Shame on me. I made an error. A small, but very important one. The files that manage the database sector load had a small error in it.

This resulted in bad load balancing between database sectors, thus very very very slow loading speed for new users.

Users who registered between December the 13th and January the 23th will run into this issue. Unfortunately I can’t fix this. luckily, you can. It’s a dirty work around, but so be it.

To get better speed, follow these simple steps:
1. export your current records
2. remove your current account (be sure you have all records exporterted!!) (do this: your account -> click the ‘delete your account’ icon)
3. create a new account
4. import your records with Form structure and Data.
5. your formfields are inserted, but unfortunately not your fieldpreferences. Go to tools -> manage forms ->
update form and update your preferences per field.

The last step is an annoying one, I am sorry about that.

If you run into any issue during any of this steps, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

I decided to deprecate two functions in Grubba.

There were always problems with searching date fields, so I decided to stop using date fields.

Just use a normal field and tell the users in the Help text what you would like the input to look like. For instance put: requested date mm/dd/yyyy in the helptext.

This way you can also search by date range (sort of anyway). For instance if you need all dates within the month of December, do this query:
select this in the dropdown = %%
and enter this in the field: 12/%%/2011

You can use wildcards with %% (where each % stands for one character) . So in the end this is a much easier and better way to deal with dates.

The other function is the file upload function. The box.net API just doesn’t work properly anymore. No idea why. To be quite honest, I simply don’t have the time to fix it. I was thinking of renting an image server and do the uploads within Grubba. This would be a great solution, but it will take some time coding and the biggest issue, it will cost money. In this time of crisis donations have dropped, so I am not sure if I can afford this. As always, I am open for suggestions or discussion. If you feed the need to do so, please send me a message via the ticket system.

Today I got an interesting question from Don: He was wondering if the data he enters remains confidential.
And if I monetize customer data in any way.

I am pretty oldskool. Been actively designing since 1999. In the early days the only people who made any money at all where the guys that showed naked ladies on their website. At the risk of sounding very old and a bit like a nag: I don’t really like the ‘modern’ internet. Companies like Facebook really annoy the p$#@ss out of me. Not only because they sell user data, but also because they are not upfront about it. They should be required by law to tell the user in font-size 44 that they do sell your data, before you are even allowed to sign up.

Bottom line is:
I only disclose data if I am required to do so by law. Period.
I do not sell e-mailaddresses. Period.

Please read the terms of use and privacy statement if you need more info.

Just wanted to share that today Grubba reached the 30.000 active user mark!
I just wanted to say thanks to all the users who submitted feedback and to the users
who made a donation. Thanks to them Grubba will keep on running.

Up to 50.000. Our 50.000th signup will get a cake!

I always used the tagline beta and recently I even used always in beta . I liked this tagline: because Grubba is an ungoing project, never ending, never finished.

I liked this tagline, that is, until i read the excellent book from the people at 37signals. It’s called Getting real. They really spoiled my tagline for me, with a few excellent remarks, here are a few small quotes:

These days it feels like everything is in beta stage forever. That’s a cop out. An interminable beta stage tells customers you’re not really committed to rolling out a finished product. It says, “Use this, but if it’s not perfect, it’s not our fault.”

Don’t wait for your product to reach perfection. It’s not gonna happen. Take responsibility for what you’re releasing. Put it out and call it a release. Otherwise, you’re just making excuses

I never thought of it that way, call it a blind spot. But after a few minutes of deep thought I decided to ditch the beta tagline.

So goodbye: always in beta and hello to the easy database

Ps. you can read the book online here >
or better yet, buy the book here >

First, of all, I am so happy with our first user-contribution! Thanks to Haughton we can start implementing a Spanish version of Grubba. At least the back-end, which is great!

Would you also like to help out? Please visit this page: http://grubba.net/blog/?page_id=220

More news:
I made a small modification to the layout. We removed the extra navigation items on the top of the page. All main site navigation can be found at the bottom of all pages.

And even more:
The new export procedure with the .rtf export is nearly finished. We are now testing and testing and testing…