Eric
Posts: 17314
Joined: 10/10/2003
From: Seattle, WA
Status: offline
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At long last, February is the month where you will be able to get your hands on the new CellarTracker site.
This is coming Saturday, February 27th at 9AM Pacific time. It is 1AM Pacific right now, and I am finishing off a number of loose ends. I can't believe we are almost here after more than 15 months of working on this. Just a few more hours and hopefully a little bit of sleep too.
As a reminder, here is a sneak preview video and demo: http://www.screencast.com/t/OTE5MzVhNz
Over the next few weeks I will be making several changes under the covers. My goal is to do this with minimal disruption to the current CellarTracker site, but I am human and technology is brittle. - DONE 1/29: Set up a new URL/site to host the new interface. Apologies, there was a 5-minute brown out today as I wrestled with some web server configuration.
- DONE 2/8: I posted most of my remaining low-level database changes to enable the new site. I have been testing these like crazy, but there is always the chance that I will introduce glitches in the current site. There was a 12 minute advertised and planned outage from 3:02-3:14PM. HOPEFULLY no unplanned issues. These are low level changes, so you should see no difference.
- DONE 2/24: There are likely to be some residual mop-up database changes as I do final testing and catch a few things, so I may have an occasional planned outage for 10-15 minutes over the next few weeks. On 2/24 I am planning a much longer (a few hours?) late night outage to update some major tables and regenerate some caches
- PLANNED 2/27: BETA GOES LIVE! Probably around 9am Pacific. I need to get my morning coffee and then hunker down for the expected onslaught. It will be a busy weekend of questions and hopefully not too many glitches
- As a happy coincidence, RoundersRob pointed out that 2/27 is OTBN (Open That Bottle Night), so let's all open a special bottle that night to celebrate!
I have had MANY, MANY requests to be included in the beta. The beta will be open. My goal is that anyone or everyone will be able to use the beta. This will all be running in real time, on the same servers, against the EXACT same database as the current site. In fact you should be able to switch back and forth seamlessly. There are lots of features only exposed in the new site, but things should coexist happily with the current site. One rub is that the new site will have email notifications for some actions (e.g. if someone requests to be your 'friend', someone has commented on one of your tasting notes etc.), so people who are still sticking with the current CT may start getting notifications that are driving them to the new site. I will try to do what I can to make sure that everyone is aware before the beta goes out.
This beta will in fact be a beta, e.g. an 0.9 software version and not a 1.0. My goal is that if you want, you will be able to switch to it right away instead of the current CellarTracker site. My #1 goal is to get 100% of current users onto the new site, happily with no regrets. My hope is that most people will master the new site in less than 5-10 minutes, but I am taking a cautious, phased approach. I do still have a long list of things to finish before I can officially move everyone to the new site and decommission the current site. At a minimum I expect to take 2-3 months doing this, but realistically I think it will be mid-year before everything is all done and ready to cut over completely. In a number of areas in the new site you will see some obvious direction that Ill explore ever more deeply in the future, and in general the new site offers a much richer, more organized, more modern canvas which which I can innovate and iterate for you.
OK, I will stop rambling for now. Please bear with me for a few more weeks as I approach the finish line of this next phase. I am so very excited to have you all using this and doing everything I can to get it to you.
< Message edited by Eric -- 2/27/2010 12:53:47 AM >
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Cheers!
-Eric LeVine
http://twitter.com/cellartracker
http://facebook.com/cellartracker
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