Kim and I were getting a lot of work done on a new import tool for WineLog. There is no question that this tool is awesome. It is one-of-a-kind and will help users who have invested a lot of time into another wine tracking system to convert to WineLog. This new feature is good for our users, and good for the growth of WineLog.

However, there are a lot of existing features that could use our attention. The RSS feeds for instance need some help. Some are more flexible than others, some are not yet taking advantage of the smarter search code, and some are not working at all. There is a lot we can do to make subscribing to our content through RSS more user-friendly and easier to understand for folks who may not be familiar with Real Simple Syndication.

There are a lot of web sites moving into the wine space recently. Some of these web sites are really solid. While I think we currently offer the best mix of features and community, others are catching up fast. And their quality is not suffering. We can’t afford to have a reviewer say something like, “Sure, WineLog has a huge database of wines, but such and such a feature was rough around the edges and confused me.” We can’t afford to lose a user who runs into a problem like that.

For these reasons, over the next few weeks Kim and I will be focusing on making our current feature set as solid as possible before moving on to new things. Adding new features will only complicate things if we’re not sure that the current offerings are the best they can be. Sometimes we try to run faster than our legs can take us and we stumble a bit. When this happens, we need to slow down a bit and focus on our technique.