Welcome to The Beer Cellar v2.0!

You'll notice that things look a bit different, but there should also be a good deal that's familiar. The aesthetic has received a much needed overhaul, existing features have been improved, and a number of new features accompany this release. Details are provided below, but first, a quick disclaimer.

This is a big release, and there might be bugs, so let me know if you have any problems! While I've had a number of beta testers checking out the preview version of the site over the last few weeks, this release touches a lot of code and there could be edge cases that no one discovered during testing. If you have any issues, please hit me up on Twitter or via email and I'll look into it ASAP. I'm releasing on a Monday night to ensure I'm available throughout the week to deal with any issues that are reported.

Also, please log out then log back in to ensure all new site features are properly enabled.

With that said, below is some information on what's changed, what's improved, and what's new for The Beer Cellar!

What's Changed?

  • The site has received a visual overhaul, with a new color palette and some new design cues here and there. However, the general user experience remains very intuitive, and basic cellar management tasks should be familiar to existing users.
  • Cellar management is now entirely asynchronous, meaning no more full page reloads are required when adding or editing cellar entries. As a result, quick cellar updates will be quicker and bulk management tasks can be accomplished much faster than before. This was a big part of the new release, and is by far the most prominent change.
  • The application has been refactored almost from the ground up, which means new features and improvements will be much easier to add. I have a number of additional improvements already planned, which I'll detail in a later post.

What's Improved?

  •  Thanks to a new Elasticsearch backend, beer and brewery searching is now much improved! Non-exact queries will provide correct results much more frequently, and there should be far fewer duplicate entries created as a result.
  • On a related note, the CSV import now leverages the Elasticsearch index for initial matching and fixing unmatched entries, meaning the the matching process can now be completed in a fraction of the time. This won't affect existing users much, but new users should have a much easier time importing existing data into the site.
  • Despite the addition of new features, cellar load times should be slightly improved over the previous release, with bigger cellars seeing the biggest improvements thanks to low-level application adjustments.

What's New?

  • A number of new account settings are available, including default sort order (beer or brewery), the ability to disable the In Fridge column, and note and tasting note public visibility.
  • User messaging! Any user that has the feature enabled (all users are opted-in by default) can be messaged in order to facilitate trades, discuss beer, or generally shoot the shit. If you'd like to disable this feature, do so in the My Account area.
  • A new Drink By field is now available on all cellar entries, and a corresponding indicator will be displayed on all entries that have this field populated. You can control the public visibility of this indicator in the My Account area.

That covers the big items, though there are a number of smaller improvements sprinkled around the site that are not covered here. I have a lot of improvements planned for the coming months, and I expect far less downtime between releases given the improved code-base.

I'll detail those planned improvements in a later post, but in the meantime, enjoy the new site! And, as always, if you have any bug reports, usability issues, or feature requests, please let me know at @BeerCellarMe or via email at josh@beercellar.me.

I'm happy to announce that The Beer Cellar v2.0 will launch next week on Tuesday, March 29th!

Thanks to those who volunteered to help beta test, the new site has come along quickly, and I'm excited to get it into the hands of users. It's a big revamp and, while it's been rebuilt almost entirely from the ground up, the core functionality has been retained and improved. In no particular order, here are some things you can expect in the update:

  • Speed: all primary cellar management actions are now performed asynchronously, meaning no more full-page reloads after each add, edit, or delete operation. Existing entries can be edited inline, and new entries can be added dynamically.
  • Accuracy: thanks to a new Elasticsearch backend, searches for Beers and Breweries now handle "fuzzy" matches without issue, ensuring you can find the information you're looking for. As a result of these changes, the CSV import process should also achieve more accurate initial matches, and is much quicker when it comes to fixing unmatched entries.
  • Features: a bevy of new features will accompany the update, including but not limited to: sortable Drink By dates for entries; user toggles for default sort order and tasting note visibility; the ability to hide the "In Fridge" column; and user messaging.
  • Usability: in addition to the improved cellar management flow, the entire site has received a visual refresh utilizing darker tones for increased readability and, I hope, a more visually pleasing experience.
  • Security: when the new version goes live, the entire Beer Cellar site will switch to the HTTPS protocol, meaning all traffic will be encrypted.

I'll provide more details on launch day. You can expect the site to be down during the upgrade period on the evening of Monday, March 28th as I move things live and ensure everything is working as expected. In the meantime, I'd suggest holding off on any major cellar updates or imports, as everything should be much easier come next week!

Lastly, I'd like to thank my core of beta test users one more time for volunteering their free time to help ensure the upcoming version is up to snuff. Without your help, I'd be much more nervous about releasing the new version into the wild. Cheers, and if you're ever in town, I'll buy you a beer.

Beta Invites: Want One? March 8th, 2016

Beta invites for the the revamped Beer Cellar—might as well call it version 2.0—are going out this evening! I'm really excited to get this new work out there as it's a vast improvement over the current state of the application, but I'd like the help of any users who are willing in testing things before they go live. Ideally, we'll be able to work out any remaining kinks before deploying the new site to the entire userbase.

Some details follow, including info on how to receive an invite at the bottom.

  • The beta site is being hosted indepent of the live site so as not to interfere with normal site usage during the testing period. It will utilize a duplicate of the live database, but no live data will be affected—the beta environment is sandboxed.
  • While the entire beta site is up for grabs testing-wise, in particular I'm hoping for testers to focus most on a few specific areas:
    • Cellar Interface: the main cellar interface was rewritten from scratch and can now be managed entirely ascynchronously, meaning no more full-page reloads when adding new entries or working with existing ones. I've done a lot of testing here, but I wouldn't be surprised if users uncovered a bug or three.
    • Data Integrity: related to the main cellar interface, I'd like for testers to make sure those changes they make are being accurately reflected and maintained across uses. Things like beer/brewery/unique totals, in fridge and in cellar counts, etc.
    • Messages: this is a brand new feature allowing users to have threaded conversations with others on the site. It's a relatively self-contained feature, but some testing would nonetheless be useful.
    • CSV Import: while the underlying matching logic hasn't changed much, the Import interface was also rewritten using the new Add Entry flow. And thanks to improved beer/brewery searching with Elasticsearch, the final Fix Import stage can move a lot more quickly.
  • Some other new features to look out for and test:
    • A Drink By date can now be set for any beer entry, with a corresponding days remaining status displayed in each row
    • The Add Entry flow has been revamped so that you can still browse your cellar in the background when making an addition
    • Default Sort can now be set to Brewery instead of Beer, in the My Account area
    • There are additional My Account settings as well, including: an In Fridge toggle, a Drink By and Tasting Note public visibility toggle, and a toggle to enable or disable Messaging

With those testing caveats in mind, if you're interested in helping test version 2.0 of The Beer Cellar, I'd greatly appreciate it! You can either email me at josh@beercellar.me (please hit me up from your Beer Cellar address), or reply with your email address at @BeerCellarMe. You'll receive a response from me with further details.

Thanks in advance to all willing to help out, and for everyone else, I'm hoping to launch version 2.0 within the next couple weeks. Stay tuned.

A Status Update for 2016 February 16th, 2016

Despite rumors to the contrary, I am still alive, as is The Beer Cellar!

Obviously the previously promised update has not yet materialized—though it is still in the works (promise!)—so I wanted to post an update to let folks know what's up. The scope of the work has expanded over time, and I have not worked on things consistently, but below is an outline of the planned features and improvements, including a rundown of current progress and a few screenshots (click to enlarge).

Updated Aesthetic
One of the first things you'll notice in the included screenshots is a change in aesthetics. While the overall user experience should remain largely the same when it comes to managing your cellar (though faster and easier; see below), the site's palette has changed. While not one hundred percent locked down, I'm pretty happy with the shift after extensive use and find that the darker take makes things a bit more readable (and a lot less like an out-of-the-box Bootstrap UI).

User Messaging
One of the biggest truly "new" features is a system to message users, finally giving you an internal means of contacting other users for potential trades or other discussions. When launched, all users will be opted in and will be able to send/receive messages, but any user will be able to disable the messaging feature in their account settings. Initially the system will be limited to one recipient per message, with threaded histories for each conversation. This feature is technically complete, though some further tweaks may be introduced after user testing.

Asynchronous Cellar Management
Arguably the driving factor (for me) behind this refactor, the entire cellar management area has been redeveloped with speed and asynchronisity in mind. This means that when adding, editing, or deleting entries, the entire cellar page will no longer be reloaded—instead, changes will be processed via AJAX and reflected in place. Management tasks should take significantly less time to complete, and bulk adjustments (e.g., deleting a large number of entries) should cause far less headache. In addition, I am experimenting with a new bottom-docked entry overlay (in contrast to the current modal overlay) in order to keep most of your cellar visible and scrollable while adding new beers and breweries. This set of features is nearing completion, though some final JavaScript and UX work is still pending.

Community Moderation of Beer and Brewery Info
As more and more beers and breweries are added to the database, so too is more "bad" data acculumated, be it duplicate entries, misspelled beer names, or incorrect information. While I initially attempted to moderate these errors myself, the data set has long been too large for me to handle alone. So, in some form, I'll be introducing community moderation for beers and breweries, enabling users to correct these kinds of issues. This feature is not very fleshed out at the moment, and may be pushed to the release immediately after this one in order to get the new features out the door more quickly.

Other Additions
While not pictured in the screenshots, a few often requested additions will be included as well. These will include: a "Drink By" indicator of some kind (with user definable value); the ability to default sort your cellar by Brewery rather than Beer; the ability to change the email address associated with your account; an export for Tasting Notes; and an option to toggle visibilty of the "In Fridge" column for those that don't make use of it. Some other user requests, such as amount paid, entry copying, and more granular public visibility toggles will likely wait for the next update.

And lastly, speed! So far, using similar data as compared to the live environment, I've seen reductions in page size up to 30% and loading times up to 70%. These reductions may not be quite so large once I'm actually done, but I'm hopeful they'll remain significant.

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Next steps for me are to wrap up the cellar management work, shore up those areas of the site that have not yet been updated with the new UI, and implement any missing or newly broken features (the biggest of which is currently the CSV Import) to bring the refactored site up to parity in those areas. After that, I'll be soliciting some help from users to help beta test in a non-live environment with the updated application in order to root out any issues, especially any issues that might affect the integrity of your cellar data or other information in the database.  After that, we'll launch (though, having learned my lesson, I won't promise a hard and fast delivery date).

If you're interested in helping beta test when we get to that point, feel free to let me know that you're interested via email at josh@beercellar.me. Otherwise, keep on enjoying beer, and keep an eye on this blog or @BeerCellarMe for further updates!

The Refactor Cometh February 25th, 2014

I wanted to post a quick status update about the upcoming refactor, which continues (albeit more slowly than I'd planned—thanks in no small part to San Francisco Beer Week).  It's coming along nicely, and I'm excited about the new aesthetic for the site as well as the cleaner, quicker interface for doing common tasks with your cellar.

While that's brewing, however, I've pushed a quick fix up that should significantly decrease cellar loading times.  I've discovered a number of less than performant aspects in the existing code, but this particular fix was easy to move over to the live site, so I've done so.

Enjoy the better performance, and look for a site-wide refresh in the next month.  Cheers!