With a bit of time to work on things before the holidays arrive, I've pushed a small batch of updates to the site. First up are messages, which now support basic Markdown text formatting. Emphasis (bold or italic), linked text, lists, and more can now be employed. I've already updated the messages generated when responding to user reported beer and brewery issues to utilize the new formatting.

Next up are cellar exports, which have received a new column: beer style. This is a user requested addition, and will include the style for all beers that have one defined. If you grab an export and notice any beers with missing styles, feel free to add them in your cellar.

Lastly, I've made a number of configuration changes around authentication, sessions, and timeouts to (hopefully) fix some issues with logging in and some CSV import errors. You shouldn't notice any of these changes if I did things right, and less weird behavior should be encountered in general.

Cheers all, and happy holidays!

I'm busy thinking through the next round of new features for The Beer Cellar, but in the meantime I wanted to bring attention to the many improvements and additions that were introduced over the past few months. For those users who are new to the site, and for those who haven't visited in a while, here's a brief overview of what's been happening.

• Most recently, the mobile site was upgraded to what I'm calling version 2.0, featuring an overhauled interface, improved management features, and greater feature parity with the desktop site.
• Storage locations, a more granular and customizable way to organize your cellar, were introduced. After disabling the In Fridge column and enabling Storage Locations in your account settings, you can now add unlimited custom locations and use them to organize your cellar any way you see fit.
• On the consumption side, a new graph-based interface is available via the Consumed area of your cellar. See your consumption habits plotted on an annual basis, along with style tracking.
• A number of community management features are now available to all users. Missing beer or brewery information can be added by users, and incorrect information can be reported and then fixed by moderators. Hundreds of errant records have already been corrected thanks to our users!

I'd also like to thank all the users who have reported beer and brewery issues, and those who have sent feedback and bug reports. I take note of all suggestions and feature requests (even if I don't promise to implement all of them), and always appreciate hearing from folks using the site.

If you'd like to get in touch with me for any reason, you can reach me via in-site message, email, or Twitter. Thanks for using The Beer Cellar, and santé!

While the desktop version of The Beer Cellar was recently revamped, the mobile experience was still in sore need of attention. To that end, I am happy to announce that mobile version 2.0 of the site is now live! To access the new version of the site, just visit https://www.beercellar.me on your mobile device.

The new mobile site now more closely matches the desktop aesthetic and experience. A number of mobile-specific quirks and issues have been remedied, and there is greater feature parity between the desktop and mobile sites. Specifically, the following areas have been enhanced or added:

• Sorting and filtering options on mobile have been improved substantially. In addition to Style filtering, Location filtering has also been added for those who utilize storage locations.
• Storage Location management and functionality is now more fully supported on the mobile site. You can enable storage locations, add and delete locations, and assign those locations to cellar entries as desired (and then sort by those locations in the main cellar interface).
• The site visuals have been updated to match v2.0 of the desktop site, and most of the mobile site's code and styling have been been refactored. This is a big update that touches most areas of the site.

       

    

I hope you enjoy the updated site! It underwent a period of beta testing before going live, but I still expect there to be a few bugs here or there, so if you encounter any issues please get in touch with me. You can email me, send me an in-site message, or hit me up on Twitter. Cheers!

After a couple months of work on and off, a revised and much improved version of the mobile site is ready for testing! I've implemented an almost complete rewrite of the mobile-specific code, ditching jQuery Mobile and its quirks for an overhauled aesthetic and functional experience. The mobile version now more closely matches the 2.0 re-design, many irregular behaviors specific to mobile have been corrected, and in general there should be greater feature parity as compared to the desktop version of the site.

       

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.

The beta period has ended and the new mobile site is now live. Thanks to everyone who helped test!

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.
• Updated 8/25: Storage Locations can now be added and deleted via the mobile site. For now, editing of existing Storage Location names is only available on the desktop site, and it will remain this way for at least the initial release.
• 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 josh@beercellar.me, 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.

Thanks in advance for your help! I'm really looking forward to pushing this work live, and hopefully that will be able to happen in the next week or two. I'll post another update as we near the live launch of the new mobile site, and in the meantime, cheers!

After finishing up the recent flurry of activity and taking a couple weeks off from serious site development, I decided to ease back into things with a "fun" feature addition: Consumption Graphing! Available via the Consumed area in anyone's cellar (see the new "View Graphs" button in the header), these charts are a preliminary pass at illustrating your consumption habits and history visually.

Click the above button in your Consumed area to display the charts below.

For now I'm featuring the two graphs above, Beers Consumed and Styles Covered. Graphs can be viewed on a per-year basis for every year you've been a member of the site, and graph values provide more information on hover. The Consumed graph charts your per-month bottle consumption for the specified year, while the Styles graph shows the styles represented by the bottles consumed in that year. In addition, some extra data is displayed alongside each graph, such as the total volume of beer consumed or your favorite style that year.

You'll also notice a new "Share" button on the Graphs page with an informative tooltip. As is also possible with the Cellar and Consumption History pages, all you need to do to share the new Graphs page is copy the URL and share it with whomever you'd like! As long as your cellar isn't marked as private, anyone can access this new area for any existing cellar.

I have some ideas for further graphing, e.g., total cellar size over time, brewery representation breakdown, and possibly some trade-related graphing, but I'm happy with this simple presentation for round one. If you notice any issues or have any suggestions, please feel free to let me know, as always. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy this new way to view your consumption habits!