia preparations could be added. The new website has contains a gallery of butterfly and moth genitalia, both male and female, as well as a module for comparing them. New photographs will be added in due course.
Here I would particularly like to thank Patrick Clement for his consent to use his extremely high-quality photographs.

Literature

Literature and links

There are several hundred publications on Lepidoptera. New ones will be added during website updates.
The built-in browser allows you to filter results and to review the covers of most publications.
An area filtering option has been added to the list of links to Lepidoptera websites.

Online Edition

Editing online

The new website allows authorised users to edit on-line certain information on the website, e.g. descriptions of species, developmental stages, wingspans, occurrence etc. Changes made on-line are invisible to other users until they are accepted by the administrator or moderators. Information can be added individually for every language available on the website.
A detailed description of how texts can be edited are given in the editing instructions for authorised users.


Gears

Editing account and user rights

A simple application has been added to the user account settings window enabling you to trim and re-scale user avatar.
You can change country after you have created an account and display the list of user rights that you currently possess.