We've migrated to the production servers off of the development site, and so from here on out, this is all public and all out in the open on puttertalk.com for the world to see. I'm not done building yet, but it's all public now. I'm also going to send out about 200 invites tomorrow to the former membership to get some new people in here. You all have had your invites reset to 5 available, and you're welcome to invite whomever you'd like from here on out. (All returning members will also get 5 invites to share.) My hope is to only be invite only for another few weeks before I announce to the whole database that we're back and live again. Thanks for all your help and support these last few weeks. It's really shaping up nicely and I'm really happy with how things are going.

So the last week has been pretty rad. With less than 50 people in here, it's starting to feel like home again. In the next day or two, I'm going to flip the switch and bring Putter Talk back to life publicly. Still beta. Still invite only, but for the world to see. All the content here moves over to the public site too. Your logins will work there same as here. You may need to log in again, but then you'll be good to go. The marketplace mechanics are all pretty solid from my tests, so that'll go live with the rest of the site too. I'm granting "Supporting Member" status to all of you, as well as the next 150 people to sign up for the next 6mos to get things rolling and proven out. After that the marketplace is "Members Only" although all the listings and auctions will be public facing. you just wont be able to bid or list or buy if you're not a member. That's how we keep things safe as possible around here. You can't do any of those things unless you've had your identity verified by a 3rd party and we gate that to Members. The Community always has been and always will be free to use. Speaking of Auctions, I ran the first one tonight and it went really well. Auctions here are run a little differently than you've seen elsewhere. There are no fees taken by the house at all. All chatter and bids are public, and there's a 2min cool-down at the end of the auction so you can never be sniped at the last second. Everyone sees all the bids and who made them, and only Members can bid so that should cut down on shill bidding that's plagued eBay forever. I'm pretty proud of the system we've built and hope it resonates well with the Community. Marketplace listings are as you'd expect, but also with comments enabled so you can interact with the seller. I'm pretty happy with the system, but we're not done building yet either. Lots of new stuff will happen in the coming weeks as we get closer to lifting the invitation only requirement and open Putter Talk up to the public.

Now that I have most of the surfaces figured out from a "what kind of content do we need here" stand point, it's time to make it all look good. So today, you're going to see a lot of things go through significant changes. I promise it'll all be worth it.

Hey gang. Appreciate all the feedback I've gotten and for those of you sending invites out to friends to get them involved too! Made a bunch of changes this week, and we're getting closer to the public beta. I'm spending a lot of time on the Database over the last several days to get that into proper shape. It's a big undertaking but SHOULD pay off in the long run so that from anywhere on the internet if someone has a question about any putter, Putter Talk is where they end up. I've got a bunch of little UX nits that I'm working through this weekend, and early next week. Miles better today than it was last week at this time, so I'll take that as a win. When we flip to the public beta, all of this will be public at https://puttertalk.com. It's STILL going to be invite only for a few more weeks, so please use those invites you hold (in the "You" page) but you'll need to log back in. I'll be retiring the dev.puttertalk.com server here in a few days. (It'll redirect you, but you'll need to log back in.) From there, I'm going to put a lot of work into the Marketplace section and have a cool idea that should load a hundred or so putters in there that should be right up everyone's alley. Looking forward to getting that set up and ready in the coming weeks too.

Hey gang, it's been a min. Just getting things stood back up and organizing around here. General Putter Talk was always the hub, so it had to be the first room that I brought back online. We'll be making a lot of changes here over the next few weeks. If you're reading this before mid-August, you're a beta tester and here to kick the tires with me. If you're reading this after we went live, this is the thread that started it all...again.

Hey gang. Thanks for filing in, inviting people, and helping me test out everything. Here's what's happening next week. Could be as early as Monday, but next week we'll be going off the development server and onto the production servers. That'll mean that you will be accessing at https://puttertalk.com going forward. (I'll redirect the url you're using now for a time and you'll have to log back in once.) Everything you post (and have posted) will then be public for the world to see. It'll STILL be invite only for a bit, but I'm opening up the invites to people that have filled out the form, and some returning members. So only about 300-400 of the original 20K membership list. My goal is to let the public see what they're missing, and let people trickle in over the next few weeks to test out a bunch of new features that I'm adding. Getting the archive stood up is my priority now, and then we're going to ingest a lot of good data into Caddie so it'll have some rich history to recount if/when people ask.

Over the next week, my servers are spinning 24h a day to collect and build the most complete archive of putter models and specs that has ever existed. I've found over 250K pages in the Internet Archive that have manufacturer putter specs. This will all feed into a searchable database for Putter Talk. It'll have every spec for every putter since the websites for the manufacturers went live. MY goal is to have this all alive as a baseline that will continue to grow over time with not only new models, but also CONTEXT from posts made by the community as well as published reviews. This should grow massively over the next several years. I'd had the idea of a "putterpedia" way back in 2006 when I launched PutterTalk, but I never was able to figure out how to programmatically get all the data. I don't have that issue any more. So we're off to the races.

One of the things that I'm most excited about with this relaunch is Caddie. Caddie (@caddie) is PutterTalk's resident Agent, openly a machine, on everyone's bag. Ask him about a putter and he answers from a sourced record: thousands of putters, tens of thousands of cited facts, specs and release histories, reviewer takes, our own reviews, and what members here are saying. Every claim comes with a source you can tap, and when the record is thin he says so instead of guessing. Ask him anything putter-shaped on his page, or mention @caddie in any thread and he'll drop in. Two things he'll never do: put a price on a putter, or call one real or fake. And he's a machine that can make mistakes, so double-check anything that matters. He's just getting started. The record grows every week, deeper maker histories are on the way, and the longer you're here the better a caddie he gets, because he reads the public record and remembers the gear you've been talking about. He's operated by @puttertalk, and he's part of the house. Kick the tires. I'm going to be working with him extensively over the next several weeks to get more first-hand knowledge into his brain, so don't think this is as good as it'll ever get. We have a lot to do and a long way to go, but I think this is a damn good start.

One of the things that I think we can do to help people out, is giving them a centralized source for the secondary market on putters and accessories. We're still just getting started but here's how we're putting all of this together. 1: Sellers and Buyers will both have to have their identity verified by a 3rd party. This SHOULD cut down on 3/4 of the scam listings and scam attempts that are rampant on the old Forum based marketplaces. 2: Anyone can view the listing, but you can't see the contact details unless you're also verified. The things that'll be shown to members will be the details on the putter and all of the pics. If you're not a supporting member, but want that item, it's cheap tuition to get in touch with the seller. Sign up just for a month for all I care, but the identity verification service that we use carries a cost per check, and that's baked into the cost. 3: The "Proof of ownership" picture is hidden from the public eye, and only revealed to the Admins of Putter Talk. A human being looks at all the pics to determine if the seller does in fact, have possession of the item they're selling. 4: Past that, it's all between the buyer and seller on how they want to complete the transaction. We'll always suggest a way that's safest for both parties, but it's really up to you all how you want to handle it from there. We're not in the middle of the transaction. In the (near) future we'll have categories for the items that are being sold and a way to search by brand and alerts for watched items. That's all coming, but getting this stood up to start testing it was important before I put the site live to the general public. As beta testers, I can flag you all as approved any time. Just ask here and I'll take care of it so you can see how it all works.

Hey gang, if you're reading this...you're early. And that's the point. I wanted to get some friends in the door to help me kick the tires and figure out how to best work this new network that I've created. Thank you for being early to the party. Everyone that I invite has 5 invites that you can use however you'd like. People arriving from my invitatoin don't have the normal restrictions on making rooms like gen-pop will, so go ahead and plant your flag. Invite a few friends that you think would be helpful, and let's all see what happens here. I'm always a DM away of you have issues or questions or better yet...suggestions. Go to the "You" tab, and you'll see a button called "Invites" and you can all generate up to 5 to send to people. Please note: These are single use, so you can't send the same invite to 5 people. They're one at a time and expire in 14d. YOu can send them via email, or text or any other messaging platform and it'll let the person know that you're inviting them to Putter Talk. Go forth and have fun!