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 getting very close to re-launching Zistle on the new platform. While this launch won’t be packed with new functionality – this release will offer major performance improvements as well as set the stage for new features. For those members with large collections – you will no longer see error messages that you have reached your memory limit and you should notice much faster response times for sorting your collections and wantlists. It may not sound like a big deal but this release is a complete rebuild of Zistle and we will be able to implement new features faster than before. Which is good news for those of you who have been waiting for some new functionality but really good news for Josh who will be able to make changes without as much headache.

Since we will be migrating all of the information from the old Zistle to the new Zistle, we will need to take the site down for as long as 24 hours. We are hoping to be able to complete the relaunch this week. While the site is down, we will have information on the blog with current status as well as a preview of the new features.

We are really excited about this new platform. Thanks for your patience…it will be worth the wait.

Well friends. It has been a while since you heard from us. The main reason is that Josh and I have been wracking our brains for the last several months about what direction to take in 2010 for Zistle. 2009 was a great year for us. It was about this time last year that we were putting the final touches on the first version of Zistle and getting ready to share it with others. Wow, we have come a long way since then. But the momentum has slowed and I know that some of our die hard members are concerned. A sincere thanks for checking in and caring so much about the site and us. I cannot really express how much it means to us to have such a caring community surrounding this site.

This post is really meant to quell your fears as well as address some of the issues that are facing Zistle and how we plan to move forward in 2010. First of all, Zistle is not being shut down. We haven’t abandoned you or the site. What in fact has been going on behind the scenes is a long and involved conversation about how to take Zistle to the next level. Here are the major challenges that we are facing.

Larger capacity

If you are a member that has a large collection or wantlist on Zistle, you are no stranger to error codes. This is unacceptable to us but we frankly do not have the bandwidth to support it. The immediate fix to the problem is to pay for more bandwidth but this is not a real solution since this is a cycle that will just perpetually continue.

Zistle needs to stay free but have a path to sustainabilty

Our love for Zistle is deep but it is obvious that at some point Zistle will become a financial burden for us. We are committed to keeping Zistle free but it is also important that the site breaks even monetarily. This is our goal for 2010. We have ideas for how to make this possible and as always, we will be asking you for your feedback, thoughts and suggestions. Stay tuned.

More members

Zistle is only as good as the members of the site. We know that having more members is not only our  key to growth but also the only way to give our current members the best experience possible. Many of you have reached out with great ideas on how to increase membership and you will see us implementing some of them this year. In addition, we will be working harder to engage with the users that we do have to keep them excited about the site.

Better Data

While we have a great start and we have some rockstar members who have devoted so much of their time to add to the database, there are still major holes and we can’t expect you to fill them by hand. To tackle this issue, we plan to build more sophisticated tools for you to enter information and make it easier for us to edit and update changes on the back end.

More access

One issue for many of you has been the inability to export or print your information. While most of you trust us, we also understand that it is frustrating to not be able to access your data the way you want. This is an issue that we will be tackling head on. We appreciate your patience in waiting for this feature.

After reading all of that, these challenges might seem obvious and you might even ask yourself why I would take the time to write all of this down and make you read it. While the challenges are obvious the solution is not and this is what we have been struggling with for the last six months. We have decided that to face these challenges and reach our goals for the site that we will need to actually rebuild the site in a different platform. It may sound scary but Josh has convinced me that this is not only the best course of action but the fastest as well. Please don’t be scared by the proposition. Your data will be safe and Zistle will be better when it is completed. We are confident that this will allow us to not only implement many of the features that you have been asking for but also make Zistle a faster, easier to use site. If you made it this far in the post – thanks for taking the time to be a part of Zistle. 2010 is going to be a great year.

The time has come for a style guide. We cannot wait any longer. While approving the flagged cards this evening, I noticed that there are some flagging wars over how to label a card. We need come to a consensus on a few things so that we don’t have people wasting their time flagging endlessly. As we continue to grow, it is important that we have guidelines to help our database to be as accurate as possible.

Since I anticipate this will be a little messy, I am going to be writing a series of  posts about issues that I am seeing over and over again. Please, Please, PLEASE help us by giving feedback in our comments so that we can come to some consensus over these issues. As we reach decisions, I will be adding them to the Zistle Style Guide which will be housed on the Zistle site.

Here is the first list of topics: determining what is a set and what is a subset, the number of a card, multiplayer cards, short prints, team checklists, and named cards (different from payer name), and unnumbered cards.

Please let me know in the comments if you have other suggestions for additional topics. I know there are others out there so just let me know. I am working on the set/subset post now and it should be ready soon. Thanks for participating and I am looking forward to seeing how this works.

I have been neglecting our blog. It is true and I am deeply, deeply ashamed. But, I have a really good reason.  Josh and I have been completely glued to our computers getting ready to launch the next release of Zistle and I haven’t been able to tear myself away. But tonight I am making myself take a breather to share a preview of the new Zistle.

I know what you’re thinking…the new Zistle? Isn’t Zistle pretty new? Why do you need a new version?

Our current site is really just a prototype that was never intended to be the final product. As many of you know, we have been making gradual improvements to the functionality of the site, mainly in response to your feedback and suggestions. Next, we set out to tackle our trading platform, which allows you to propose and negotiate detailed trades with other Zistle members based on the contents of your WantList/TradeList. It didn’t take us long to realize that building the trading platform meant that almost every area of the site needed to be optimized. Launching our trading functionality was going to have a huge impact and rather than having several small releases, we decided to roll it out in one big release. So here is what you will see when the new Zistle launches.

1. New Look

With the new release, there will be major changes to the overall design of the site. When redesigning the site, we wanted to highlight the beauty of the cards, make the navigation more straightforward and add advanced options while maintaining the simplicity of the site. Plus, some areas just needed a little polish. We also intend on launching LOTS of new sports–more to come on this later.

2. Trading Platform

The trading platform is the major new feature of this release. With our new trading platform, you will be able to search for trading partners based on their WantLists/TradeLists, offer card for card proposals (I will trade you these 15 cards for those 15 cards), and counter offer until an agreement is reached. Each trade negotiation has its own page and stores the history of the proposal. Once the trade is complete, you can rate the trade and all cards will automatically be entered into your collection. It is going to be really, really sweet.

3.  Overall Optimized Experience

Almost every single aspect of the site is getting an upgrade. The dashboard, your collection experience, the library homepage, trading (of course), box breaks. We can’t possibly fit everything that we want to do in the next release but we are trying to make it as awesome as we can. If there is anything that you absolutely cannot live without in the next release, please post it in the comments and we will do our best to include it.

I cannot give an absolute date that we will be launching the next version but we are planning on mid-March at the latest. We hope it is sooner and we work fast but there is still a lot of work to do.

You have been amazing in using the site, giving feedback, sharing your scans and most of all sharing your passion for this great hobby. You deserve the best site that we can provide and we are determined to give it to you.

We all need to show off every once in a while. It’s ok, don’t be modest–especially about your cards. If you want to show off your collection on Zistle, now you can! Anyone can view your entire collection by visiting www.zistle.com/username/collection/sport. Visitors do not need to be logged in to see your collections so you can post a link on your blog or share it with anyone that you want.

When visitors access your collection, they will be able to browse in the same way you do when viewing your collection. Your collections are also now accessible from your dashboard by clicking the sport names in the “My Collections” section. What are you waiting for…go show off already!

We have launched the beta version of our teams functionality to our beta site. With this feature you can add a player’s team to the card when editing your collection, browsing the library, adding a card to the library or flagging a card.

All of the current professional teams for all four sports have been entered as well as a few retired, amateur and college teams. When adding team in list view, click on the “add team” link and type in the team name and it will automatically complete your selection. Click the green add button and the team will be added to that card just like that.

Select Add Team

Type name and click green add icon

If the team you are entering is not in our database, you will receive a prompt to add that team to the library.

You cannot see the team name while you are viewing your collection right now. If you would like to add teams to your cards, go to “edit collection” and select “just my cards” and add teams this way.

You will also note a different layout for editing collection. This was necessary to have enough room to display team info. We look forward to hearing your thoughts about this new layout.

We also plan to allow you to sort by team while editing but we have not yet built this functionality. We will likely add it in the next few days. If you can, try to add teams to a few cards and let us know what you think. We would like to make this available as soon as possible.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

It is Valentine’s Day which means that most people are thinking about a different type of cardboard–the type that tells loved ones you love them and/or the cardboard boxes that contain chocolates. Not us! We celebrated Valentine’s day early by heading to the local card shop and buying a box of fresh wax for each other. But it doesn’t stop there. All weekend, we are going to be working on cranking out some great new features for our loyal members because we really love you guys. Here is what we have lined up for our weekend of Zistle love.

Teams! As I write this, Josh is building the infrastructure to add teams. The lists will start with current professional teams but you will be able to add old teams, minor league teams, college teams, etc… We think we have come up with a pretty great solution for adding team to a card quickly as well as adding new teams. Just like adding a new set, a new team will have to be approved before users can see it. This has been a popular feature request and we are excited to launch it.

Layout improvements: Adding teams has forced us to reconsider our layout in list view. We are improving the layout to be able to see more cards at a time in gallery view as well as be able to see the team in list view.

Trading! This is a behemoth of a project which we plan to make a huge dent in this weekend. We are working hard to get this functionality to you. We definitely need people to beta test this for us. We’ll let you know as soon as it is live!

Other Bug Fixes/Improvements: You will definitely see some small updates as well. For example, some improvements/changes to adding cards, the ability to flag sets/subsets and the ability to add a box to the box break page.

At the request of skoormit from A Pack A Day, we added a “Feature Pipeline” page which details all of the features we plan on building. It outlines our vision for Zistle and gives you a chance to review all of the new features before they are code complete. The features are roughly listed in order of deployment but we don’t have specific launch dates to give you. Our Trading Platform is one of our biggest features releases and we plan to launch very soon (within the next two weeks). Please check it out and let us know what you think. As always, continue to share your new ideas and questions at http://getsatisfaction.com/zistle. We love to hear from you!