For The Love Of Port

On Friday night (4/4/08) at Stewart Todd's convenience, he will be shutting down the website for as long as it takes, to launch the new website. It more than likely will take the entire weekend. You may continue to check back and can use either http://www.ftlop.com or http://www.fortheloveofport.com ... whichever is easier for you to type.

We will be back up and running thereafter, as soon as we accomplish the launch. Please be aware, that with ANY new launch there are going to be some challenges and things that go wrong. Stewart has done his best to negate these as much as possible, but I can guarantee that there will be some things that will need a fix. Please do not get angry ... in other words ... your PATIENCE will be most appreciated.

We have the usual place for such issues that you find -- http://www.fortheloveofport.com/index.p ... Itemid=138 which is the WEBSITE QUESTIONS & SUGGESTION FORUM -- and Stewart, Andy and I will be watching it like a hawk. We will work hard to make this as smooth a transition as plausible, so bear with us. On the other side of the tunnel is a pretty cool new FTLOP. I wanted to give everybody a heads up so there will be no question as to where or why you won't be able to get on your favorite Port website!

Thanks in advance, for your understanding.

One additional note:

All you active Forumites need not worry - while we take the home page down, in it's place will be page that includes a link to the forum, which WILL remain up and running during the upgrade.

I am a little confused as I often am but wasn't the forum down for a couple of days last month for an upgrade?

That was the forum upgrade, this is a totally new main page upgrade. It is VERY cool..and thats all I can say until it's rolled out this weekend.

The good news is the forum will still be accessable during this time.

Yep - Andy is correct. We've already upgraded the forum. Now we need to upgrade the rest of the site components, and we are also taking the opportunity to do a redesign and add more functionality.

Well, the website upgrade has begun...mostly back-end and database stuff that won't be visible yet for anyone. The good news is that I'll be able to leave the main site up until tomorrow morning Seattle time, so stay up all night cramming yourself full of Roy's articles while you can! I anticipate that the site may be down for the remainder of the weekend, but the forum should be functioning properly as we aren't touching any of that code.

Thanks in advance for your patience!

Stewart

The main site will be going up and down today during the upgrade.

The forum will still be up and running, but you may not be able to log in since the login authentication is tied to the main site. You should be able to view all of the posts, but it is likely that you will not be able to post at times. If you are trying to post any long messages or tasting notes, I'd write them offline and cut-and-paste them into your post, as I'd hate for you to spend lots of time writing your post only to have disappear if the site has been taken offline as you were composing.

Our apologies in advance. Please check back soon for status updates.

Update - April 7, 2008...

The upgrades are progressing... Our target is re-launch the site on Tuesday, April 8.

Thanks again for your patience, and we believe the wait will be worth it!

:)

Stewart and I just called it a "night" and just before he hung up ... I could tell he was exhausted.

We are very close to being done. After seven or eight months of planning and preparation and having all of our ducks in a row, this is still a ton of work as so many components have to fit together, work side by side with one another and overlap in some cases. I can tell you that the new site is like being on a different planet vs. the one you are all used to. However, most things will be the same or similar content, and there is lots of new features too ... but you be the judge. Please realize that the site map is now handled by drop down menus but we've done our best to keep FTLOP very user friendly.

So, sometime on Tuesday afternoon or early evening, this will be complete and we will launch, although there will be lots of minor tweaks over the next week that we already know about. Much of this won't be visible at all. We welcome your feedback, no matter if you like the changes or not, please don't hold back.