VeloBase.com - Updates Part II
 

Since it seems the Search index is still being rebuilt and can't find the original thread, I'll just start a new one for the December Update! Current members of the site, check your inboxes and spam boxes as you should have a copy of this in the email account you registered under.

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Valued VeloBase.com Members,

Happy Holidays from VeloBase.com! It is already time for the December Semi-Monthly site update and there is much to tell so I will get straight to it. First off, the growth of the website is staggering. When I sent the last update on October 12th we had just hit 500 components, today we are nearing 1200, with over 130 individual brands and manufactures represented! A few of the newest additions include the Assos aero section rim, Avocet RS saddle, Lyotard 460D pedal, Weinmann Alloy & Steel stem, Houdalille EX Powercam crank, and Shimano SP-7320 seat post from the Dura-Ace AX group. Over a 100% increase in a span of less than two months. Add on 100 individual head badges (the newest representing the Jan De Reus brand of Holland), 51 vintage tools (5 new VAR tools added this week), and 60 catalog scans (two new Palo Alto shop catalogs!) contributed by many of the nearly 250 registered users and VeloBase.com is already exceeding all of my wildest hopes when I started this project back in June.

In the last two months I have been making a number of functional and visual changes and upgrades to the website to provide a smoother and pleasing user experience on the site, as well as fixing a fair number of minor errors that popped up along the way. I thank all of the members who brought these to my attention and help in getting them resolved as quickly as possible. The following are a few of the major changes made:

1) VeloBase.com Announcements page posts detail of the most recent updates on VeloBase.com, including these Semi-Monthly updates, release notes, and more.

2) VeloBase.com Discussion Forum is a basic discussion area, also where you can find the archived announcements, discussion on announcements, and more.

3) Opt-in / Opt-out of Announcement emailings. Found in the Edit User Profile you can control the amount of email you receive from VeloBase.com's Announcement system. I try to limit the number of announcements outside these semi-monthly mailings so changing these settings won't suddenly cause a flood of emails.

4) New Quick Search Options for Components, now do a quick text search by Component Name or Group Name.

5) The View Single Head Badge page, and the ability to add more than one photo per head badge.

6) Photo Search. Now browse some or all of the photos uploaded of Components. Provides quick filters to select just the photos you want to browse, and links to the full Component listing.

7) Upgraded (or actually finished) the Variation system. Allowing you to link two similar components together as variations of one another. A variation might be two cranksets that were produced for one group, or a derailleur which was marketed under multiple brands, etc.

The Full list of changes and upgrades can be found in the News & Announcements section of the VeloBase Forum.

And if that wasn't enough, there are even bigger changes and upgrades in the works. I am currently working on a revamp of the entire Brand and Group system for Components. The changes are aimed at making the database much more flexible in linking components to a certain group. It is a fact that some manufactures used the same component in multiple groups, or a component might have been a part in multiple groups over multiple brands. These changes aim to allow those associations to be created, tracked and displayed. There will be a View Group page where one can see a general overview of the group they are interested in, and link to all of the components currently associated with that group. I also intend to upgrade the Year range data for Components which will allow to search and filter by a time frame. I have not set a date for the release of these changes, but when the time comes it will be necessary to bring the site down for a time period of probably about an hour. I will try to schedule it when traffic to the site is at a low point during the day. Once these changes are released, I will post an Announcement on the velobase forum covering all of the new content and functionality of the release.

Hope everyone has a safe and happy Holiday Season. It might just be the perfect time to unwrap and photograph some of your stored vintage cycling treasures to share on VeloBase.com. I'm also interested in expanding the Articles section of the website, contact me to find out more. As always, I'm open to suggestions, ideas, questions and any other feedback you wish to provide on how to make VeloBase even better.

Wow, that's simply amazing. Now all you need to do is start a forum :) to go along with the site.

Just kidding :eek: !

East Hill

See #2 above. Though I have no plans, nor hopes, that it ever becomes as big as BF's C&V!!

I was not paying attention, was I!

I'm blaming my lack of attention to detail on working on my family tree and trying to keep all those people with the same exact name over five generations straight... :p .

Even if it never gets as big as here, it will still be civil, polite, entertaining, and informative :) .

East Hill

This morning I've got a bit of time to hammer on the new Group changes. I'm really liking how its coming back together and look forward to deploying all these changes (hopefully) in less than a week. Just depends on how much work I have to get done and how complete I want the new system to be when I make the first deploy.

It looks really good over there at VeloBase. I am a new user there now, also GT2005. Thanks for a fine site with lots of useful bike information. -GT2005

GT, thanks. It's been a lot of work, but so much more fun. Recently I got to photograph, weigh, and just plan see some very cool rare stuff that has since been uploaded to velobase (stuff form Galli, Assos, etc). It's very cool to have a place to share these rare parts with the entire community. :) First thing I do in the morning after turning on the computer is check BikeForums and the "recent content" section of velobase to see what has been added/updated since I last looked.

FYI: Velobase.com will be down for about an hour Saturday night starting around 8pm CST (-6 GMT). I'm deploying a fairly major upgrade which includes some database changes which will do very unfriendly things to the site till all of the new code is also in place. Details and further announcements will be posted as needed.

New round of updates released and noted here: Announcements
Component count is now over 1400! Add on top of that over 100 head badges, 85 vintage tools and much more!

Some very cool changes to the Quick Search sections, details little later when I get home. For now, go check it out. ;)

You don't need a reynolds 531 professional sticker photograph do you?

I think I might have one that hasn't been added yet, but if you have a good photo I certainly wouldn't turn it down!

Ok, now an update to my slightly cryptic post earlier this evening (sorry it took two and a half hours to get back to it, but wife and I went to dinner straight after work). Ok, I've been playing around with some development tools called AJAX. Any techies out there might know what it is, but in short it is about as close to magic as it gets when it comes to speedy development of powerful web based asp pages. Lots of very cool little gadgets that would take me weeks to years to write on my own that I can add to a page in minutes. Here's what I've added so far:

1) Star Ratings. You've had the ability to rate a Component by Quality and Rarity before, but now you have a set of stars to click on to choose the rating instead of a plain old drop down box.

2) Expanding panels. I've added some of these to the Help & FAQ page. There are currently 3 sections that you can click on to expand to see the detail information. I plan to rewrite the FAQ using a similar setup in the near future. For now these expanding sections allows the initial page to be smaller to find what you are looking for faster.

3) Watermark, Filtering & Field Validation on new Production Years section of the Add New Component screen. I am in the process of rewriting the handling for Production Year Range which will allow users to search by year, and this set of fields are the first step in that. You can either supply a exact year or an approximate year (mid 1980's, early 1970's, etc) with these fields. Currently the new fields are for add component only, but the edit page will be updated soon. The 'watermark' notes the fields for exact years, the input filtering prevents anything but numbers from being entered in the text box for exact year. And some cool field validation boxes appear if you input a year outside the allowed range.

4) Auto Complete dropdowns for the Name, Group and new Model search text fields on the Quick Search page. Start typing in the brand name, group name, or model name that you are searching for and a list of valid values in the system appear that you can choose from (or just continue typing in exactly the search phrase you want). Additionally I have made it where you can search for multiple groups or model numbers by separating the values by ';'.

More new stuff to come, feel free to poke around the site and as always I welcome feedback to make the site better.

You have my permission to use this picture. I'll take a better one once there's some light outside, that's the best I could do without real outside light. My frame makes the flash go crazy because it's metallic purple (aka shiny!).

Some cool (at least to me) changes on velobase. The full list is over in the Announcements area on the website. But for my friends here on BikeForums I'll give you the highlights.

1. Year Range has been revamped to allow for searching by year range. Quick Search now has a section that allows you to search for components made in a decade. This was a user requested feature some time ago. I know they were a BF C&V regular but I forget exactly who it was that stated the obvious that it would be a desired feature.

2. Most Wanted Updates List. Just like the name suggests, there are a lot of updates and missing data in the Velobase.com database and here is a place to see what needs what information added. You can filter what information, what categories, etc etc you want to see the list for. By default it shows the top 25 components that are missing Date Range or Flagged for Incorrect Information. See the list here: http://velobase.com/ComponentMostWanted.aspx

3. Component Search options have been collected and put in a Menu on the left hand side navigation mast. Instead of each type of search listed, they are all under "Component Search" which shows each option when you hover over. This puts more of the features of VeloBase.com on the screen in that left hand navigation area.

4. RSS Feeds. If you're a techie and knows what RSS is, you'll know what this is about. Else, check out the link on this page for the wiki info on this technology. http://velobase.com/FeedList.aspx

5. Lastly, I've created a little page with a bunch of Data Statistics about the information on Velobase.com. It was mostly an exercise in one of asp.net's AJAX controls, but supplies some interesting insights into what the site holds. http://velobase.com/DataStatistics.aspx

It may have been me. When I am looking for period correct, I thought it would be nice to see all of the options available. I also like to see the development of parts as times passes. Thanks for putting in the feature.

iab - I think it was you in fact.

I like to keep the community involved in development and get their feedback to changes. I've made some changes that members didn't like so I've changed them back in the past. It's all about what works for those who use it.

btw - if anyone was getting errors early this morning trying to view the site, it appears that my webhost had a problem with the database server that my site runs on. I'm guessing it was down for about 1-2 hours or so. Freaked me the heck out when I saw it too. :eek: But all is well now and things seem to be running smoothly.

Appears I broke the Add New Component earlier today after the last deploy. Not sure what the problem is, but I'm going to venture to guess that it has something to do with the SQL Injection Prevention code that I put in. Hope to have it fixed tomorrow as I have a few new components to add and don't want to turn anyone else off from doing the same.