The Bar Towel

Carsten Nielsen, the author of the LCBO API, has open sourced his project:

https://github.com/heycarsten/lcbo-api

Also, as he reports on the site, the existing LCBO API will be shutdown on January 15th.
https://lcboapi.com/news/lcbo-api-shutting-down

This has an impact on drinkvine, as after the last series of site changes from the LCBO, I re-tooled the site to use the LCBO API.
I now have a decision to make. Whether to retool the site, close it down, or something else. While the site still receives
about 1000 unique visitors each month, this is about 1/4 of what it received before the craft beer market really heated up.
I also now have a family, and a much more demanding job than when I first envisioned and built the site.

If anyone has any thoughts, feel free to let me know. I'm going to have to come to a decision in the next week or so.

Let me start by saying I use Drinkvine all the time and would be disappointed to see it go. You've built a phenomenal tool which has helped me source the beers I really want extremely easily.

That said, family changes everything. When we started Toronto Beer Week in 2010, I had no kids. When the decision to sell came last year, I had three. I found that at certain points of the year, huge chunks of my time would be eaten up just to make things happen, and for no return for myself other than satisfaction of bringing something to the scene. The decision to walk away was a tough one, but I don't regret it. If the site makes you money, or consumes very little time, its one thing, but if you have to do a major retooling and get very little ad dollars...

Well thanks for doing it this long either way! What are your options? Would some volunteers help at all? I can't code but would be happy to help with updates once it's set up. How much would you have to charge for the site to make it worthwhile? Have you looked into sponsors at all?

Cheers!

I still use drinkvine and would hate to see it go

spinrsx wrote:I still use drinkvine and would hate to see it go

Likewise, really handy tool.

I visit the site almost daily. I honestly don’t know what I would do without it... living in a small town but close to big cities means this website helps me know which store(s) to visit when I make a trip in.

I have some coding experience via running and building a few websites back in the day (plus one still) and would gladly volunteer to help maintain it, if my abilities are capable of doing so.

Ultimately though, you must do what’s best for you. I’d be sad to see it go, but my wallet and waistline would benefit I guess, lol. Either way, I thank you for drinkvine!

I think this author created boozewatch.ca which has been acting up the last 2 months. sad

I'm not sure who created boozewatch.ca.. but it's not mine.

On January 15th drinkvine.com will stop working and I plan to close the site down shortly after that.
Creating and launching drinkvine was a really rewarding experience, and I hope in some small way
it had an impact on making craft beer more available to the people of Ontario. Thank you to the
many users which used the site, provided feedback and were always great to interact with.

Cheers!

Tyke66a saying thank you Ralph. I will certainly miss Drinkvine since I used it daily to check the location of various bottled beers and found it very reliable to determine local and province wide availability Could get stuff in Markham ie Hitachino Nest that never made it anywhere near Ottawa. All the best Bill

tyke66a wrote: ...thank you Ralph. I will certainly miss Drinkvine since I used it daily to check the location of various bottled beers and found it very reliable to determine local and province wide availability.

What tyke66a said. Drinkvine will be sorely missed by many. Thanks for making it such a great resource over the years. Cheers!

Ralphus wrote:I'm not sure who created boozewatch.ca.. but it's not mine.

On January 15th drinkvine.com will stop working and I plan to close the site down shortly after that.
Creating and launching drinkvine was a really rewarding experience, and I hope in some small way
it had an impact on making craft beer more available to the people of Ontario. Thank you to the
many users which used the site, provided feedback and were always great to interact with.

Cheers!

my apologies. I was confusing you with someone else.

https://github.com/CDyWeb/boozewatch.ca

I usually send the owner a message on FB when his site (boozewatch.ca) is broken and he usually fixes it but he hasn't responded in months.

Ralphus wrote:
On January 15th drinkvine.com will stop working and I plan to close the site down shortly after that.

Cheers!

This is the worst, this is how I do all my beer shopping, crap

Sorry to hear that! This is a site I use to see what’s in stock at a specific store:

https://beersearch.on.somerandominterne ... ventory/10

Ralphus wrote:I'm not sure who created boozewatch.ca.. but it's not mine.

On January 15th drinkvine.com will stop working and I plan to close the site down shortly after that.
Creating and launching drinkvine was a really rewarding experience, and I hope in some small way
it had an impact on making craft beer more available to the people of Ontario. Thank you to the
many users which used the site, provided feedback and were always great to interact with.

Cheers!

Drinkvine was such an awesome resource in the early days - thank you very much for your hard work Ralphus.

agreed.. RIP drinkvine

Urotsukidoji wrote:

Ralphus wrote:
On January 15th drinkvine.com will stop working and I plan to close the site down shortly after that.

Cheers!

This is the worst, this is how I do all my beer shopping, crap