Ready for consumption on both desktop and mobile clients, a handful of sorting improvements are now available. Details are as follows:

• A new Filter by Brewery option is now available, which lets you view all the entries from a specific brewery.
• The Filter by Location option, previously only available on mobile, has been added to the desktop site, allowing you to show only entries from the specified location. (This only affects users with Storage Locations enabled.)
• On the desktop site, Trade Status filtering has been condensed into a single drop-down list, and you can now filter by entries with no status, along with the usual For Trade and In Search Of options.

In addition to the updates above, I spent a little time on a mild refactor of the sorting code, which should result in slightly quicker sort operations in some circumstances. Enjoy!

Fueled by many a crowler from Fieldwork Brewing here in Berkeley, CA, the mobile redesign is now complete. This revamp brings the mobile experience and aesthetic in line with the styling introduced in the recent desktop update, and includes a number of enhancements meant to increase usability on the go. Some screenshots of the new look are included below.

    

Additionally, because I am a crazy person even when it comes to the aesthetic of cellar URLs, I've also taken this opportunity to update cellar addresses to use Twitter-style routing. What this means is that, while you could previously find your cellar at https://cellar.beer/cellar/[username], your cellar is now located at https://cellar.beer/[username]. For example, you can find my cellar at https://cellar.beer/josh

All existing cellar links with the old /cellar syntax will redirect to the new location, so there's no need to update any links to your cellar out in the wild if you don't want to. And while I've tested this feature extensively, I'd appreciate it if you let me know of any strange behaviors that I might not have accounted for.

Lastly, this release includes a smattering of other updates and bug fixes:

• Brewery and Beer add forms are now properly cleared when adding multiple breweries or beers in succession.
• The mobile site no longer defaults to "app" mode when adding the link to your home screen. If you notice the site is in a non-standard full screen mode, try deleting your home screen link and re-adding the site from your browser.
• On the desktop site, when viewing your consumed history in expanded mode, pagination links now retain your view preference.
• Fixed an issue where some Android clients wouldn't connect to the website due to HTTP/2.

As usual, this release took longer than anticipated, but I'm really happy with the new look and I hope you enjoy it as well. There's definitely enough change here to introduce some new bugs (though I hope not!), so if you notice anything strange please message me, shoot me an email, or mention me on Twitter. Santé!

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 josh@cellar.beer, on Twitter at @CellarDotBeer, or via in-site message. Santé!

As the Reserved Instance leases were up for both the EC2 and RDS pieces of the site, I wanted to do some testing in other environments. After a bit of looking around, I decided to give Linode a shot, and The Beer Cellar has now been migrated to one of their servers.

On the user end, if I did everything correctly, no one should notice a thing. In fact, loading speeds may actually be measurably quicker for some users, as the database—the primary bottleneck for those with large cellars—is now served from an SSD. There is now also considerable CPU and memory headroom, which won't hurt.

Enjoy! And if you notice anything awry, please don't hesitate to let me know.

My plan for the next major feature addition to The Beer Cellar is to tackle beer trading. While support for marking cellar entries as For Trade (FT) or In Search Of (ISO) has been there from the beginning, I'd like to implement a more robust way to manage separate lists of beers on offer and beers you're looking for, as well as provide an easy interface for matching up with other users to propose trades.

Development of these features is in the early stages, and I wanted to solicit some feedback on what's important to users who would utilize trading before moving too far forward. I'm interested in hearing about the following:

• How should For Trade lists be organized?
  I'm pretty sure that the new trade lists, both for FT and ISO beers, should be separated from the main cellar management interface. This will reduce complexity, allow trading-specific features to be displayed only where contextually appropriate, and provide the opportunity for users to link directly to trade lists, rather than their full cellar, when desired. But some issues I'm undecided on are whether there should be one list each for FT and ISO beers, or multiple per; whether lists should be directly linked to current cellar contents, meaning completing a trade would automatically remove FT beers and add received beers to your inventory; and whether there should still be some indication of FT/ISO beers reflected in your main cellar.
• What sort of feedback mechanisms should be in place?
  While The Beer Cellar will make it clear that you trade at your own risk, some sort of feedback and rating mechanism seems necessary in the world of trading. While 99% of traders are great, it's never fun to be bit by the 1% of bad actors out there. I'm hopeful that the nature of this site, and the time investment necessary to get a big cellar input and organized, will provide a higher than usual barrier to entry for would-be malicious traders, but a public profile of past trades can help weed out any that do make it through. With that in mind, what kinds of feedback and ratings systems do folks find most helpful? Should I also provide a means of linking to reputation profiles on other sites? Etc.
• How to handle trades with non-Beer Cellar users?
  While trades between users on the site will be more straightforward in terms of communication, I suspect a large number of trades will be conducted with folks who are not account holders here. I'm wondering what kinds of feedback non-users should be able to leave for users they complete trades with (or whether any would-be commenters should be required to create an account to leave feedback), and what sort of access non-users should have to FT/ISO lists and the searchable database of outstanding beers on offer?

These are just some of the areas I'm thinking about, and I'd love to hear from anyone interested in this space, even if your thoughts are about something that wasn't touched on above. If you have any ideas, questions, concerns, or brilliant master plans around trading, please get in touch! You can reach me via email at josh@beercellar.me, hit me up on Twitter at @BeerCellarMe, or shoot me an in-site message. And in the meantime, santé!