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 Zistle live chat has become a pretty lonely place. The idea has been tossed around by several Zistlers to set up at least one time during the week when people would go online and chat. I saw now is as good of a time as any to get something started. So this Sunday night while the football game is on, we are going to have an official chat session on Zistle. People can organize trades, mingle and get to know newbies. Join in anytime. If you have a blog, please spread the word. One note is that you need to have a Zistle account to access chat so if you mention it to others please let them know. This should be fun. See you Sunday.

by ashley New on Zistle, Trading, Zistle Updates

I was going to post this last night, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to stop weeping after that heartbreaking Twins loss at Yankee Stadium. After regrouping, I am ready to share some pretty cool milestones. Even if the Twins can’t beat the Yankees and leave 17 men on base, at least Zistle is still going strong.

Milestone #1 : Shoeboxlegends reaches 1 million contribution points!

Ok, this is a little crazy. I mean 1,000,000–that is six full zeros. And this happened a while ago because his current points are actually at 1,121,489. I am not sure how we should award this type of dedication. Your own custom status? Good work Shoebox, you are an inspiration to card scanners everywhere.

It is also to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who contributes to Zistle. You many not have 1,000,000 points but you still make a huge impact on Zistle.

Milestone #2 : Zistle reaches 600,000 cards

Over the past few months, we have over doubled the Zistle library. We are growing little by little. We are working on some tools that will help make it easier to add cards more quickly. We realize how much work everyone puts in to add these cards and you are doing a great job.

Milestone #3: Zistle has 50,000 user-added images

This is really the milestone that is crazy to us. I mean that is A LOT of images. That isn’t the total amount of images grant you – just the ones added by our users. As we continue to grow in membership, we are starting to get really great photo coverage.

by ashley Zistle Updates, zistle love contribution points

Hey Zistle Peeps! We hope everything is going well. We wanted to share this video from Packs to the People before it hits the shelves. As always, we enjoy their fresh approach to Box Breaks. Enjoy.

by ashley Box Breaks, Zistle Updates Box Breaks, packs to the people

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!

by ashley Zistle Updates, improvements Feedback, get satisfaction

Hey everyone. It has been a while since you have heard from us–unless you are one of the few who sends us an occasional email. If you were worried, we are still here and still working.

We have some bugs that we are trying to figure out right now. People with over 15K cards in their collection may notice some performance issues. Thanks for your patience while we work on it. If you are having issues, it would help us immensely if you could let us know about it.

I want to take a second to give a big huge THANK YOU to all of our members who have been adding cards with some amazing scans. You guys rock. I also want to welcome all of our new members. Thanks to DKrill’s recent endorsement on Saints of the Cheap Seats, we have seen a big increase in membership. Thanks DKrill!

If you are interested in helping us grow this great community of people, we have made a little banner ad that you can download and add to your blog or webpage. If you put up an ad, you are a friend of Zistle and we will happily add you to our list of friends.

If you have ideas or suggestions, send your feedback through our feedback link or leave a comment on the blog. Also, all members should feel welcome to reach me directly at ashley@zistle.com with any praise, questions, complaints or concerns.

by ashley Zistle Updates

Hey Zistlers. Andrew from “Packs to the People” emailed us and asked for our help promoting his video “Manhunt Break”. They entered a creative contest a while back and it turned in to a sponsored gig from Upper Deck and they are trying to get the word out. We are always willing to help collectors who are doing new things in the hobby. This is definitely not your typical box break video. This is an 08-09 O-Pee-Chee Premiere Hockey Break but they have others from other sports on the way. Check it out and if you have a youtube account, let them know what you think.

by ashley Box Breaks, Hockey, Zistle Updates 08-09 O-Pee-Chee Premiere, Manhunt Break

We just rolled out a new feature to the Zistle main site! Many of you have asked for a way to annotate cards in your collections, so we added a new view type.  If you are viewing or editing your collection you will now notice a “details” view option is available.  If you select that it will show you your results that look like this:

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!

by josh Features, Zistle Updates

This is the first in a series of posts that will begin addressing issues in creating a Zistle Style Guide. The Zistle Style Guide will be a collaborative project in Zistle members will reach consenus regarding naming conventions and categorizing that will be used for the Zistle Library. Before I delve into this post, I want to make the point that there are many different naming practices that exist–thereby creating the confusion in the first place. This discussion is not to decide what is the “right” way but what is the best way for Zistle and its members. I am aware that some of you are quite passionate about your views and I ask you to think about what is the best for everyone–not your personal preferences.Thanks in advance for your participation and enthusiasm.

Brands vs. Sets

While it may seem obvious, I think it is important to distinguish the difference between a brand and a set and the implications for Zistle. A brand is the name of the Card Manufacturer: Topps, Upper Deck, Razor, Donruss, etc. On Zistle, sets are the actual sets released by a manufacturer. So Topps is a set in addition to Topps Heritage. Topps Heritage is not a subset of Topps. There are a few reasons for this but the most important reason is parallel sets and categorization. Most sets include multiple subsets (parallels, inserts, autos, relics) often with the same numbers (parallels). If we do not have subsets, it becomes impossible to sort these cards correctly. A good rule of thumb is that if you can buy a pack of it, it is a set. If you can’t buy a pack of it, it is a subset of another set. There are exceptions and often there are inserts from other sets in many sets. These are admittedly more difficult to classify and requires a second post. I think most people agree on this topic, however, if anyone has any ideas for how to deal with sets that fall outside of the conditions listed above or if anyone has any additional comments, please share them.

Main Set vs. Subsets

In my personal opinion, this is one of the most difficult issues to resolve and I am extremely interested in what people think about this topic. The main set is another way of saying “base set” or “base cards”. Normally these cards are numbered numerically and have no particular distinguishing attributes (i.e. 1-400). Parallel cards should be categorized as a subset. Insert cards should also be categorized as a subset unless they belong to a different set.

Again, outside of a few exceptions, there seems to be general consensus on this topic. The one problem we need to resolve is when a card is in the normal numbering system but it is distinct from the base card design. For example, Season Highlights in Upper Deck occur in the normal numbering system, but they are obviously different in design from the regular base card. On one hand, if you take them out of the main set, there appears to be a hole in the numbering and can often lead to duplicates. However, if you don’t make them a subset, there is a loss of some detail. Some members have kept them in the main set, but added the title of the card, so that they can be searched. While this keeps the detail, some card names are often too long.Your thoughts on this are most appreciated.

Specific Sets: Bowman, Upper Deck, Topps

There are a few sets that I would like to address specifically and ask for help from the Zistle community on how to deal with these sets.

Bowman- Bowman released two products pre-2008– Bowman and Bowman Chrome. Within those sets, there are the draft cards as well- Bowman Draft and Bowman Chrome Draft. Both of the sets have multiple subsets. Because of this, Zistle lists them as four separate sets: Bowman, Bowman Draft, Bowman Chrome and Bowman Chrome Draft. Are there any thoughts on this? Is this a good solution or do you find it confusing?  In 2008, Bowman started releasing a Draft Pick and Prospects set which may have solved this problem going forward but I would love to hear your thoughts pre-2008.

Topps/Upper Deck–Series 1 and Series 2- Both Topps and Upper Deck release their main product in two distinct releases, Series 1 and Series 2. Currently, Zistle lists both Topps and Upper Deck as one product and puts those two sets together. While it diminishes some confusion, the carda are technically labeled distinctly by their respective series and often contain different subsets. Is it better to have one big Upper Deck/Topps set or better to distinguish them as separate sets?

I am going to start some discussions in the Zistle Forum about the above mentioned topics so you can join the discussion there or leave a comment on this post. Of course, feel free to start your own discussion thread about any issues that you feel need to be resolved. Thanks everyone for contributing to this!

by ashley Zistle Style Guide, Zistle Updates bowman, bowman chrome, set, subset, topps, upper deck