It's been a while since I've posted what's happening with VeloBase.com. Well here's the latest. What I'm working on, in no particular order...

First, there is going to be a new look and feel. I was never really happy with some of how the site looked. It's going to be cleaner and (at least in my opinion) better looking. Easier on the eyes, even easier to navigate (hopefully).

Improved search and lists. The Search for some of the types of item collections on VeloBase were never really completed. I'm going to be either removing, rewriting or at least improving most of the search functionality.

New "Narratives" ability. This will expand the range of information that you can add about a particular item infinitely. I'm also going to work on integrating an ability to promote a 'comment' left about an item to a Narrative about it, thus moving it to a more predominant position on the page. This will give the site a slightly more Wiki feel to it. Narratives will also allow you submit articles, howto's and other types of information directly to the site. There are a lot of people out there that know a whole lot more about parts and other things than I do. Hopefully this will promote others to take the time to share some of that information on the site.

Frame and full bicycle collections. This item has been on my todo list from early on, but never fully planned out how I am going to implement it. This is still coming, eta undetermined still however. There is a head badge, frame tubing and other frame part collections now which are growing slowly.

An "In Search Of" feature! Looking for that hard to find item, I will allow you to post a note for other people viewing the site that you are looking for that item. For the time being I will not be adding a For Sale or Trade feature. I am looking at how to integrate an ebay search into the site, but no promises on that front at this time.


As always, I'm open to suggestions and feedback on the site. Right now I get a couple emails a day about the site, many asking if I sell one part or another, but a lot of others just asking questions or giving comments on the site. I try to get to these as quickly as possible, often sending them over here to BikeForums.net if I can't answer the question.

Nice!

Thank you for the work.

You are a CHAMP!

Regards,
J T

thanks again for putting this together. I have gone to your site several times for help.

I find myself using the site more and more. Do you accept contributions of a monetary kind?

One thing that might facilitate browsing more would be to make thumbnails displayed in a category (I find myself using the "brand" search more than any other) smaller, so that they can all be seen on one page, or at least a lot more of them than show presently.

Thanks very much for all the work.

There is a donation button at the bottom of the page. 100% goes straight to hosting costs. VeloBase is and will always be free to use, but donations are deeply appriciated.

Could you elaborate on the suggestion a bit more, I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly what page / what exactly you're describing. Are you talking about the Visual Search: Categories images? If so, that whole page is likely going to be overhauled soon. Never liked how that came out.

Progress on the new top navigation and menu is progressing. Haven't finalized colors yet, playing with the idea of a dark forest green and a lighter sage green color with some dark orange highlight on the hover-over. I plan to make an initial release of the new layout when everything is setup to my liking, and then incremental releases of new features and upgrades to existing features as they are finished.

Great site. (Psst, the link in your signature is hosed.)

Sig fixed. Thanks.

Ok, it's still very much a work in progress, but wanted to give you all a slight sneak peak at the direction the page layout is taking.

VeloBase 2.0.1 (made it a link since the picture is rather large resolution).

Colors aren't finalized, and I'm thinking about giving registered users the option of choosing between a few different color options. My graphics guy hasn't gotten me any of the new images for the site either, hopefully he'll get to work on that some next week. But over all I think it's a cleaner better looking layout that will be easier to extend as I add new features.

Time for another peak behind the covers. I rode too hard yesterday so I spent all day today recovering the legs and working on the code. I have just about finished cleaning up the old pages so spent a fair bit of time working on a new section, the first part of which is seen in the screen shot below. You'll have to click on it to see.

VeloBase 2.0.2

I do ask for some input (and perhaps some help) here. I am making the header background consist of a collage of images. I am making a number of different sets to choose from, either by a random selection when someone first visits the site, or a registered user can select the one they like the most. So far I have:

1) Campagnolo (seen in screen shot - still working on perfecting it)
2) Francophiles
3) Shimano / SunTour
4) Hubs

I would like to come up with another 4 to 6 more. But what I need is a decent selection of high resolution photos to work with. I have snagged some of the images from the VeloBase.com directory, but some of them are not the best resolution for blowing them up to a larger size for the header. If anyone has any interesting / artistic photos of components, frames, or bike stuff in general that wish to donate them to this project please PM me for an email address to mail to. Thanks!

lovely work , i am very thankful .
Cheers
T

Work on the Bicycle Frame database continues. It has been a struggle trying to create an Add New Frame process that was simple to use and understand, but still included the ability to add all the details about a frame that I want to. However I am making progress and am finally mostly satisified with what I have. Now I'm on to how best to add and manage specifying what components were original spec for the frame. That I hope will be a little more straight forward of a process. I should be able to spend a good part of tomorrow working on it as I will be home taking care of my wife who had her tonsils removed this morning and am taking these last two days of the week off work to be home with her.

(put these in a seperate post so it doesn't break the text too badly...)

While I work on the not so interesting behind the scenes details of all this code to make it work, here's some pretty pictures that I worked up for the header section of the page that I mentioned in my last post.

Shimano / SunTour




French




Hubs




The Italian Job (BF member ViperZ's Colnago)




Campagnolo

Beautiful graphics work...professional, stylish, and just d@mn sweet. Looking forward to the new site.

stan
.

Drool*pant*drool*pant*drool*pant*drool...

Do I make my point clear?

-Kurt

First release is going out tonight if all goes to plan. Site will be off-line for about an hour starting around 9pm CST. The frame / bicycle database will not be avaliable yet, but hopefully that'll be released by year's end.

I have been using this site quite frequently lately. It is very helpful to a newbie to the vintage cycling thing. Very much appreciated.

Jake

Exactly why I created it Jake. So happy that you and so many others are getting a benifit from it. Makes the hours of work put into it worth it!

btw, activity on the site continues to rise. I'm now averaging a little over 4000!! page hits a day.

4000 a day! Wow!

I too love the sight.......The graphics work you're doing is fricken' awesome!

When it's back up and running I need to nail down that brake set, lol.

If nothing else, we now have a set to add pics of.

you still got a few hours till it comes down.

Expect it to come down around 9pm, CST. I'll post in thread when it comes back up and try to include at least a rough set of release notes.

velobase tip of the day: Registered users have access to a Component Watch List which can be found on the MyBase page. Easily go back to a component you may need to reference later, and will also highlight recently updated components in your list!

ok folks, I'm going in. if pastor bob is around, a prayer I don't screw something up may be in order. I'll post again when everything is done.

You got me right in the middle of fixing up a goof on a Gran Sport headset I was entering into the database!

-Kurt

I was really meant to check the recent activity to see if anyone was on, but in my concentration of getting things complied correctly I didn't. You'll get to be the first person to make sure the add/edit component didn't get screwed up in the upgrade!

update: database changes *should* be complete. file upload in progress...


9:42pm: Deploying one more time to fix a little issue with the catalog list. Otherwise everything looks good (that I've seen so far...) I'll be opening the site back up with this deployment.

9:56pm ... seems like I broke add component somehow... everything else is up and running. poke around if you want, just try not to add or edit components just yet.

10:10pm: deploying for hopefully the last time this evenig. things may go a little wonky while the deploy is going, but should hopefully be fairly seamless. I'll submit a new post when deploy is complete.

11:27 - edited the Campag headset without a hitch, though it doesn't appear in the latest additions to the site (as if it mattered).

One thing though - the original photo credit was marked N/A, and I didn't see any provisions for editing the credit caption of the photo without deleting and re-uploading it.

-Kurt