UPDATE:  Everything has been resolved.  Sorry for any weirdness that you may have encountered.

We’ve also been really thrilled about the level of feedback so far. We’ve been able to fix issues quickly and we’ve had more questions and interaction from the Zistle community than we have had in a long time. One of the things we learned this week is that the Zistle concept can be a little confusing when you are first starting out. We sometimes forget this because most of our members have been with us for so long that we take for granted that new users will know how to use the site.

This week, we are going to be working on creating some getting started guides, help text and knowledge base articles to help new and old members better utilize the new Zistle. We’ll be combing through your questions over the past few weeks and you’ll start to see help text within the application. If you’re already a pro, you will be able to remove these alerts and tips but hey, you may learn something new.

As always, we’d love your help to make Zistle better. If there is anything that initially confused you when you first joined Zistle, please let us know in the comments or send us a note with the feedback tool and we will add it to our guides and help text. Help us help you make it easier to use Zistle.

It is no surprise that Custom collections came in first as the most requested new feature for Zistle. You asked and we listened. Our next feature release will be custom collections!

Most collectors like to say what they are collecting. Obviously right? Whether it is a player, team or even aspecific set, many collectors focus on something that they enjoy. If for no other reason than to save some money – it’s hard to collect everything right? Now you can create as many custom collections as you’d like. They will be sport specific for now.

We’re really excited to be able to launch this new feature. Stay tuned for a sneak peek over the weekend.

Collection New Look and Feel

Similar to the rest of the site, the collections tab is getting a new look and feel that makes it easier to use. This includes inline pricing, a fixed sidebar for easy scrolling, multi-select and a detail pane.

Multi-Select and Bulk Actions

We want it to be as easy as possible for collectors to add their collection to Zistle. Now you’ll be able to select all cards, a group of cards or one by one and bulk add or remove them to your collection.

The controls will be very similar to selecting multiple files on your computer’s file system.

• Hold CTRL to select multiple cards
• Hold SHIFT to select multiple cards in a row
• Select ALL selects all cards on that page

Once those files are selected, you can add or remove them from your collection using our bulk edit feature. We also plan to add a way for you to add cards to your tradelist and wantlist if not in this release, in the near future.

Detail Pane

We have replaced our detail view with a detail pane that is completely integrated within both list and gallery view. Clicking on each card name will show a closable pane at the bottom of the page that will display all of the details that you used to see in the detail view and more.

In addition to the card image, team, card attributes, pricing and information about who added the card and images, you will be able to see trading information including who wants the card and has the card up for trade. There are also links to see that card and set in the library (more details soon on library). In addition to being able to show more content about the card, you will be able to click through cards one by one and get information without losing your context.

Card Notes

You may have noticed that card notes are no longer in the detail view.We’ve moved card notes to a new column in list view. When a card is in your collection and you hover over it in list view, a pencil icon will appear in the note column. If you click on the icon, a pop-up will appear that will allow you to add a new note.

When your note is saved, a note icon will appear that you can hover over and see your note anytime you are in list view. Pretty fancy, huh? This way, you can easily see which cards have a note and read it instantly.

We’d love to hear your feedback about any of these new features and improvements at http://feedback.zistle.com or in the comments. Our target is to roll out the next release in early June and we are making great progress toward that goal. We’ll be asking for some of you to be beta testers before we roll it out in full production. If you’re interested in helping us test the new version, email me at ashley@zistle .com or just add a comment below.

Vote for New Features

One of the features that we are most excited about is the ability for Zistle members to suggest and vote on new feature ideas. All Zistle members will have 15 votes that you can use to vote for features that you or other members suggest. You will only get 15 votes however, when an idea which you voted for is either closed or implemented, you will receive those votes back. You can also choose how many votes (1-3) you want to cast for each feature. So if you REALLY want one particular feature, you can cast 3 votes.

See what we’re working on

Since Zistle started, our members have given some awesome ideas and suggestions. With our new system, you will actually be able to see what features we are working on, which ones we have planned and which user submitted ideas we have implemented.

Better Response Times

There are a few reasons why we needed to make a switch. The first was that we needed a better admin interface for answering your questions and resolving your problems. We want to be more responsive in answering your questions. Our new tool will quite literally hunt us down if we aren’t doing our job.

Get Started

If you want to get started suggesting and voting for new ideas, go to our new Feedback Site. We have seeded the new feature forum with some suggestions that were already mentioned in the previous forum but we know that there are more out there.

We are working on launching some new features soon and we would love to add some more user suggested voted. Get voting!

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.

One of the reasons why this release took so long to materialize (besides some complicated back-end changes) was a lack of focus in terms of what features to focus on first. There are so many ideas out there and so many things that we want to do – but, it is significantly harder to decide what to do first and how to prioritize. So to simplify our process we asked ourselves one simple question: what is stopping most collectors from using Zistle? It was an easy answer – we need better data. So our number 1 focus for this release is to make tools and features that make it easier for you to get your data into Zistle and allow you access to get it out. More data, better data, free data…

More data – Bulk import into the Zistle Library and to your collection

Many of our members have spent countless hours entering cards one by one into the Zistle database. With the next release, members will be able to mass import cards from a .csv file directly into the Zistle database. This allows Zistle members to leverage their own spreadsheets as well as spreadhseets and checklists that already exist online and import them into the database which will make it a lot easier to increase the number of cards in the database.

We would like to add similar functionality for adding cards to your collection and wantlists. We could really use your imput on whether or not you think this system would be useful to you and if you have any suggestions for how to make it the most useful process for you. Obviously, members without their entire collections will not benefit from this as much as users with more data to add. We are hoping that this will help people who have been on the fence about Zistle make the leap. Be sure to give us your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks!

Better Data – Tools for improving the accuracy of the database

So more data is great, but it is no secret that there are some issues with inaccurate and duplicate cards in the database. Right now, our flagging system works well for individual errors or updating a single card. However, when an entire set is incorrect or there are a series of duplicates, there is not a very good system for bringing that to our attention and correcting it. We are approaching this in a few different ways. First, you will be able to flag a set or a subset as being a mess (that probably won’t be the official term – but when I think of 1990 Topps or anything Starquest sets, that is the only way to describe them). This way, we can identify and track sets that need a substantial amount of work and resolve it more effectively. Those of you who have emailed me or shared feedback on Get Satisfaction will be able to appreciate that these requests often slip through the cracks.

We are also making some significant changes to the Library tab. Currently, the Library tab is designed to serve as a reference area to look up cards not in your collection. On the new site, it will serve as a wiki-style view of each set on Zistle. So for example, you will be able to go to the 2010 Topps page and see a comprehensive view of each set, with a list of every subset, the number of cards in each subset, and images of the cards. There will also be a discussion area to hash out style issues such as red ink versus black or misprints. In addition, we will have set experts that will be able to approve the cards added to that particular set and monitor any changes that happen to the set. This will help take some of the administration burden off of Josh and I and allow more consensus within the community on style points and the nuances of each set.

Free your data – Exporting your collection/wantlist from Zistle

This is a feature we have talked about for a long, long time. One that many of our detractors mention as a downfall of the site and certainly makes people nervous (especially when we don’t blog for a few months). We do firmly believe that you own your data and we recognize that it is nice to be able to print off your collection and wantlists for card shows, etc. As a disclaimer, there will be some limits to the amount of data that can be exported at one time (this is primarily a technology barrier). We haven’t worked it out exactly but it will be something on the order of a limit of 10,000 entries at one time – which seems workable to us. We will be monitoring the exporting and reserve the right to disallow this privilege or cancel someone’s account if we suspect abuse for obvious reasons ( mean spirited people be advised). To our valued members – thank you for trusting us with your data for the last year and a half. We are excited to be able to launch this feature.

We know that is a lot of information. Please give us feedback in the comments below. If you have ideas about how to make bulk importing into wantlists/collection better than we laid out above, please let us know. Can’t wait to hear what you think.

In addition to being able to edit your collection like the other views, in details view you can add and view notes that you have put on your cards.  If you click “edit note” you will get an input box that you can enter your notes into

If you click save then your note will be attached to that card

So notes will allow you to store information specific to your cards for you to see.  A few things to note about notes:

1. Right now you can only use this view on your own collections
2. If you search while viewing your collection you will search over your notes
3. If you move the quantity of cards to 0 you will lose any notes attached to those cards

Enjoy and if you have any suggestions for improvements we would love to hear them!

After we launched live chat, there were quite a few requests to add a forum. And well, we just can’t say no. There is now a Zistle Forum that you should definitely go and check out. As you might have guessed, this will help facilitate the writing of the style guide as well as give you an opportunity to have longer threads between members. If you want a category added, just let me know. The forum is housed at forum.zistle.com and if you are logged into Zistle, you will be automatically logged into the forum as well.

Private messaging is built into the platform and it is called ‘whispering’. If you want to whisper, simply start a new discussion and type in the user’s name in the appropriate field and only they will be able to see your message.Similarly, when you respond to a thread, you can simply enter in the name (the field will auto-complete so you don’t need to type the whole username) and you are all set.

Chat is still available for you to use. For now, they are different experiences but we will most likely integrate them down the road. As always, we love to hear your feedback on what you like, don’t like, think could be better, etc so don’t be shy!

Live chat, our most requested feature, just came to Zistle and we are very, very excited to offer this feature to our members. Any member logged into Zistle will be able to access Zistle Live Chat to instantly connect with other Zistle members. There will be one main chat room where all members logged in will appear. You can participate in the main conversation or have a private conversation with any individual member in a separate tab. So you can discuss the topic du jour or work out trade details with other members simultaneously. To initiate a private conversation with a member, just click their username and click ‘ private message’.

You will be able to access Zistle Live Chat from your dashboard and the trading homepage. Members who do not log into Zistle chat will not appear in the chat room so you don’t need to opt out if you are not interested in chatting with other members online.

While we have tested the new chat feature, we anticipate that bugs will arise over the next few days. As always, we rely on you to let us know about any issues you encounter. We work hard to get new features to you as quickly as possible and we appreciate your help when we launch a new feature.

See you soon on Zistle Chat!