Hello Everyone, and a very Happy Valentine's Day to you all!

My apologies for the lack of action recently with thebestof Braintree blog. Due to my attention being diverted to our new and much improved website and making positive changes to many of the products and services that we offer, I have been unable to keep up with making regular posts here. Well, we're all back in full action and showcasing the best local Braintree businesses in the best ways we know how!

I suppose to make up for the lack of posts, I should attempt to catch up with myself: I hope everybody had a very happy and lovely Christmas and New Year! Personally, I spent a week in Spain with my family and had a fantastic time chilling out and catching up on much needed sleep!

To keep this post short and to the point, I'll talk mostly about our great new website - look out for other posts coming soon that tell you all about the other new and improved parts of thebestof Braintree!

So, much of November was spent testing TBO2.0 (our brand new website) and going through hundreds of pages of data to ensure that the transition went as smoothly as possible.

I have to say here that I'm extremely grateful to my Tech Team at thebestof HQ in Solihull. Months and months of hard work has been put in by our patient tech team who have had to deal with building a website initially with one set of functionality only for me and my colleagues to reverse decisions, suggest extra features, etc. Very patient indeed!

Finally, though, our new thebestof Braintree website is functioning properly. There are a few minor bugs that remain but that's only to be expected when over half a million pages are being migrated to an entirely new website on a different platform. thebestof Braintree had about 50 features live on our website at the time of changeover but across the whole thebestof network there were around 60 000! It has been a huge job and we really hope you like the result.

I'd love to hear from you if you do find any bugs or problems with the website or if you have any suggestions for improvements or extra functionality. I really hope that more and more local people in the Braintree District will be getting involved with reviewing and recommending the best local businesses and events. I vow to work harder than ever in 2009 for the success of my business members and the happiness of local people.

Personally, I think that the new website is outstanding BUT I have one problem. At the minute, I'm championing and showcasing just a few of the best local businesses. So many categories remain empty when I have the ability to showcase hundreds of the best local businesses to other people like you looking at our website. Help me out - recommend a local business or two?

Don't forget, though, that as I said at the beginning of this post, thebestof Braintree is far more than just a nice new shiny website - and we're far more than an online business directory like many of the websites that you will see below us in Google search results.

We are of course a local business too and so want to see our local business community continue to do amazing things and flourish throughout 2009 - our success is dependent on it!

Ignore all the doom and gloom that you hear and read in the media - while a few big names are in trouble we have nowhere near the amount of local trouble that the press would have you believe! As a community, we must continue to up our support for local businesses and local business people.

Thank you for your time - speak to you soon.

Gareth Talbot
www.thebestof.co.uk/braintree
braintree@thebestof.co.uk
07738 073043