Migrating Pubzilla, Beer Scoring and the encyclopaedia to new servers

Latest news

What's happening

Pubzilla, Beer Scoring and the encyclopaedia are stuck on some very old servers that can't be upgraded. New servers are in place but all the data has to be moved onto them, and this takes some time. While the data is moving, we can't allow it to be changed, otherwise those changes will be lost. So there is going to be some downtime while the move happens. In theory this will be a smooth process. It has been rehearsed a few times, but we are planning for the worse. If the switch fails for some reason, we will switch back to the existing systems and work on the problem try again at a later date.

During the move, the public facing WhatPub site and app will continue to run. There may be a short interruption in the ability to lodge a Beer Score at some point, so best if you hold back with your scores for now.

What's changing

The move has meant a lot of changes to the internals of the software, but most of this makes no difference to the user experience. The key differences are outlined below:

• Opening hours and meal times
  • there's a new "picker" which handles seasonal hours, or you can type in a text version (but you have to be precise)
  • this video shows the picker in action
  • the text format separates each day by ; and each session by , and can handle 12 or 24 hour clock like this 2.30pm or 14:30
  • for example: Mon closed; Tue-Thu 11-11.30; Fri&Sat 11am-midnight; Sun 11:30-9pm
• Railway stations:
  • you must uses the "official" name and can only pick one (improvements on all this will follow later)
• Pub ownership:
  • it's now possible to record the freeholder, leaseholder and operator separately, though this data largely being sorted out centrally, so hold fire for more information
• Generally it is now tighter on validating the data you input, so watch out for errors and warnings when you commit changes.

Stuck

If you find yourself thinking "How do I make it do...." then post a question on the Pubzilla group in Discourse. Someone will surely have the answer.

Bugs

Some long standing bugs in Pubzilla have been fixed as part of this move, but surely some more will have been introduced. A large team of volunteers have been doing some testing, but you can be certain there will still be problems. If you find a bug, report it by email to: Pubzilla Support

Enhancements

If you find yourself thinking "I wish it did this...." then hold that thought. Now is not the time to be thinking about enhancements, but once the systems are back up and running it will be possible to start improving things.