Brewer's Friend development stopped?

I'm checking now. I was supposed to have a guy starting this week but have not had any updates.
 
Alright, I just got a hold of the developer who's starting and I have asked for a game plan that I can share with you all.

I will keep you posted.
 
He's getting the game plane together. I hope to know more in the next couple of days.
 
Good to know. But another concern I have is -- who is maintaining this service? It all sounds as if the previous developer was doing everything and then just stopped overnight and now there is nobody who is technically running the system. What if database crashes, for example?

BR,
JB
 
I have developer to server level issues, just not one to develop presently.

Josh, the new developer, is going to get me a game plan together by next week in terms of site development. There is some server maintenance he needs to do first but after that we'll have a plan in place.

I'll let you guys know as I get any more information.
 
I would love to see a bit more openness about. How people that is running, owning and developing it is. Having all development stopped in such a long period is not very reassuring. I would suggest making the development of the site a bit more process then it up to no now have been.
 
Here's the breakdown from Josh, our incoming developer.

October 2014
Move Brewer’s Friend site and API to new servers
Move web server to newest AWS image with more CPU and memory resources
Move Database to dedicated and managed MySQL server
Load codebases into version control
More Authentication Options
Ability to log in through Facebook
Log in through Google+
Recipe photos
Ability to add photos to recipes and show them on recipe browse pages, brew sheets, etc.

November 2014
Social recipe actions
Liking recipes
Following and Friending brewers

December 2014
Calculation issues and investigation
SRM Calculations
Brix to FG
Custom Fermentable calculations
Dilution and Boil Off
etc
Misc bugs
Address feedback and reported issues with:
Login
App syncing
Account upgrades
etc.
Future
General Brewer Notes
Favorite Links
General brewing notes
Brew Sheet Updates
Customizable content
Add missing recipe details to brew sheet
App additions
Priming calculator
Scale recipes
Water calculator
Save Unit Preferences
Brew Session Efficiency
Recipe detail additions
Specific timing for boiling of fermentables
Fermentation process details, including specific steps, durations, and temperatures
Ingredient Selection & Custom Ingredients
Ability to modify an existing ingredient and create a custom version
Selecting from the pool of all custom and built-in ingredients based on most popular versions
ingredient auto-population and searching inline on recipe page
Data Updates
Rahr, Mr. Beer, etc. ingredients added to DB
Pre-hopped LME ingredients
Style updates
New yeasts (Yeast Bay, etc.)
Brewing schedule
Add full schedule of all brew phases to “My Brew Sessions”
Homepage updates
Show popular recipes, styles, etc. on homepage to promote navigation
Show dashboard on homepage when logged in
Misc. Visual updates, e.g.:
Link logo to homepage
Improve touch-friendly version of site
Replace native dropdown at mobile scale with more organized hierarchy
Hop image, gear icon, default avatar, etc. could be more coherent and visually cleaner
Make font sizes, buttons, etc. more consistent and scale-friendly
Brewer Equipment Photos
What to Brew page
Style detail pages
Ingredient detail pages
Recipe Comments
Replace third party plugin with in-house comment tracking
Add comments to Brew Sessions
Water Profile
Ability to save base water profiles in chemistry tool
Water calculator integrated inline into recipe page
Display of impact of different Salt additions
Android App
Windows Phone App
AJAX
inline saving and editing on recipe fields
Additional Social Features
Recipe Tags, tag clouds, etc.
Ability to order recipe ingredients

So that's the road map currently.
 
That's a lofty goal for December. :p I'm assuming that's a list for December and later.
 
Austin,

thanks for sharing this, very encouraging! Good to see things are moving.

However, I have a question about the order of tasks. I hope these were taken by the amount of actual requests from people? Because I see the initial tasks include quite some social network stuff which I'd argue is not a primary concern for brewing software..

I'd like to draw attention to one hugely missing functionality -- to be able to customise brew day steps! Last time I checked it had quite a lot of support by people, requesting the same thing. Could this be taken forward to be implemented soon?

BR,

JB
 
Vaat said:
Austin,

thanks for sharing this, very encouraging! Good to see things are moving.

However, I have a question about the order of tasks. I hope these were taken by the amount of actual requests from people? Because I see the initial tasks include quite some social network stuff which I'd argue is not a primary concern for brewing software..

I'd like to draw attention to one hugely missing functionality -- to be able to customise brew day steps! Last time I checked it had quite a lot of support by people, requesting the same thing. Could this be taken forward to be implemented soon?

BR,

JB

I don't know how the order was decided, but I will discuss with him that there are greater issues we need to address. He will be taking my role in the next couple of months, and I'm sure at that point he will ask for more opinions.
 
just a note these api scripts that use Google and yahoo and others only slow the site down based on my experience...sorry but been there lol
 
The site has an API? Is it a RESTful one that others could use to build their own things with (that is documented)?
 
The site has an API? Is it a RESTful one that others could use to build their own things with (that is documented)?

I think Ozarks was referring to APIs brewer's friend is consuming. I don't think brewer's friend is exposing an API. Would be a cool thing though, I could imagine our brewpi interacting with the brew session, automatically adding log entries, etc.
 
October 2014
Move Brewer’s Friend site and API to new servers
Move web server to newest AWS image with more CPU and memory resources
Move Database to dedicated and managed MySQL server
Load codebases into version control
More Authentication Options
Ability to log in through Facebook
Log in through Google+
Recipe photos
Ability to add photos to recipes and show them on recipe browse pages, brew sheets, etc.

If all of this really is taking place this month. Where is this happening and why should not the users know anything about it?
 
I'm sorry but I don't understand what you mean. We did tell you guys. Did I miss something?
 
steinmb said:
October 2014
Move Brewer’s Friend site and API to new servers
Move web server to newest AWS image with more CPU and memory resources
Move Database to dedicated and managed MySQL server
Load codebases into version control
More Authentication Options
Ability to log in through Facebook
Log in through Google+
Recipe photos
Ability to add photos to recipes and show them on recipe browse pages, brew sheets, etc.

If all of this really is taking place this month. Where is this happening and why should not the users know anything about it?

We already migrated Brewer's Friend to a new hosting environment, now that has been completed the other tasks are being worked on.

There is a bit of larger news. After acquiring Brewer's Friend it took us some time to learn the in's and out's, then we compiled a huge lists of bugs that needed to be fixed as well as development features. After that we wanted to find a partner that could act as manager for development that also was a very advanced brewer. So a very niche position to move Brewer's Friend forward correctly. One option fell through and we finally came to a match with Josh Smith's BrewPrint.com. So now Josh is on board with moving forward with Brewer's Friend development. We will be migrating the recipes and users from BrewPrint plus some technology over the next month, then closing BrewPrint for him to mange Brewer's Friend.

So there has been a lot of what is perceived as downtime in development but not for us and now the wheels are in motion to have steady updates on a monthly basis.
 
Thanks for this update. That all sounds a real thing, very encouraging.

I now just hope the customizable brew steps feature will be implemented soon and then I'm very happy!
 
I am stoked that BF will be taking off in an awesome direction.

Can not wait to see what the future holds for us!

T
 
@TxBrew for the update :) @TxBrew and @Austing what I was saying was more and less: Talk is talk and code is code. I would personally like a little more official transparency, perhaps able to see/follow these bigger changes in from blog posts/issue tracker. I hope you guys understand that after no code visible change in the code base for a rather long time people get a little nervous? Any plans to sum already done changes/state in a blog post? Last one is pushing one year ago ( Friday, November 8th, 2013 )
 

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