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.

by ashley Building Zistle, Zistle Updates

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.

by ashley Building Zistle, Zistle Updates, improvements

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.

by ashley Building Zistle, Zistle Updates Add new tag, FAQ, flagging

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.

by ashley Building Zistle, Trading, Zistle Updates

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!

by ashley Building Zistle, Features, New on Zistle, Zistle Updates share, view collections

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!

by ashley Building Zistle, Features, New on Zistle, Zistle Updates beta, list view, teams

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.

by ashley Building Zistle, Features, Trading, Zistle Updates Box Breaks, flagging, improvements, zistle love

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!

by ashley Building Zistle, Zistle Updates box break features, collection features, library features, new features, trading features

There has been some confusion over our domains and frankly it is our fault. Initially, we were going to have a private beta site (beta.zistle.com) before our public launch on our main domain. We realized that this was a tad silly as we just wanted collectors to start using the site. So, we decided to go ahead and push everything to our main site www.zistle.com. This should be your main destination when using Zistle.

We will still be using beta.zistle.com to test new features before rolling them out to the new site. We strongly encourage you to check out our beta site to use new features and give us feedback before we launch them to the main site. We have recently received a ton of feedback from our members asking for new features and we’ve definitely heard you! We are already working hard to add new features to the site. For example, Dan from Saints of the Cheap Seats had a great idea  about being able to add entire sets/subsets to your collection (we may have given him carpel tunnel when he added over 2,500 cards to his collection over the past few days). Not only have we started working on building this feature, but Dan will be able to test this feature when it is finished and give his feedback.

At the moment, anyone can log onto the beta site to test new features. All of your data will transfer between the two domains. So if you update your WantList on beta, those changes will also happen on the main site. The only difference is that our beta site will have some additional features that have not been fully vetted (i.e. the site may break on you).

We want our beta site to be a way for our loyal users to test out new features while keeping our main site as bug free and stable as possible.

by ashley Building Zistle, Features, Zistle Updates

I just wanted to write a quick note and let everyone know what we’ve been up to–because we’ve been busy. We’ve recently made a lot of progress on the site, especially considering that we can really only work on it during nights and weekends. So here are some of the highlights:

Improved Search
For those of you that used some of our earliest versions of the site, I’m sure you can tell the difference in performance.  We have increased many of our search times by at least an order of magnitude.  In addition we have really expanded the search syntax that you can use.  For example you can now include sport names, years, player names, brands, numbers and even some properties.  Keywords such as “relic”, “rookie” or “autograph” can be used.  So you can now look up “Kirby Puckett 1985 Topps #536″ or “Adrian Peterson rookie” or even “Hockey 1999 Gretzky autograph” and you’ll find what you’re looking for.  As we get more data we hope to expand even further potentially including teams and more.

Revamped Trading Lists
We now use smart lists to help you let people know what you want or are willing to give up.  By that I mean that you can say I want “Kirby Puckett” cards and your want list will show you all of the Kirby Puckket cards on Zistle that you don’t have.  Whats great about this is that as we get more and more cards your lists are automatically updated.  We have many, many more improvements in the pipeline with respect to trading, including trade reccomendations and the ability to embed these dynamic lists in your blog allowing you to manage your cards in on place and access it from many. Expect to hear much more from us about this soon.

Bugs galore!
We are really happy with the quality of the site right now, but we wouldn’t be here without the help of our users.  Thank You!  Please use the feedback tools or send us email, we love to hear from you.  In the end this site is about user participation, thats what will make it work.  So let us know what you want, we’ll be happy to talk with you about it and see if we can’t get it into Zistle.

by josh Building Zistle, Zistle Updates