For the passionate tippler and follower of Barberry Garden, you're well aware of the site's essence. It's not just a platform; it's an intimate reflection of my journey through the world of wines, a direct window into my personal tasting experiences. Today, I'm excited to share the most exciting transformation our site has undergone, a "wine-ovation", aiming to deliver a richer and more immersive experience for all our readers.

A Splash of Aesthetics

Firstly, yes, the UI has evolved significantly. Once a stark, no-frills design that almost shouted "an engineer did this without a designer within a ten-mile radius" has now metamorphosed into… well, a less minimalistic design that still carries the unmistakable hallmark of an engineer's touch. I am pretty sure the change is obvious, but worry not - I will share a few screenshots below, especially for those of you who didn't encounter the 'days of old'.

The Under-the-Bonnet Changes

While the outer façade has seen its fair share of tweaks, the true pièce de résistance is what lies beneath.

The process of Barberry Garden construction consists of two phases. The first is pulling public data from my private notes. The second is actually building the site. My initial focus was on the first phase as I wanted to make it fast, safe and reliable. Now that the task is mostly done I was able to focus on the second phase.

Without going too much into technical details, I transitioned to NextJS, a popular framework based on React, and embraced TailwindCSS, a utility-first CSS framework, including its components library. On the road, I was able to remove all the ad hoc solutions I had to maintain because of past conscious decisions that allowed me to deliver something faster. Now I am just excited about all the possibilities new system gives.

Any details?

Curious about Barberry Garden as a product? You can refer to the presentation I did some time ago to learn more details on the product. If you wish to learn technical details, just let me know and I will gladly prepare a blog post or presentation.

So what?

Aside from becoming more beautiful (at least to my taste), the new site enables me to deliver new and more powerful features in a shorter time. I don't like to make promises with hobby projects, but at least I can share a few things you can expect this year.

• New wines table. Better performance, more filters and more optional columns! By the way, I would be glad to hear your use cases.
• Yearly report. It's becoming a tradition to share yearly reports on all the wine tastings we had, but this time I want to make it even better. Stay tuned.
• A new way of representing ratings on the event reports. I know, these tables are not the most convenient, so I want to improve them.
• Experiments with the way average score and QPR are calculated. If you are curious about the details, let me know and I will gladly share them.

What's missing

My initial plan was to achieve feature parity and then make a switch. Although my hands were itching to make the new site available as soon as possible, it's GitHub Pages (what I used to host the previous version of this site) that forced me to make the switch sooner. The site was too big, so they warned me patiently for around a year before actually starting to fail my builds.

So the new site is missing the following features:

• Wine table sorting and filtering. This is something I will bring as soon as possible.
• Various JSON files with data about wine, grapes, regions, etc. I contacted all the users I was aware of, but in case you were relying on them - let me know. I have no ETA, but I will expose them again.
• Ratings list. And I have no plans to bring it back as I find it useless. If you disagree - let me know. In general, I have several ideas I want to play with to make it more useful.
• Related wines on the wine page. It will come shortly.

Showtime

The time has come to show you some pictures.

Layout

Overall, I tried to experiment with a wider layout with a side panel. It doesn't occupy too much space on big screens and on smaller screens it turns onto a classical vertical layout, so it's not a big deal.

Yet I am still willing to experiment with it. One of the ideas is to provide context-aware content in this panel.

Posts list

For some reason, I find it hard to visually list items. I am always tempted to share too much information, so UI becomes too heavy. In the new design, I moved all the metadata above the title and included a short description.

Yes, it occupies more space now, but IMO it looks clearer and more attractive. I am not sure if the "Read more" link is needed. Maybe I will remove it in future updates.

Ratings list

The idea has not changed. But now it's used not only for convives (everyone gets their personal page upon request), but for my ratings as well. Nice, isn't it?

This list is also consistent with other UI decisions.

Wine page

I think this is pretty self-explanatory. In my opinion, this is a really nice layout for showing wine information.

Wine rating

On the new site, you can see where the wine was tasted (location) and during which event (if applicable). It even automatically generates the last line! It was super easy to add with the new site, so I didn't resist the urge.

Producer page

Here I tried to maintain the general aesthetics of the new UI. Less sharp corners, and more stuff floating. On hower effect also makes it more pleasant to view.

Thank you

At the heart of Barberry Garden, it's always been about the shared love for wines and a commitment to enhancing your experience. As we toast to this new chapter, your feedback and continued support are invaluable. Here's to many more wine-filled memories together. Cheers!

Thank you, my dear readers, for being with me on this road. And extra thanks to Vova Ulianov, Elvira Kantiieva and Dmytro Lakiza for all the help with the new design.

Love you all and see you over the glass of wine.