Pedal Room Shirts!
Update: We're not giving away shirts at the moment. We've still got a few lying around though. If you really want one, contact us and we'll get you hooked up for a nominal fee (just gotta cover printing/shipping costs).
New Feature: Serial Number Storage
Everyone should really store their bikes' serial numbers somewhere. This little bit of data can be invaluable if a bike is stolen, and we want to make it easier for everyone to keep track of it.
So now you can add your bike's serial number (or other identifying markings) on that bike's edit bike page. We'll store it for you, and only you will have access to it if you ever need it.
Interesting Brake Setup
From eBay: "I used a drill press and a NOS alloy wedge bolt and drilled a 2mm hole in the center of it. It was a bit hard to make the hole but if you take your time it is no problem. Both ends were then drilled to accept a campy der. ferrule to stop the cable/housing from flopping over."
Some Quick Search Updates
You can now order bikes by page views, popularity (though I admit our algorithm needs a bit more tweaking), and most-favorited! More bike browsing and searching improvements coming tomorrow!
Feedback!
We've got a lot of new stuff coming, and we want to make sure we get input from everyone as we continue to develop the site.
So on every page, we've implemented a feedback link in the top left corner. This pops open a little box (without leaving the current page) to leave some quick feedback. Leave as much as you want - good or bad, we want to hear it!
Search Ordering
We just released code that allows bike searches to be ordered. This should make finding/browsing bikes a bit easier! Anything else you guys would like to see to improve the site? Let us know!
A Couple Small Updates
We just made a few nice little tweaks to Pedal Room. Just a few of many we plan to make in the next few weeks.
We added a quick bike search form on various pages to make searching for bikes easier. Pretty soon we'll have a nice quick bike search on every page. Oh yeah, we also fixed some bugs around search.
We also made comment author photos clickable, and added links to members' other bikes for members with multiple bikes.
Better Photo Uploads
We just released some updates to improve photo uploads! Now, once you choose a photo, it starts uploading immediately, showing a progress bar as it uploads.
This not only helps figure out how long it'll take for the upload to finish, but we also re-configured the server so that photo uploads don't slow down the server. We hope you guys enjoy it.
And we combined the add photos page and manage photos page into one, so managing all aspects of your photos is even easier!
P.S. We also fixed several bugs with various parts of the site. And we're working to allow for even higher-resolution photos to be saved and viewable by all.
FourteenTeeth
Last year, we built Fourteen Teeth. Today, we moved it over to the Pedal Room server and integrated it with the site.
This allows us to do things like include the latest fixed gear and track bikes from the site on the Fourteen Teeth. We also completely rewrote most of the code to make Fourteen Teeth even faster!
Check it out at it's new url: http://fourteenteeth.pedalroom.com. Don't worry, the old url (fourteenteeth.com) still works and is changing to pointing to the new site on the Pedal Room server.
Oh yeah, we also cleaned it up a bit and changed up a couple of the blogs. Let us know what you think!
Happy Fourth of July!
Happy fourth of July everyone! If you're in the US, ride safe and have a good Independence Day!
Search Improvements - Part Two
Today we released our second round of search improvements. Now, when you do a bike search, we not only search the bike title, specs, and description, but we also search any tags associated with that bike. This should mean that you get more accurate search results.
We also added search boxes (and sometimes clickable search suggestions too - hooray!) to search results pages, so you can easily perform another quick search. We're thinking about expanding search options near the search box on search results pages, but we weren't sure. We'd love to hear what you guys and gals think and what you'd like to see!
Hope everyone has a good weekend! Ride safe!
Search Improvements - Part One
Today we released a new option that helps immensely in finding the right bikes on Pedal Room - The ability to match all keywords when searching.
This means if you search for "cannondale track" and choose the match all keywords option, only bikes which have both "cannondale" and "track" will be found. Very useful for searching for specific bikes! Stay tuned - more search improvements are coming soon!
New Pedal Room Stickers!
Our new Pedal Room stickers are in! Let us know if you want some and we'll send some your way!
Better Photo UI!
We finally finished up our new photo UI and released it a few minutes ago. Gone are the photo comments* and now the photos are loaded inline in the same page, which is faster and allows you to see the bike's details, comments, other photos, and of course, the current photo all in the same page! Let us know what you think!
* Photo comments aren't actually removed. They have been moved to the bike details page. Feel free to go through your bikes and remove any comments that don't make any sense in the context of the bike details page (which shouldn't be too many.)
Upcoming Enhancements
We're currently working on some small changes that will help Pedal Room show up in search engines better, which will in turn help the site grow faster.
One of these changes is getting photos to show up more prominently in image searches, so we're redesigning the way images on Pedal Room work from the ground up. We're considering removing image comments to make things more simple and faster. What do you guys and gals think of that? We'd love to hear any feedback, so just let us know what you think!
Other changes coming soon include improved searching and bike browsing, both of which will be coming very soon!
P.S. Don't miss today's interview with Kyle about his custom pursuit track bike!
Random Pedal Room Graphic Design
I've been creating these in my late night spare time, and figured I'd share. Let me know what you think!
P.S. We're releasing some minor updates to Pedal Room today. Check back later tonight!
Featured Bike Interviews!
We've started interviewing some of our featured bike owners! We hope that you guys enjoy these interviews as much as we've enjoyed talking with cyclists!
Currently, we've got an interview with Fabian about his gorgeous Colnago Pista, and a couple days ago we interviewed Matthew Divita from iMiNUSD about his Green Cannondale Track.
We're always looking out for nice bikes and interesting content, so stay tuned for more and enjoy!
Last Week at Pedal Room...
Last week was a busy week, with a lot of new work going into Pedal Room.
We started the process of redesigning our forms to be more accommodating. See below.
You've probably noticed this already - we redesigned our home page! It now includes featured bikes, which we'll be updating regularly, and a new layout. Oh yeah, the login box for visitors who aren't logged in yet moved to the top right of each page.
On the backend side of things, we've been fixing a few errors and bugs that have popped up as a result of our new site framework. We've also upgraded our logging and error delivery systems, so that our team gets notified more quickly when problems occur. Also, we improved some of our caching mechanisms, which should speed up the site a bit more.
Coming This Week
This week will be good. We have some sweet new bikes to feature, and we're starting work on our big new feature. We're incredibly excited about what's coming very soon (like within the next month) for Pedal Room, and we really hope you guys like it too. Also this week, we plan to roll out more form and general design upgrades. Stay tuned and ride safe!
Making Pedal Room Faster - Part One
We just released some new code that greatly speeds up the site! It's only on the home page right now, but we plan on implementing it on more pages very shortly. Let us know what you think of the home page speed, and if you find any problems!
Btw, we're also working on several other speed improvements, hence the "part one" in the title. Stay tuned for part two, coming later this week!
New Site Framework!
We just launched the rewrite of Pedal Room! Several bugs were fixed in the rewrite and the site should be running better, but the best part is that with this rewrite done, we'll be able to focus on building out new features and making the site better all around!
There might be a few bugs here and there, so please let us know if you see anything that seems off. Enjoy!