Here is some stuff we have been working on. Most of these are features/bugs that Zistle members have specifically suggested or requested. We added back to features from the old zistle site that people missed - Main Set appearing on top and Adding Team in list view. We want you to know that we really do listen and implement your ideas on Zistle so keep the ideas/suggestions coming.

Main Set now appears on top and is automatically created for new sets

These were feature on Zistle before we rebuilt the site and they are finally back. Rather than having to scroll down to the middle of the long list of subsets, Main Set will automatically appear on the top rather than in alphabetical order. Also, if you are creating a new set, you no longer have to create the Main Set subset – it is automatically done for you.

Add team easily in list view

This is another feature that existed on the old Zistle and is back by popular demand. We have made it easier to quickly add team to a card in list view. In case you are new to the site – here is how it works.

In list view, when a team has not been assigned a blue ‘add team’ link will appear in the team column. If you click the link, a text box will appear where you can begin typing any part of the team name and it will auto-populate a list of matching teams.

Simply select the team from the drop-down list and just like that you have added the team. If you make a mistake and select the wrong team, you will need to flag the card in order to change it.

Making Bulk Import Cards a little more user friendly

One of our major new features for the latest release of Zistle was adding a way for users to mass import cards into the Zistle library. This was a pretty big feature for us and one that we have been talking about for a long time. I was recently trying to fix some issues with Bowman Chrome and realized that we could make importing cards a lot more user-friendly.

The first thing that we did is made the formatting guidelines for importing cards appear in a new tab rather than opening in the pop-up. If you had a question about how to format your CSV file, the link for formatting guidelines would open in the pop-up. It didn’t fit very well and to go back to the import page, the user had to close the window and start all over again. What a pain! Now, if you want to double check the formatting before importing your cards, the guidleines will display in a new tab and you can easily go back and import the cards.

Which brings us to our second improvement: Zistle will now auto-populate the year, set and subset that you are currently viewing when you are importing cards. Before, if you were adding cards to 2010 Topps Main Set and decided to bulk import, you would have to add that information again. Now that information will automatically appear although you can change it if you are not on the right subset.

One thing I noticed while I was importing cards was that occasionally I would forget to add the file before clicking submit. I would get an error and the wondow would close. What happened? Did the site break? Nope – I just forgot to add the file. I would have to click import cards again, enter in the subset again and do it all over again. Now if you forget to add the file, red text will appear notifying you that a file must be selected to continue. Whew – much easier.

Our hope is that we can give you regular updates on what we are working on behind the scenes to make Zistle. I know we can disappear sometimes working on the site and you won’t hear from us for several weeks and it isn’t always bovious what we are working on. We know you want to hear from us more often and we are working on that. Thanks for being a part of Zistle and helping us make it better.

We are excited to announce that we now have better search functionality for wantlists and tradelists. You can now search wantlist and tradelists – your own as well as other members’ lists. To search your wantlist, make sure that you select your wantlist on the left navigation menu on your dashboard. The type any search terms in the search box above the lists and you can instantly search.

You can also search other member’s wantlists, tradelists and collections by going to their profile page www.zistle.com/username and selecting their wantlist/tradelist or collection and search. This should help make trading a little easier in the future.

Set experts is one of the features that we are most excited about with the recent release. This feature allows users to moderate individual sets, validate cards and moderate flagged cards. We are working on how to make this feature a little more obvious – but we thought we would get you started with a quick tutorial on how to become a set expert.

1. Go the Library Tab and search for the set that you would like to moderate. In the screenshot below, I have searched for 2008 Upper Deck and I have a list of all 2008 Upper Deck Sets.

2. Select the set that you would like to moderate from the search results. In this example, I have selected Upper Deck 2008 and I have been directed to the set directory page. On this page, I can search within the set, select different subsets and report any problems. On the upper right hand page, it will also show the set expert and give you the option to volunteer to help.

3. Select ‘volunteer to help’ and a pop-up will appear where you can add a few comments on why you want to become a set expert (this is optional). Josh and I will receive a notification of your request.

4. When your request has been approved, you will receive a message in your inbox notifying you that you are now a set expert. You will also see a Set Expert Panel on your dashboard where you will now see any flags for that set, new cards added to that set and any issues reported.

Congratulations! Now you are a set expert. Your power is endless!

Hi Zistlers! Thanks again to those of you that have taken the time to give us feedback over the past few weeks. We have been working hard to make sure that we address all of your concerns, suggestions and issues with the new site. We appreciate you using our new feedback tool and helping us track our progress.

We have had a lot of bugs and we appreciate your patience as we fix them. The good news is that we have not had anyone report that they could not access their collections or received error messages while trying to view their Wantlist. Our first priority was to make sure that the site could work for everyone – even if you had a massive collection. If you are having issues – please let us know.

Import/Export

The mass import/export has been working well and we are very excited that you have been trying it out. We have increased our user created cards in the database by 30% – with over 30,000 cards added to the site since we re-launched. That means in a year and a half of user submissions, users added 100,000 cards compared to 30,000 in that last few weeks. That’s pretty amazing! Thanks to jmurph8081 who has been busy importing and completing several sets as well as becoming our first set expert and taking the lead on the contributor leaderboard.

We hope that more of you will become set experts and help us build the Zistle database and moderate the library. I will be writing a post later about how set expert works and how you can give jmurph8081 a run for his money in the top spot.

Thanks for your patience during the launch and our subsequent absence. The launch took a lot longer than we expected and there were some bugs that we had not anticipated. As a result, we did not have as much time as we would have liked to test and make sure that everything was working properly. A huge THANK YOU to those of you who have taken the time to use the new site and give us feedback. Josh will be working full time this week on getting bugs fixed so if there is something that isn’t working or you have a question – please use our new feedback tool. You can access by using the link on the side of your browser – see below.

Please give us your feedback using the side link

We are using Tender as our new feedback and FAQ tool. Not only will this be the way that Zistle users can report bugs and other issues, it will serve as an area where we can cumulatively add to the knowledge base for new users. If and when possible, it is really helpful to us to report one problem at a time rather than a laundry list of issues in one thread. Then we can say: “hooray! We fixed this problem!” and then we can move on to the next one. It also helps other users identify individual problems and then add to the discussion if they are also experiencing it. That being said, we sincerely appreciate the feedback and your help finding the bugs. It is ultimately our job to make sure that everything is working and we appreciate any and all help.

Over the next few days, I will be responding to some of your questions and suggestions on the blog as well as in the help and support section. I will also be addressing some of the features that did not make it into this release and how we plan to continue to work on the site moving forward.

We want to thank you again for your feedback, support and patience as we made this change over to the new platform. It was definitely not as smooth as we wanted it to be and we will be working hard over the next few weeks to rapidly fix bugs and make sure that the site is running smothly. The current version of Zistle is certainly not the last. Now that we have made this transition, we will be able to make updates more quickly in addition to being able to accommodate users with hundreds of thousands of cards.

This launch paved the way for all of the features that we have been planning for the last year. We are so excited to be on this new platform and to make Zistle what we know it can be.

So we finally finished migrating all of the data over… unfortunately it took a little longer than expected. The good news is that we have it all on our new system and it is much faster. Users with large collections can actually use the site and we will be able to roll out new features much more quickly. The bad news is that it is still a little rough around the edges that we are going out of town in about an hour for the remainder of the week.

Initially I wanted to delay the release, but after talking about it for a while we decided to let you guys have at it–with a few big caveats.

1) There are some issues in internet explorer, so if things seem a little screwy, try firefox.
2) We are not going to have internet access for the next 5 days so if something goes wrong, please be patient.
3) We have moved some things around and not yet had time to update our help site..

With that said, we are switching it live so you should be able to access it once the new DNS records propagate. If you decide to jump in please feel free to let us know what you hate, what you love, bugs you’ve found or whatever else is on your mind via our help site (http://help.zistle.com) or the feedback button on the site. If Beta sites are not your style, just hang tight for a few more days until we wrap up the loose ends.

Have fun and we’ll see you online next week!

We are currently working on launching the new Zistle. The site will be up and sunning in roughly 24-48 hours depending on the migration of the data from the old site to the new site. Thanks for your patience!

The launch of the new platform is getting very close. As we mentioned before, the site will be down for at least 24 hours. The down time will depend entirely on how long it will take to migrate the data from the old system to the new site. We are planning to take down the site at some point tomorrow and it will be down until later on Sunday and may possibly delay until Monday. Prior to the data migration, we will be approving all outstanding flags and new cards. We would appreciate if you could hold off from adding any more flags/new cards until we are done with the launch – the more cards we have to approve, the longer the delay before the new site.

All of your current settings and information will transfer over to the site with one exception. Outstanding trades and trading history will no longer be accessible. Trader scores will be maintained but there will be no history of previous trades. We apologize for the inconvenience but this is one item were not able to migrate.

So, relax on entering more cards, clear up any outstanding trade issues, check the blog for updates and enjoy the weekend! Happy 4th of July!

Hey Zistlers. We are planning a fourth of July launch for the new platform. We want to apologize for not giving more frequent updates. It is never fun to write a post saying that the timeline is getting pushed back and I wanted to wait until we had good news about our progress. However bad news is better than no news.

We are still cranking through the approvals and flags – thanks for your patience with this. There have been more delays recently as we continue to work on the back-end migration.

Look for a post this weekend giving a preview of what will be different in the next release. As always, feel free to drop us a note with any feedback or ideas.