08-Jan-2026 — Advanced search & Server Pagination ref: #110

build 408 — commit 3399b3e

This feature was motivated by the need for walks and events view to be viewable for a group or area website and for any walk filter to return results performantly. It's likely that for an area (e.g. Kent) there could be 3,000 — 6,000 walks in history, so it's important that querying this data in any way should still deliver a fast user experience. Before this release, all walks within a date range (regardless of whether they were on the current page), were queried and returned to the browser which took a long time if the All Walks date range filter was selected.

Finding the Walks Page

• Go to the Walks Programme at https://<your-site>/walks. If there is less than 1 page of walks (10 walks per page), no pagination controls will be visible.
• The display of walks is still the same as it was before but there are initially two visible differences — the Date Range Selector, and the Advanced Search button — both on the top row of the walks view.
• The initial selection is All Walks Today Onwards, and Advanced Search is hidden. In the screenshot below the Date Range Selector has been clicked to show all available options:

• When you now make a walk filtering change in this view, your filter is sent to the server, and you receive only the rows for the current page so performance stays consistent even with thousands of walks in the filter.
• As an alternative to above, the screenshot below shows a Past 3 Months date range filter which returns 16 walks therefore the pagination controls are displayed:

Advanced Search Details

• Opening Advanced Search reveals sliders for date and distance, multi-selects for leaders and (in area mode) group codes, day-of-week and grading pickers, accessibility/facility toggles, plus free/cancelled switches:

General Search Fields

• Date range selection with slider and preset buttons (Today, 7 Days, 30 Days, 3 Months, 6 Months, 1 Year, All Time)

• Custom date range with configurable amount and unit (days/weeks/months/years)

• Distance range slider to filter walks by length in miles or km

• Walk leader multi-select dropdown with search capability. Values are populated from the events within the selected date range, ensuring only relevant leaders appear.

• Multi-select Group code filter exists for multi-group or area sites

• Day of week filter to find walks on specific days

• Difficulty level filter (Easy, Leisurely, Moderate, etc.)

• Accessibility options filter

• Facilities filter

• Free & cancelled walks toggle

• Changes are made in the URL so you can bookmark a search and go back to it at a later date.

• Changing any of the values in the filter view above should change the filtered results in real-time.

Walk Search by location

• The Location Search field provides you with the ability to enter a location or postcode and for the location to be automatically located on the map.
• Proximity controls let you use your current location or enter a postcode/place, adjust a 1–50 mile radius slider, and preview the coverage on a map before applying it.

Searching for walks in your location

If you want to find walks that are close to you, click the Current Location:

Searching for walks in a specific location

If you want to find walks that are close to a specific location click Enter Location:

Intialising Local Data

• The site no longer fetches walks live from the Ramblers feed; instead, it relies on a local copy in the database. That means that when this release is deployed, an empty programme exists until someone runs the sync from the admin panel, so part of “getting the site ready” is making sure you pull down the latest walks before launch.
• Admins manage this data at https://<your-site>/admin/system-settings?tab=external-systems. The last sync time is displayed and a “Sync Now (Incremental)” for the past week or Full Sync (All Time) exists.

• A background cron job runs every six hours for installations configured with WALKS_MANAGER or HYBRID populations, keeping the cache fresh even if no admin manually triggers a sync.

Sync Now vs Full Sync 💡

You might be wondering what the difference between the two syncs buttons are:

• Sync Now (incremental) - This is the one you want for day-to-day use. It only fetches walks that have been added or changed since the last sync ran, so it typically completes in a few seconds. If you've just amended or cancelled one or two walks on Walks Manager, hit this button and the website will reflect your changes almost immediately.
• Full Sync (All Time) - This re-downloads every walk from the Ramblers API from scratch, which takes longer depending on how many walks your group has. You'd really only need this when setting up a brand new website that has no walk data yet. For normal day-to-day updates it's not necessary.