ANNOUNCEMENT: The new (redesigned!) WineBid Search Bar!!!

I’m very pleased to formally launch the project I’ve been working on with WineBid - the WineBid search bar (version 2.0)!

A little background: With what little time I have to play around Wine Berserkers and actually read threads about wine (the whole reason I started this community!), I often found that I’d read about a wine that I suddenly wanted to know more about, about how much it costs, how widely available it is, etc. With Russ at the helm of ‘the new’ WineBid, I was able to get them as excited about it as I was, as it is a tool that we can all use (more info on that below), and they were willing to customize the results so they are geared more directly to Wine Berserkers’ needs, i.e. if you enter a specific search term (let’s say 1997 Chateau Palmer) and there are no live auctions available, you’ll see a price history graph (I was so excited we could do this - see example below in this post). When there are live auctions, obviously you’ll see those.

Rather than keeping a separate tab open and jockeying back and forth, we were able to bring this search bar readily available to you via a collapsible, ‘zoom out’ function you so you can access it instantly. The query will open the tab for you, with your results laid out immediately, and, if you are signed in, you’ll stay signed in so you can quickly add the wine to favorites, etc. This will ONLY be on Wine Talk, not Asylum, Offline Planner, Politics, etc. I did originally talk with both WineBid and Wine-Searcher, and ended up with WineBid primarily because of the shared excitement and ability to create this custom landing page and search bar to implement within the community.

Who will see it? Everybody except Grand Cru Crü members will see it by default, and GCC members, as part of the ‘benefits package’ of their membership (which includes BerserkerDay Preview, BerserkerDay Early Purchase, AND no ads) can elect INTO the WineBid search bar, and still keep the rest of their benefits. I did this because I know many of the GCC members are on the forum quite a lot, as am I, and I pursued this project because I wanted it for myself, frankly, and knew others would find it useful as well. How do the GCC members opt-in? Simply go to your User Control Panel (upper right under your name), click on the Usergroups tab, and check the radio button by Grand Cru Crü WineBid. I’ll be trying to look at those multiple times a day as we start, approving them all as needed, and if you have an urgent need to be opt-in for the WineBid search bar, just PM me! If you want to opt-out, just PM me

Design: After trial and error (in live mode) we are now going with a floating, dynamic WineBid logo in the bottom left, where there is open space on the forum (username/avatar sections) as it moves with you as you browse, making sure that the search bar is always accessible, so that when you read about a wine within a thread, the search bar is ready and waiting for your query. Mouseover the logo and you’ll see ‘helper text’ of ‘WineBid Search Bar - click to expand’. Click it, and the search bar comes out for your text entry.

As always, questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome. Much to my surprise, the beta testers from WB were universally excited about it, with very little to no suggestions to change, and zero complaints. That is rare to find, to be sure, but once I launched live, the complaints and suggestions on the first design iteration came flowing, and hopefully now we’ve got a suitable option that pleases everyone and provides a handy tool for those of us who like to search for wines while browsing the Wine Talk forum.

Here’s a screenshot of the 1997 Chateau Palmer inquiry, as an example of what you’ll see if there are no live auctions:
Screen Shot 2019-11-25 at 4.01.14 PM.jpg

Very cool! I think this is an innovative cross site marketing idea! If it helps Todd/the site with funding I’m all for it.

We should all use it as it will help the board and I’m assuming it’s monetized on a per search basis.
Someone should see if they can get a developer to write a script that will automate :wink: kidding. That would be… wrong :slight_smile:

The new format is much better on desktop :slight_smile: !

The new format is installed, and much better on both, even to me…who actually WANTED the search bar ‘at the ready’.

I’m going to eliminate many of the posts (regarding prior design) in this thread and re-do the original post so we can move forward from here and not cause confusion. I guess my beta testers didn’t really give me any good constructive criticism as that all came when we went live, and had the chance to redesign it!

Glad to see someone listened to my ideas!!

One further thought - can the winebid logo not appear on the forum home page (i.e., “Wine Talk”)? It’s not really necessary then (per your use case) - just when you’re in threads…
Or can the location move to the lower right on the forum home? (it blocks the thread logos). Not sure what the limits of programming are . . .

Yeah, this isn’t home life - someone might actually listen to ideas!

I’ll see about not showing in Wine Talk ‘index’

For me, the new format is acceptable, but the design of the logo remains somewhat strange…
BTW, I would permanently place the WinBid search bar beneath the standard WineBerserkers search bar.

Just the floating winebid icon in the lower left corner seems much better…

Thanks for posting.
I was looking at the top and couldn’t find the search bar.

It has been moved to a much more convenient and less obtrusive space flirtysmile

Much better.

I agree.
I have an old winebid account that this link enticed me to update!
Danger!

WB costs a LOT of money - I’d be rich if I hadn’t fallen upon eRP and here! Too much wine spending!

Very cool link. Could be dangerous.

FYI the mobile formatting is a bit off since the winebid change. See the screenshot, the icons in the upper right corner of the post overlap your name.
Capture+_2019-11-30-11-38-22.png

That’s been that way for me for months.

It’s because it is situated above an ad…which you guys don’t see…hence that empty space. I could put the ad back there for you and you’d have a much cleaner UI! neener

[stirthepothal.gif]

There’s something up with the stylesheets from this icon. When the page is scrolled to a certain point, buttons become unusable. I can reproduce it if I line up the winebid icon with the “full editor & preview” & “submit” buttons beneath the quick reply text input, those buttons then don’t respond.

Having inspected the code, it looks like .wine-search-background has a width of 100% for some reason, and the z-index is 3000 with fixed positioning which obviously puts the container over the buttons.

Yes, I noticed it as well, waiting for WineBid to fix this - a quick scroll upward fixes it, so ‘submit’ can be clicked, but I’ll get it fixed