About This Site
Our Mission
The raison d'être of VodkaBuzz is to keep people from drinking cheap, shoddy or overpriced, pretentious vodkas. We intend to do this by drinking all the vodka we can get our hands on and telling you what we think. At VodkaBuzz, we love our vodka. We want you to love your vodka. We are humanitarians. Really.
Why Call It VodkaBuzz?
The short answer is that I like the look of the glyphs in the word (yeah, design geek here) and I like the double entendre. There is a longer version.
This site was being formulated for a long time. Originally, it was called VodkaSnob. I was going to register VodkaSnob.com in March 2006 but I didn't. In May, I was going to try again, but it was registered. Since I didn't want any branding issues, I registered VodkaBuzz.com. The idea was that it would be vodka news (or "the buzz" for slang, like that Jesus Christ Superstar song), but it was also about drinking vodka and getting a vodka buzz. So, it was a nice double entendre. I found out later that the original domain was being squatted on. So, I got VodkaSnob.net (just in case) in August 2008, since there were no branding issues. It turns out, while I was designing, I liked how VodkaBuzz looked better in Palatino Linotype than VodkaSnob (the "S" looks like it's going to fall over), even though I like the term VodkaSnob a lot.
Who's Involved
I am Robert Brodrecht. This site is my site. But, I like to involve my friends. Some other people that are in on this are:
- My girlfriend, Erin
- My pal, Daniel (who always clears his palate before testing)
- My mom, Kathy
- My hetero life partner, Jeremy (though he lives a long way off)
They are nice people that I enjoy being around. There will probably be more people later.
How The Site Was Made
I designed and programmed the site with PHP, Smarty, HTML 4.0, CSS, JavaScript, and a little help from PhotoShop. The goal of the design was to get back to playing with typography. I coded everything in Smultron by hand and there is a pretty neat little API under this beautiful facade. I tried to make this site as accessible as possible, and everything has valid, standard-based markup. Yes, it rocks. Totally a lot.
What Else?
The site was offocially launched March 10th, 2008 in Breckenridge, Colorado. That's all I can think of. Wait… No, that's it. Sorry.