[Tohopekaliga]

Hey everybody! Ever wondered, "what kinds of crazy things is Toho cooking up next?" Well, wonder no more! I have for you a general roadmap of feature additions & updates I will be adding to the site in the near future. At my current rate of development, all of these features together will take until roughly May or June. The exact length of time is hard to pin down because of various factors, including unforseen problems that may arise, and the fact that I need to start working a "real" job again soon, so I can keep paying the bills of this place (and my house!).

Anyway, without further ado, here goes!

This list is of what the updates are, I rate time to complete with stars, and give a little blurb of what's going in to that. Not all features are fully explained here, you'll just have to wait and see what they are. :)

• Header/Navigation update
  • Time: *
  • The header and navigation bar (home, shops, trade, etc) up top are kind of old, and need some love. We intend to give it just that. Love of the tough variety.
  
  
  
• Home Page Update
  • Time: **
  • The homepage with its little announcement blurbs and pictures could use some updating. Largely on the admin side for how it's done, but also in general presentation.
  
  
  
• Commons uploader enhancements
  • Time: **
  • Making new commons is a bit of a hassle, especially with our approach of having lots of color variations. We'll be making a new way for Galla and friends to upload, making item creation easier (thus more likely to happen!)
  
  
  
• New Shop Feature
  • Time: *
  • Adding in a new fancy purchasing feature to the shops. We'll explain it when it's being worked on and almost ready.
  
  
  
• Forum Home update
  • Time: ***
  • Change Who's Online to who's active today (users from the past 24 hours). Easy to do, and I hadn't thought of it until a few days ago.
  • We also plan on redoing how the forum home page (/forums/) displays all the boards and new content. It's pretty much just "basic vBulletin" right now, so it needs something. A fair amount of time for this task will be spent designing how exactly it should look
  
  
  
• Avatar editor & inventory update
  • Time: *****
  • The obvious bit for this is making the avatar editor have styling like the new shops. But the main thrust of what we want to do is a new feature to avatars (really, two new features) that I think everyone will like a lot.
  
  
  
• Newbie tutorials
  • Time: ****
  • Trisphee has a lot of stuff going on. It's easy enough for those of us who are used to it...but just arriving? Super easy to get lost. Therefore, a nice guided introduction when an account is created is in order.
  • We'd do this sooner, but given that a bunch of features will change in several ways, it's better to wait until then, so the tutorials don't have to be rewritten a bunch of times.
  
  
  
• Special Items Gallery
  • Time: **
  • A way to view monthlies, yearlies, and such from the past would be nice, wouldn't it? Well, that's the plan. It'll work like the shops.
  
  
  
• Item color sorting
  • Time: ****
  • The shops, inventory, and avatar editor could all do with a way of only displaying items that have certain colors. It'll take a bit of doing, but it will be great when we have it!

[Illusion]

Now it's the debate of where is the best place to start lol.

It seems like Newbie Tutorial is the last thing on the list to do because of it's need for a finalized site design for it to run properly.

My top 3 of what needs to be done right away:

- Commons uploader enhancements, the first thing that needs to be done because the quicker you have it done the more time you save for your artists to produce more content in the long run. <-- Most time efficient thing to do first.

- Special Items Gallery is sort of needed ASAP to help kickstart the economy/market again. I've heard of ideas of releasing older items as well that would help, the site also sort of needs older items be re-released so a standard trade ratio/currency exchange can be figured out and established. The gallery should come first and see if it's possible for the market to re-establish pricing by people knowing of the products they can try to buy alone, but if the market doesn't pick up then re-releasing older items to help re-establish the market becomes a top priority.

- Changing users currently active to daily active is needed to change perception and increase/encourage activity. That and what about time stamps changing as well? xD

Those are my 3 top picks on the first three that need to be done. Everything else seems to be like extra/less crucial things, or things that require something else to be done first.

[Coda]

One thing to note is that this is just an estimate on the order in which things will be done. We'll have some stuff going on in parallel. Another thing to note is that it isn't an exhaustive list; there are other things we're thinking about but we haven't completely settled on yet that are going to get sorted into the list.

The newbie tutorial isn't QUITE the last thing on the list because it doesn't have to cover ALL of the site features, but it does need to be late enough in the flow that the stuff it covers doesn't change underneath it.

Timestamps aren't really a priority. We haven't really decided on it outside of the Who's Online bit.

Commons uploader enhancements are... actually probably more like a ** or maybe even a ***, depending on what we end up doing with it. (I thought it had a ** when I was reviewing the post when Toho first wrote it. I'll go edit it.) It's not quite as much of a priority as it sounds because it DOESN'T actually help the artists all that much. Non-artists can sort and upload items just fine. It's just annoying and error-prone. So while it's very, very nice to have, it isn't blocking anything to not have it. There are other things that will have a more immediate impact.

I don't think the item gallery is going to have all THAT much of an effect in kickstarting the marketplace. New items and new users will do a better job of that. An item gallery will be more useful in boosting it once it's gotten some momentum going first.

[Tohopekaliga]

The actual next one is going to be header/navigation update, because I have a few things that are wrapped into that that tie into most new features, and having it out of the way will be quite advantageous.

[Gallagher]

You go ahead and have your opinions on commons junk, Coda. I'm gonna keep sitting here with my 24 files of items that would take me literal weeks to upload, without even taking recolor time into account.

Literal. Weeks. Go ahead and knock that down to ***, see what happens.

[Coda]

I don't deny it sucks, but I'm going to be realistic about how long the work is going to take. Those stars don't mean priority. Those stars mean how much work it requires. And it's WAY more work than the home page update.

Also, you CAN always ask for help. Commons sorting is a matter of patience (because it's slow and takes a lot of work) and diligence (because you have to pay attention and not mess it up), not artistic ability. And you are some sort of martyred saint for taking it all upon you yourself.

[littl3chocobo]

oh galla X''D



nah, i think the uploader is very important. years and years ago it was three hassles and a small holy hell to get things uploaded properly and quickly and from the sounds of it the method is still as cumbersome as it was then. do the staff a favor and take the headache of uploading out of the equazion of how to get item up and out quickly

[Coda]

Like I said: I'm GOING to. But just because it's important doesn't mean it's not also a lot of work to do right.

The LAST thing we want is for the replacement to the ugly to be uglier.

[littl3chocobo]

which is well and good but if you put it on the backburner in favor of quick fixes it will continue to not get done and i don't need to be the one to tell you that a bottle-neck on items is something this site just does not need

[Coda]

I already said above that we're going to be working on stuff in parallel. Keep in mind that we have more than one coder now. The commons uploader is not blocked by other things, nor is it blocking other things.

[Illusion]

Originally Posted by Coda

Commons uploader enhancements are... actually probably more like a ** or maybe even a ***, depending on what we end up doing with it. (I thought it had a ** when I was reviewing the post when Toho first wrote it. I'll go edit it.) It's not quite as much of a priority as it sounds because it DOESN'T actually help the artists all that much. Non-artists can sort and upload items just fine. It's just annoying and error-prone. So while it's very, very nice to have, it isn't blocking anything to not have it. There are other things that will have a more immediate impact.

It's already going to be planned and finished, so why not make it a sole priority for one coder to finish and get working right so you can save you're artist time then during the time of the other projects would had taken to complete. Even if this is the project that will require the most amount of time, you will save more time in the long run.

Even if it saves say 5 minutes per use, that's still 5 minutes periodically over the course of whatever other projects being done would take. Not to mention freeing up your artists availability/work time and getting things done more faster/productively when you need their help to start/begin other projects.

I don't think the item gallery is going to have all THAT much of an effect in kickstarting the marketplace. New items and new users will do a better job of that. An item gallery will be more useful in boosting it once it's gotten some momentum going first.

It helps identify items for the desire to even buy or sell thus re-establishing a basis for a new economy.
Increasing user activity first would help boost a new market/economy sooner but then the old economy still lingers with a unknown value/worth which prevents sales/growth of old items in the new market which = Less circulation of those items = Less Usage of the items = A bit of a waste of a great resource.

I mean you could just re-release the items in a new market instead with a shop at a higher rune cost point then it's initial release to help establish it's desire/value in the new market. But then you have to discuss and agree on a mark up value for their re-release, which would be a easier decision if you could look at the items current value and sales.

It will all probably end up in the same direction anyways, but things might become better decision making wise if you establish the gallery sooner.

[Coda]

It's NOT already planned and finished. In fact the plans are barely started. I have a small list of things I know the new version of it needs to do, but we haven't started formalizing the requirements yet.

That said, it IS nearly the the sole priority for one coder to finish: me. I have one other project I'm wrapping up.

As I mentioned before: Uploading doesn't have to be done by an artist. Now that our active staff is growing, there's no reason we need the same person being responsible for making the pixels as being responsible for sorting and uploading the items.

I disagree with you on the gallery. As I said before, right now the site's biggest concern is activity. More than anything else, we need people active on the site (whether new people or old people is irrelevant) and that means we need content for them to interact with. A gallery listing off old legacy content that has a ridiculously high probability of NOT being available? That's not really going to do much at all.

[littl3chocobo]

and items going up and out quickly DOES help with that activity

[Coda]

Yes, it does, which is why it IS a high priority, but it's also a lot of work, which means we can't make promises about it being available quickly even if we had already started on it.

The scheduling is just being realistic about when it CAN be ready.

[Den]

tbh, I'm just happy that this site isn't dead, and that the mods and staff actually listen to the users.

[Tohopekaliga]

lol, guys. Relax. Everything on this list is going to be done. And as I said up front, it won't take too terribly long to so. No need to fight over what's happening first.