What's Happening!?!

December 22, 2016

Why is the site different!? What is happening!?

Story time

Ok, we last did a full refresh of Beer Mapping back in 2012. That's a long time ago. We started working on a new update with a code rewrite earlier this year.

We decided to do an entire full rewrite of all the code. Some of the code for the site was dating back to 2006 or 2007 (a lot has changed in 10 years). Rewriting EVERYTHING took longer than expected. We were in the middle of finishing and we hit a problem. The filesystem of the site got compromised. This means that someone injected a file or two into the old site code that was being used as a relay to send out spam. Note: NONE of the user accounts or the database was hacked.

Because of this situation, we decided to go forward with finishing up as much of the code update as we could with the goal of wiping the site clean and starting fresh with all new code using the old/current database. It's been a long two weeks of as many spare moments as possible devoted to getting this far.

This is where we are now.

You are here

The main issue we have at the moment is that we dumped the old forums (which were very quiet and possibly the cause of the spam injection). And we have rewritten and set up a new user system with the old/current accounts brought over. We've always had your passwords encrypted so that even we couldn't see them, so when we ported things over, your passwords are gone. But your accounts with the email addresses you used to register still remain.

If you had an account here, all you need to do is click the "log in" button up top right, and then click "forgot password" and enter your email address and then you'll get a new link to setup a new password. Voila, you're back in your account. If you use Facebook, Twitter or Google+, now's a good time to also hook up those accounts so that you'll never need to remember your password if you need to login from another computer (as long as you're logged into your social media account already) You can hook up those accounts where you edit your profile. If you're logged in, look for the gear icon beside your name and hit the tab called "Connect."

What is new?

  • Everything is super mobile friendly. Or we hope it is. That was a goal.
  • We've changed the image upload system so that all images are stored offsite on Amazon's servers. Images are also getting resized on upload, so feel free to upload any size image you want and see what happens. Also, uploading from phones is super easy.
  • We've added a new Check-in system. You can now check into locations without reviewing them. Eventually we'll see how people are using this and possibly build check-ins into user account maps, so you can see where you've been.
  • Speaking of user account maps, we've added those back in. You can see yours on your account page. Once you're logged in, hit your name at the top right of the site and scroll down a bit to see your map. Here's mine.
  • The review process is totally rewritten, but still the same, so you might not notice.
  • The add a location process is updated. We search the name you're entering when adding a location and show you possible matches to make sure duplicate submissions aren't coming through as often.
  • The update location change functions have been rewritten so we can update things easier
  • The entire map system has been rewritten. There are no longer city maps and regional maps, they're all combined into one and the old urls should be redirecting properly. You can check that out on the front page. As you move around the map, pins will appear or disappear depending on where you are. Scroll out too far and you'll start seeing pin clusters. We have the map scroll locked a little so that you're not able to see 10,000+ locations at once (it takes more than 10 seconds for that many pins/locations to load).
  • The main maps now ask for your permission to locate where you are. If you allow this, we will give you the option to center the map on your location. This is handy on phones. Do it. We don't store this information or anything.
  • We've added a new user system with social logins from Facebook, Twitter and Google accounts. This will make it much easier for people to add reviews, images or new locations.
  • We've rewritten the entire admin functions (or at least 70% is finished). So hopefully we'll be able to add more administrators that can help keep things updated.
  • Lots of other things have changed too. But we forgot about them probably.
  • You can't still be reading this.

Tell us what you think

Talk to us on twitter or facebook or tell us what you think on the contact page. Or you can try commenting below. It's virtually untested though, so your mileage may vary.

via GIPHY

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