Posts Tagged ‘Website Features’

A notebook, a list, and a couple of beers.

Five years ago, this site started out as an idea on a napkin. We’ve gone from tracking a few beer releases between friends in town, to serving over 150,000 pages each year to users all over the world (96 countries in the last few months, according to a quick glance at the stats).

Sunday’s site relaunch was implemented for several reasons. We wanted to make sure that the content was easy to find, especially in cases where there is a lot of data. So, beers are now easier to find, sort, and compare; maps are a bit more interactive; and the blog is much more organized. There are also a lot of behind the scenes features that were added to make it easier for us to get the content up and delivered to all of the areas of the site as well as to the users subscribing to our feeds. This makes our overall process much easier, allowing us to focus on the content, and not trying to unravel the ever-growing technology infrastructure.

We are also going to be experimenting with different advertising options. We will keep these as out of the way as possible, but as the site and traffic grow, we need this to offset our costs. This site is a labor of love, and we’ve never made a cent from running it. But we do incur costs to keep it up and running and those costs grow as the site grows. We’ve never intended to turn this into a money making machine, but we also never intended on investing so much money into it. So, these ads are just a simple way of offsetting these costs. Our primary goal is getting Portland beer information out to you, so if you ever feel that our advertising is intrusive, please let us know.

As for the future, well, we’re going to need some help. We’d like to bring on a few more contributors to make sure that we’re not missing anything. Nope, we don’t pay. However, you get media access to some of the events, you get to propose and write your own stories, you get a better excuse for drinking so much beer, and glorious local fame. If you see yourself as a lover of beer, a writer of tall tales, and a self-motivator, get in touch. Use our contact form to let us know you’re interested and we’ll give you more details.

Of course, many of these changes were made because of suggestions by you—so if you have any other ideas, get in touch.  Cheers!

Over the years, we’ve had to make our website has bigger, better, faster, and stronger. This is because the owners have become older, slower, and lazier–and something had to make up for that! We’ll talk about some of the new features and some of our future plans in upcoming posts, but for now, we’re just going to breathe a sigh of relief and switch into bug fixing mode.

We’ve done our best to make this a smooth transition, but there are a few things that still need to be finished. Rather than delaying the launch (again), we’re finally pushing it live so that we can regroup and make sure that we’re getting back to the content side of things. This is the best time to let us know if something needs to be fixed, or if you just want to see something that we don’t have.

So, take a peek around and let us know what you think!

Cheers!

Many of you have asked for this feature, so here it is. For lack of a better name, we’ll call it the “Find beers like this one” tool. I know it doesn’t really roll off the tongue, but what’s in a name anyway?

In our beer lists, you’ll now see the tag “Find beers like this one” at the end of the description of many of the beers on the site. In order to be part of this feature, the beer must include a certain number of stats so that the tool can do it’s job. For some beers, this information is not available, and this feature will not be available.

To use this new tool, just click on the link under the description and our database monkeys will go to work and deliver a list of similar beers. I know, it seems like magic, but it’s really only monkeys making guesses, pushing buttons, and flipping switches. These monkeys compare styles, IBUs, ABV, Plato, and other proprietary weights and measure to give you the most accurate list.

So there you have it, one more tool in your arsenal for finding great Portland beer! As always, keep sending us your feedback and do our best to make this your Portland beer home!

Sure, we drink a lot of beer, but that’s not all we do. We also do some work. It is our ultimate goal to make sure that you can find the beer you’re looking for in Portland. We’ve already got customizable lists, beer and style sorting, but honestly, with over 200 beers listed on our site, it’s a lot of freaking information.

To simplify the process, we’ve added the Beer Finder tool to our site. The idea is simple: if you can remember part of a beer name, type it in and we’ll make suggestions based on your input. For example, if the only thing you can remember about a beer is that the work black was in the name, just type it in and we’ll match it to our database. As you can see in the image above, we’ll narrow down your search–just click on a beer name, hit Get Beer Info, and get the details.

Hopefully, this helps you to get closer to the beer you’re looking for. Check it out and let us know what you think!

Helping you find your perfect beer!

After the redesign of our site, we want to make sure that people are checking out the other areas of our site, and not just the wonderful blog area. Of course, in the blog section, you can find articles, news, events, photos, and almost everything else you need. Almost.

It made sense for us to consolidate a few areas together for the blog, but there are still some great features that exist outside of the blog. For example, did you know that you can print up or save dynamic PDF beer to-do lists, based on our current inventory of 199 beers brewed in Portland? Damn right! 199! In fact, you can customize your lists to include things like: All Pale Ales in Portland, or All Beers from Amnesia Brewing, or All IPAs available at Laurelwood.

Print it up, put it in your pocket, and make a weekend out of it. Check it out in the tools section. Let us know what other tools you’d find handy while exploring Portland’s beer scene!