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.

The number of member submitted card images on Zistle is a true testament to the strength of our community and the commitment of our members. Over 100,000 images have been uploaded by Zistle members into the Zistle library to date That is a pretty awesome stat especially since there is no bulk upload functionality.  That is a LOT of time spent uploading images – not to mention all of the time scanning them. We have always known that we needed to solve this problem – but there just wasn’t an obvious solution to easily upload images in bulk and assign them to the right card without making it just as arduous as our current process.

So when DaClyde offered to share his collection of 30,000 images with Zistle as long as he didn’t have to add them individually – we were ecstatic but also knew that we needed a way to solve this problem once and for all. With a little testing we were able to come up with a solution that has worked beautifully – thanks in part to DaClyde’s meticulous organizational skills. Literally some of our sets have gone from zero pictures to being 99% complete. Let’s just take a second to relish in the beauty of the 1987 Topps Set…

And all 53 pages of the main set look that way with a few exceptions. Wow! We feel extremely lucky to have such generous contributing members and we appreciate your patience while we come up with a solution for everyone. In the meantime if you have complete sets or a large collection that is well organized and would like to save yourself from getting carpel tunnel – please let us know. Ideally – the cards for any given subset would be in their own directory and the names of the cards would be the card number. However – we can most likely work with any organizational scheme.

Thanks for all of your hard work – we’re getting there.

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.

Hey Zistlers. I want to say thank you for continuing to contribute to the site and give your feedback. It is extremely helpful for us and we always love hearing from you. Some of your questions and concerns have gone unanswered on Get Satisfaction–the site we use to track ideas and questions. I have recently combed through the topics and responded to many of your ideas/problems so if you haven’t heard from me in a while, please check it out.

Also, there have been many excellent ideas shared through the feedback tool. If you haven’t checked out what people are saying, it might be a good time to peruse the ideas and let us know your thoughts. It can be hard to justify adding a feature if only one person is asking for it. Even just indicating which ideas you really like can be extremely helpful for us in determining the next feature to add. Keep telling us what you think. We are listening!