The Beer Cellar v2.0

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thanks for the async changes, that's great!

The fact that the brewery and the beer are now 2 different fields (as suggested in PM a few months ago) is a great change! I prefer browsing an account by brewery, much better! I can get rid of my JS script now ;) Happy that you changed this!

Missing the older CSS styling, but thats me :p
 
Posted an update detailing upcoming improvements, including database cleanup and an enhanced suite of trading features, and (further in the future) a revamped mobile version of the site.

Thanks to those using the site, and as always, if you have any feedback or issues, let me know.

https://www.beercellar.me/blog/whats-next
 
Another small round of updates: https://www.beercellar.me/blog/small-batch-updates

Feeling pretty good with the current state of the site, which means I can begin thinking about bigger picture updates. I think it's time to gear up and start working on fleshing out a trading infrastructure, e.g., search by beer/brewery for For Trade/ISO beers, some sort of "shopping cart" interface for proposing/dealing with trades, box out ISO lists into their own area so they don't clog up your main cellar, etc. Unlike the too-long refactor wait, I plan to release updates in a much more piecemeal manner, not save them all up for monolithic pushes. Development pace may not always be as quick as it's been recently, but hopefully I will avoid any more long procrastinatory stretches ;)

I'm also planning to to flesh out Messaging a bit (as it's quite a simple implementation/interface at the moment), revamp the mobile interface (not much new functionality but I want to ditch jQuery Mobile and go with something more modern), and add other miscellaneous smaller features. Among the various things I have on my possible to-do list are:
  • Export tasting notes (definitely planned, as a companion function to current CSV export ability)
  • Ability to hide individual entries, rather than the whole cellar, from public view (possibly planned, though I may instead address this via trading infrastructure and interface)
  • Add user-definable "storage" column to cellar, e.g., "Box 1", "Fridge 2" type info (probably doing this one, will work in conjunction with current "Disable In Fridge" feature, so if that column is disabled you'll have the option to bring in the custom location column instead)
  • Maybe add some other fields like Amount Paid (contingent on ability to do so without compromising the interface or usability)
  • Some graphing features would be fun (consumption graphing, graph by style, etc.), but this is low on the totem-pole as I'd like to focus on more functionally oriented changes first
And that's everything I can think of off the top of my head. Feel free to pass along any other suggestions; no promises I'll implement a given request, but I'm happy to read and respond to pretty much all user feedback!

Cheers, and hope you guys are enjoying the site.
 
New feature that I think "power" users will like: custom storage locations.

https://www.beercellar.me/blog/new-feature-custom-storage-locations

I wrote up the feature in full at the link above, but the gist of it is:
  • If you disable the "In Fridge" column, you can optionally display a new "Location" column
  • Locations are user-definable, you can specify as many as you need, and all locations can be edited after creation (and all beers with the edited location will reflect your changes)
  • Those with the feature enabled will have any specified locations available when adding/managing beers
  • The site's CSV import has also been upgraded to optionally support importing a spreadsheet with a location column, and will automatically generate location records for any locations you import
Not many folks have disabled the "In Fridge" column (at least, not yet), so I expect this will only be used by a small percentage of the user base, but I know some folks have absolutely enormous cellars that might benefit from more granular organization. On that note, I also made a couple performance enhancements that are, from what I can tell, decreasing initial load times for very large cellars by a good margin.

Only other update is the My Account area got a bit of a facelift, both to accommodate the increasing number of account options available, and to add an area for managing your custom storage locations. Cheers!

P.S. A cheat for anyone already on the site who'd like to use this feature but dreads the task of manually adding a Location to all their existing entries: if you export your cellar as CSV from the My Account area, you could add a Location column to that file, specify all your locations offline in the spreadsheet, then re-import with the "delete all existing entries in cellar on import" option available at the bottom of the final import step.
 
New feature update! Time for some beer graphing fun time: https://www.beercellar.me/blog/beer-graphing-fun-time

Can check out full details in the blog post, but here's a shot of the new consumption graphing area.

graphs.png
 
Been a couple months since the last update, but I've finally readied the revamped mobile interface for The Beer Cellar and it's available for beta testing. Quoting the relevant portion of the following blog post below:

Before this new version goes live, however, I need your help! Specifically, I'm looking for folks willing to spend a little time in a beta, sandboxed environment in order to work out whatever bugs and kinks might be present. I expect at least a few given the scope of this overhaul, so your assistance and feedback are greatly appreciated.

If you'd like to help test the new mobile site, visit https://beta.beercellar.me on your mobile device and log in with your existing credentials.

A few important things to keep in mind while testing:
  • The beta site is not linked to the live site data, meaning any changes you make to your cellar in the beta environment wont affect your actual cellar data on the live site. As such, I encourage folks to go nuts when testing! Add and manage beers, drink and delete beers, alter your cellar interface settings, send messages, etc. None of it will affect anything outside the beta environment.
  • There are a few areas of mobile site functionality that will be added prior to the live launch, but for now the only big caveat is that storage locations cannot be defined via the mobile interface. If you use or would like to test storage locations, please add them via the desktop site (also using the beta URL specified above).
  • As this test is meant to root out any issues prior to the live launch, please report any bugs or problems you encounter! You can reach me via email at [email protected], with an in-site message, or hit me up on Twitter. Please include the type of mobile device you're testing with and your current OS version when making reports, if possible.

Note that you can also create a new account in the beta environment if you'd like to play around with things, though this won't carry over to the live site (you'll need to create an account there as well if desired). Hopefully I'll get this new mobile interface live in a week or so!

Lastly, here are a few screens of the new interface:

newmobile_1.PNG
newmobile_4.PNG
newmobile_5.PNG
 
Had some various fixes lately. Specifically, if you've ever tried my CSV import and ran into errors around your CSV not being properly formatted (even though it was), that should now hopefully be resolved. Also fixed some issues around authentication issues, timeouts, and form errors.

If anyone has trouble logging in, BTW, try a password reset. Possible it might be necessary for some folks.
 
First off, fixed yet another bug that was affecting mobile login. Hoping this was the last one! If you've had troubles logging in from your phone in the past, this should hopefully be fixed.

Secondly, I'm soliciting feedback for upcoming beer trading features. If you have any thoughts in this area, check out the blog post and feel free to get in touch! https://www.beercellar.me/blog/thoughts-on-trading-beer
 
The Beer Cellar is sporting a new, swankier URL. You can now find the site at https://cellar.beer. I've been sitting on this domain for a while, and coupled with the work detailed below, I figured it was time to make it live. The old URL will redirect automatically, so no worries about updating existing links. I think the new address is pretty cool, if you don't mind my saying so!

On a related note, I've changed the official Twitter account for The Beer Cellar to match the new URL. While existing followers won't need to do anything, in the future you can find and follow me at @CellarDotBeer.

In addition, and in anticipation of upcoming work around trading features, I decided to refactor the site's styling in SCSS. I took the opportunity to make some changes, and the result is a new aesthetic for The Beer Cellar. Things have gotten a bit lighter, less rounded, and a little more modern, but the site should still feel very familiar for existing users. If anything looks off or isn't rendering properly, please refresh your browser to ensure you're seeing the latest changes. Some screenshots of the new look are available below.



The mobile site is still using the same look introduced in v2.0, but I'm planning to take a styling pass there as well. I'll make another announcement when those updates launch.

As always, if you have any questions, suggestions, or issues, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me. You can contact me by email at [email protected], on Twitter at @CellarDotBeer, or via in-site message. Santé!
 
Pushed a number of bug fixes since the latest release, including fixes for:
  • "...website unavailable..." errors on some Android devices
  • Forms for adding new breweries/beers now have their values properly cleared when adding multiple new records in a single session
  • Disabled weird fullscreen website mode that occurred after saving the site to your home screen on phones. If you've noticed this behavior, just re-save the site to your home screen to fix.
  • Various other styling fixes
  • When importing from CSV, the final "fix" step now shows you the original record data as it appeared on your spreadsheet for each entry when editing/adding values. This is useful for cases in which you accidentally match something incorrectly or inadvertently delete a value.
Still working on moving the mobile site styling revamp, and I'm happy with the direction of the new look--much cleaner, no more round rects, and easier to scan with the lighter colors. Should hopefully have that work done and released in the next couple weeks.
 
Pushed some small updates to sorting functionality last night. There's now a new Filter by Brewery option that lets you view a single brewery's entries at a time; more parity between desktop and mobile sorting options; and some under the hood improvements which should increase sort operation speeds in some cases. https://cellar.beer/blog/cellar-sorting-updates-improvements

If like me you often want to pull a series of beers from the same brewery, the new Filter by Brewery option is quite handy for quick looks!
 
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