UsingEnglish.com Site News

Whilst this blog has remained quite for long periods of time, it doesn't mean that work and new developments on the site have stopped.  Far from it.  The server and the site are continually monitored, optimised and improved.  The main reason for the quietness is that, on the whole there's not a lot to show for this work on the site's interface.

Here's a case in point:

Last night at around 22:30 in the evening I implemented a little trick to help speed up access to the site. I configured the site to utilise caching in a more optimised and efficient way.  It seems to have worked, for me at least.

After months of experimenting with new designs and creating different versions of UsingEnglish.com we've finally settled on a new look for our site and we hope you like it!

We've just added the ability for you to quiz yourself on intransitive, separable and inseparable phrasal verbs. This quiz type complements our existing quizzes on phrasal verbs and other grammar topics.  We hope you enjoy them.  :-)

The Site Diary has been quiet for some time now, but there has been a lot of work going on behind the scenes to improve UsingEnglish.com and to build a base for the future. Here I will attempt to catalogue the key developments that have been made to the site over the last few months, and explain what they may mean for the future.

UsingEnglish.com helps the fight against spam by using Captchas on many of the forms we have on-site. As of today, we've started used a superb new service that not only fights spam, but helps digitise old books at the same time.

Our new Idioms News Feed allows you to keep updated and ensure you are instantly alerted of all the latest idiom definitions added to UsingEnglish.com.

Just a quick note to say that our Advanced Text Analyser now includes a Graded Text analysis section. You can now compare your text to the BNC and GSL word lists and discover more about the reading level of the text. More information about this will follow shortly.

We have now made it easy for you to new add idioms to our Idioms Dictionary. Use our simple online form to make your suggestions.

We've made some changes to the Teacher Handouts section which we hope will make it easier to print and use these materials in class.

The new Reading Comprehension section has just had a bit of a face-lift. We have now reorganised how the section is presented and made it easier for you to test yourself on specific types of exams.