I know that some of you sometimes find it a bit difficult to locate content on the Landlord Law site. This is not surprising as it is a very large site, and however we organise the content, someone is going to be unhappy about it.
However you now have something new to help you – the Landlord Law toolbar!
You may have seen toolbars for other sites and services (for example the Stumbleupon toolbar) – so it is only right that we have one for Landlord Law! This tool bar is aimed at landlords (if it proves popular I may do one for tenants later) and has links to the main content that landlords are likely to use most. This is as follows:
- The various pages relating to our tenancy agreements services, such as the Which Tenancy start page and the different download pages
- Pages relating to our eviction service, including the Rent Arrears Action Plan, the possession notices downloads page, the kits, and the page where you can instruct me to act as your solicitor in eviction work
- Links to the main landlords information sections, including some of the legal pages (e.g. legislation and cases)
- A link to the members discussion forum entry page
- A link to the Q&A page, and
- A link to this Blog
- I have also put a link to my twitter feed, but this does not always show up
- There is also the facility for me to add messages to the toolbar, and I may do the from time to time.
The toolbar, which is provided by a company called Conduit, will update automatically if I change or add anything, which is nice and means that you do not have to keep re-installing it. There is an option to re-instal via the drop down list next to the Landlord Law logo on the left, but just ignore it, it is not necessary (unless the toolbar is not displaying properly perhaps).
You can also add a load of other services to the toolbar, if you want, via the + sign at the far right. I have added the weather button for you, which you can personalise by putting in your location, but there are other things you can add yourself.
I should mention however, that as Conduit is an American company, many of the add ons are really only relevant for Americans (for example the Amazon gadget is for the amazon.com site rather than the British amazon.co.uk). Unless of course, you are a British ex pat landlord living in America (of which we have a few)!
You can also tweak various other things via the menu by the Landlord Law logo, but if you want to use the toolbar to navaigate the Landlord Law site, I suggest you leave it as it is.
So how do you get hold of the toolbar? Well follow this link (I have set it to open in a new window or tab so you will still be able to read this page), and click the big green download button.
What happens next will depend on what internet browser you are using. However whatever dialogue page comes up, click ‘run’ or ‘yes’ or ‘next’ or whatever is necessary to move the process on. It is easiest to do in Firefox. If you are using Safari on a Mac you will at some stage have to give your password.
I would suggest that you consider carefully and uncheck some of the boxes that you will be asked to approve at some stage during installation, particularly the one which asks if you want the Landlord Law search page to be your search home page – this is not asked of you because of anything I have done, and personally I prefer the normal google search page.
You may have to re-start your browser before the toolbar will display. I also found that it kept disappearing in Safari which panicked me a bit, although it settled down after I had re-started the computer.
The appearance of the toolbar will also vary depending on what browser you are using. I rather like the way it is displayed in Safari on my Macbook (see the picture above), as the buttons show up more. However the twitter link does not show on the Safari toolbar, whereas it does on the others (although I have only checked it in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari). Note that you have to instal it separately for each browser type, so if you use both IE and Firefox you can just have it on one of them.
If after you have downloaded it you decide that you do not like it, you can uninstall it via the Toolbar Options item in the drop down menu on the left. Although you can also set it not to display in IE and Firefox via the tool bar item on the View menu, and then get it to display again when you use Landlord Law next.
So please try the toolbar, and let me know how you get on. I think you will find it very helpful.
Related posts:
