A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: As Rich, a.k.a. Happy Robot, mentioned in the comments on the original post, maybe I should just use tags. He was ahead of his time – these days, tagging is the standard. I still wrestle with how to manage a system where you can add as many pieces of info as you like for a given field (the “tag” field) but I also held on to my iPhone 6 for, oh, six years because I didn’t want to give up my headphone jack. So I may not be the best judge of tech advancements.
Originally published on December 28, 2008.
We’re less than 2 weeks away from getting the Frankly Wines web site up and running. Or rather, the e-commerce version of the web site. The current site exists as 1 snappy page of html code I taught myself while waiting for my license to come through. Not a bad place holder for a girl who hasn’t done computer coding since BASIC was the language of choice.
The new site is being done by Jeff at Pixalt and it’s going to be very cool. Simple, easy to navigate, lots of room for content which I can easily update myself, synchs with my in-store POS system….it’s a fully functioning e-commerce site!
And it’s almost ready…the only real thing holding it up is the database coding…and the person responsible for that is…me!
You would think this would be easy. Just type the info into the fields for producer, vintage, region, size, etc. Except my POS system doesn’t have fields for all of those items, so there’s a bit of jury-rigging required. But that’s not the problem – there’s not a small business owner around that’s not well-versed in the fine art of jury-rigging.
The real problem is the database architecture for the grapes. (I did database work in a past life, so I’m entitled to throw around the phase “database architecture”.) Here are some of the problems that are irking me:
What do you do when you have 1 grape that goes by multiple names (syrah/shiraz, tempranillo + about 5 different aliases, grenache/grenacha)?
What do you do about the vast number of wines that are traditionally blends? For example, I what’s in a Bordeaux Blend, so I could just set up a category “Bordeaux Blend”. But will someone looking for a Cabernet Sauvignon know that grape is one of the main grapes in a Bordeaux Blend? Similar issue with Rhone Blends and those looking for Syrah/Shiraz. Will they know that a “Rhone Blend” will probably make them happy? Wine geeks will say “duh,” but most wine drinkers are not wine geeks.
What do you do with the really non-traditional blends, the kitchen sink blends that give such joy to many winemakers. A category of “Gewurztraminer/Riesling/Pinot Grios/Pinot Blanc” might be the most accurate, but I don’t have room for such a long descriptor. And the generic “White Blend” is just too, well, generic. I can’t remember someone ever coming into the shop and saying “I’m looking for a nice white blend”…I doubt on-line shoppers would either.
So these are the things that keep me up at night. Check out the new site when it’s up to see how I decided to solve these pressing conundrums….and speaking of Conundrum, how on earth would I code that one!!!