On the home page search engine it only asks for the first part of your post code, in my case this covers the whole of south west wales, you can choose to search up to 10 miles from your post code ( first part remember) so this gives you a much bigger spread of land mass. Hope it helps:-)

LAST TIME I LOOKED MANCHESTER IS OVER 100 MILES FROM BIRMINGHAM                                                                                                                                                                               

Sorry to be boring but Stratford Upon Avon is in Warwickshire in the West Midlands.   Nottingham is in Nottinghamshire in the East Midlands.                                                                                                                                                                             

birmingham      the town of birmingham     read the post                                                                                                                                                                              

please delete my posts its pointless people just dont see what i meen                                                                                                                                                                              

I see what you mean, but here's how the system works... On the map, I tried to select an approximate middle postcode from each area and a best-guest CIRCULAR distance that would cover that area from the central-ish post code. What people put as their "Town" on their profile means NOTHING... the "calculator" in the site's programming that I made can only work with the POST CODE they put onto their profile. The postcode database I have only has the first part of the postcode.  Even if I had one with ALL postcodes (inc last 3 digits) it wouldn't work because it would take several minutes to perform a search on the database.  The first part of the postcode gives us the best compromise between functionality and performance. The advanced search page lets you search for more specific things, including a specific distance from your postcode.  You should use this and not the map feature if you want accurate results. The map / city list is simply for new members to get a quick look around the site and what's on offer.  The city list will search 50 miles around the X1 postcode of the city (M1 for manchester, B1 for Birmingham, E1 for London)... even though the X1 postcode might NOT be the centre of the city.  50 miles just gives a rough estimate of what people are normally prepared to travel to meet someone, so the numbers dont just give number of people in that city but within a reasonable distance of that city The homepage has lots of statistics on it, like how many live profiles we have etc.  I do NOT try to inflate the stats, I just try to design the site to make it as reasonably functional as possible. Any more questions?                                                                                                                                                                              

Sorry just saw the original question about online profiles, here's how that works...   When you login (either automatically with cookies or by manually logging in entering your password) it sets your "LAST ACCESSED DATE/TIME" as that moment (right down to the millsecond). Everytime you change page WHILST LOGGED IN it will RESET the above mentioned flag/field in the database It will do this everytime you change page. If you open the Online Users page, it runs a selection against the database like this..."Select all the profiles where the member has NOT disabled their profile, has at least one profile photo and has a LAST ACCESSED TIME no earlier than 15 minutes ago" If you hit the SIGN OFF button, it puts your last accessed time as 30 minutes ago. So... if you don't change page within 15 minutes, you'll drop off the page.  If you press sign off, you'll drop off the page
There's no conspiracy etc.  If you're on that page then SOME computer SOMEWHERE is browsing the site as YOU.  If it's not you then change your password asap.
                                                                                                                                                                             

PPS:  Please don't start forum topics with the subject ALL IN CAPS!!!   Everyone knows how much I hate that :-D                                                                                                                                                                             

Matt - Apparently the Ordinance Survey have opened up their postcode database as a web service for free.  Could make use of that in the future.