Tobacco Reviews Website Update
- Thread starter Chalaw87
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Thanks. Your initial posts made it sound like you were speaking on behalf of TR.com and I'm confused why you did that.
Looks like there's a new forum there as well.
I used both.
In fact, I have had this exact same problem before in one of my WordPress migrations (in my UAT Environment though!).
I'll try again tonight and give them time to work on it.
Jeremy is the CEO of the company that has owned tobacco reviews for over a year. I was speaking to his intentions to not censor the content until he decided if he wanted to comment here. We talk often, but Jeremy is an open book. If people have questions about the site, he is always willing to answer them. I never said that I was associated with them, just a user explaining what I know of the changes from asking.
I also went through my posts. I have no idea when you think I spoke for them. I said "they" every time. In reference to debugging and slowness issues, this was taken directly from the admin in their new forum. It was public information over there.
I'm going to take a contrarian view to the dominant tone of this thread. Tobaccoreviews.com has been the red headed stepchild of the pipe world for a number of years. None of the prior owners made any significant investment of time or money to maintain and improve the site. Now somebody's doing it and all I see are conspiracy theories and moaning because the site migration hit a few bumps in the road.
As far as conspiracy theories are concerned the website has been languishing for over a decade; who exactly did you think was going to put in the money to fix it? Some disinterested party with no ties to the pipe tobacco world? What you call a conflict of interest I call a vested interest in the site's continued existence and viability. As for a bumpy migration, I've been to this rodeo many times before and if the worst that happens is a day or two of outages that's trivial. Could more planning have avoided it? Probably, but migrations by their nature are riddled with problems (having worked with a number of consultants in this field personally I think it's a feature not a bug). This is why most vendors don't cap their charges, and how they make the big bucks; it's like getting in a taxi and riding around for an undetermined time and destination while the meter is running. But that's another subject.
In the end who really cares if it takes a few days to sort this out. Hell, the migration of this website to the new platform was not without hiccups. That's just the way it often works. To say a problem is avoidable is to say the obvious; most problems are avoidable in retrospect and yet the world keeps experiencing problems. No lives are lost here, no-one here has money at stake; get over it. That's my rant for the day.
As far as conspiracy theories are concerned the website has been languishing for over a decade; who exactly did you think was going to put in the money to fix it? Some disinterested party with no ties to the pipe tobacco world? What you call a conflict of interest I call a vested interest in the site's continued existence and viability. As for a bumpy migration, I've been to this rodeo many times before and if the worst that happens is a day or two of outages that's trivial. Could more planning have avoided it? Probably, but migrations by their nature are riddled with problems (having worked with a number of consultants in this field personally I think it's a feature not a bug). This is why most vendors don't cap their charges, and how they make the big bucks; it's like getting in a taxi and riding around for an undetermined time and destination while the meter is running. But that's another subject.
In the end who really cares if it takes a few days to sort this out. Hell, the migration of this website to the new platform was not without hiccups. That's just the way it often works. To say a problem is avoidable is to say the obvious; most problems are avoidable in retrospect and yet the world keeps experiencing problems. No lives are lost here, no-one here has money at stake; get over it. That's my rant for the day.
@jguss is right. I'm sorry I consumed all this bandwidth. My apologies.
Thank you for taking the time to give a detailed response to people’s concerns.
From the devs:
The sort should be back today or tomorrow. The Advanced Search should be back Friday or early next week.
We are also posting updates to the forum.
If Mac Baren improves TobaccoReviews, and puts the resources into it to keep it running smoothly without diddling with veracity of the content, then it will speak volumes for who they are as a company.
Having just gone through a company migration this last weekend and several others in the past, it comes down to how much effort is made to kick the tires before putting the new model on the lot.
When AOL took over TimeWarner they set about migrating all of the company's tens of thousands of email accounts worldwide to AOL. The Titanic was a honeymoon cruise compared to what happened. AOL's crappy patched systems completely collapsed and TimeWarner couldn't communicate between offices as it's email systems were effectively destroyed. We used our personal email for a couple of months while a team worked to unscramble AOL's hack job. And, of course, a lot of other communications were similarly crippled, which made production quite an adventure.
On the flip side, Discovery's IT working with Warners IT performed a migration to a fully integrated platfrom over last weekend and it's been relatively glitch free. They tested the hell out of it before deploying. Night and Day.
This is out very good outcome; "absolutely glitch free" is a null set.
The tobacco descriptions said s
Strength English. Guess a database field was selected incorrectly.
And then there was this
I had been looking at that location about a month ago and saw what is now the main site. Guess that is the test area. I've been wondering why there were two sites. Now I know.
Strength English. Guess a database field was selected incorrectly.
And then there was this
I had been looking at that location about a month ago and saw what is now the main site. Guess that is the test area. I've been wondering why there were two sites. Now I know.
They probably did that intentionally, they don't seem to care much for the accuracy of their data fields. For instance if you search "erinmore" under brands, Erinmore shows up as a brand with zero reviewed blends. You may find it strange that such a popular brand, while listed isn't actually reviewed... well it is, but under STG as the brand. So why do they even have a data entry for Erinmore in their brand listing? Who knows, but maybe its because its strength=english.
Don't try to add Erinmore under its brand so you can review it, a brand that they already have listed with zero blends. Aaaand certainly don't try to fix the other Erinmore entry under STG when you notice what you added has disappeared, and the blend was actually on the site but in the wrong place. Just trust me.
-Emiratus Account
What nobody here has mentioned, is that TobaccoReviews is setting itself up to be a direct competitor to PipesMagazine. Whether this will be good, bad or indifferent remains to be seen, but the advertising dollars are now divided between two similar sites, and viewership will be as well.
I personally feel that this site (Pipes Magazine) has its own character and flavor and cannot be replaced. Another forum is not a bad thing, per se. But I cannot imagine it overtaking the history here, and the personalities which have made it what it is.
While I agree with you, it is advertising dollars that keep the lights on. Advertisers have set budgets, so money may be divided or entirely diverted. It looks like TR has already convinced several PM advertisers to try their site.