First off, i'd like to say what an amazing site this is. I absolutely love it - it's simply fantastic! On top of you saving me money for not having to buy crappy software but now I can access my collection on the go! Already added games to the database, edited more and will continue to do so (All with full details of course.). Now where was I? Oh yes, bug/suggestions.
I didn't use the search feature for these items so I apologize in advance if they've already been mentioned.
Bug Collection Duplicates:I'm not quite sure if this was intended or not but you can infact add a game to your collection more than once. The duplicates can be rather annoying. Not to mention if you're on the item page and looking at the game, the user has no way of knowing if the item is already in their list. My suggestion would be to check if it's already in your list or not. For the item page, you could simply display the "Added!" button/image instead of the "Add to Collection" when the item is already in the list. To add a little more protection, on the development/coding side - i'm assuming PHP, SQL too perhaps? You should query whether the result already exists before adding it to the table. I'm a bit of a web developer myself - let me know if you ever need any help - free of charge of course. What can I say, i'm a community guy.
Update: Above bug is Confirmed as intended. My position still stands on the duplicates matter for unintentional collection/wishlist items.
I understand that most people will want to keep this feature, so a small work around would be some sort of notification on game info page
that displays if the game is already in collection/wishlist.
Just like the one on the mobile version. IE: "This item is on your wish list."
Bug Redraw problem: I'm using Google Chrome so not sure if this is a browser specific bug or not. The following steps replicate this problem.
1. Go to your collection.
2. Scroll half way down the page.
3. In the search field, type in a phrase like "donkey" (stop there, this would happen if we were looking for donkey kong for example)
4. Now scroll back up to the top.
5. Notice how the list leaves the drop down area.
6. If you try to continue using the search box, the results happen out of screen.
Update: Redraw Bug Confirmed, added tofix list.Suggestions:1.)
Allow users to add consoles to their collection.Use a separate list for consoles/hardware. (IE; wishlist, collection, hardware). With the correct coding you could use the hardware list to the user's advantage to speed up productivity.We used to have hardware all under one category but broke it out because it became a nightmare to maintain. The current plan is to keep them in your collection, but consolidate them into one category.
2.) This ties in to the suggestion above, you could use the consoles in the list as a filter when the user searches for a game and then only display the results of games that the user has an available console for. This will help limit the items returned.
Search will be getting an overhaul soon. Most of my efforts are going to go to improving the Advanced Search page as well as making it more visible for the user.
3.)
Mobile front end for vgcollect. Not only could you get away with not coding app specifics (Android, iPhone, and the like) but you
could just format the site for mobile and be done with it.Mobile site completed. Link for news:
http://vgcollect.com/forum/index.php/topic,1193.msg12789.html#new4.)
On the user's stats page, for the Total Spent section, i'm getting $0.00. Using the new/used prices from Amazon, what I would suggest would be to show the Total spent if the user paid new for all games, and the total spent if the user paid used for all games. Later on you could add an option for the user collection of how the user obtained the item (obviously using a combo/drop down box or checkbox) and calculate it that way. Fill the "My Cost" box with the prices from amazon. If the user didn't fill out the "My Cost" then it should automatically use a default cost option so the user can see an estimate of how much his collection is worth without having to fill out the details5.) This is similar to the suggestion above. Under the site stats, you could display the value/cost of all games in the database reflecting new prices and used prices. This would be rather useless but would be interesting to see.
Confirmed for sections 4 and 5.This section is all sort of broken right now. My end plan is to tap into the eBay API and use those prices to get an average cost. This is on the to-do list buy no where near the top. I'll make a forum post once I'm starting to go down that path.
6.) More social aware! Everybody loves being social. I'm not up on most of the social sites, but each item should have social actions like a comments box, +1 (like) button, etc. I know for a fact facebook has developer options that are EXTREMELY easy to incorporate. I added them to my website with ease. Some social sites would be facebook, twitter, google plus, etc. When a user clicks the "Like" button on the game webpage, allow the user to share this to their social feed. This will allow their friends to see what games they like and bring in more traffic from the outside.
Thats all for now. I love the site and excited that I found it.. not to mention... it being free.
With your permission, I wouldn't mind programming a scraper/front end for a mobile website so I can access it from my iPhone.
Curious if everything is hard coded in PHP or whether the results are returned as json, xml, etc.. this would help a ton if this was the case.
-Bugz
Alpha Sort on Collection Update:
Under the list viewer (not sure what else you would call it) IE: the wishlist, collection, etc. I notice there are methods of skipping through pages. How about let's take that a step further and add alphabetical search? For example, A.B.C, etc. Click on the letter "N" and it takes you to games/items starting with the letter N. Would be truly helpful for huge collections and you wanna get right to the game you're looking for in your collection.
Notification System Update:
Notification updates for other user's collections. Everyone LOVES notifications - and they love to know whats going on in the world around them. It gives people the opportunity to talk about things going on. The ideal setup would be a notification system when other users update their collection and basically show what items that have been added to their collection in a simple display feedback system. It's possible we could just use the forum popup feature as a notification system alert.
IE: Messages -> Preferences -> Change Settings -> Show a popup when I receive new messages.
Game Progress Tracker, with Levels/Chapters Update:
Whats this about a "Game Progress Tracker"?
Features could include a "Game Completed" option. Perhaps a level tracker (a far out option would probably increase the database) however would be interesting to see a level table for each game. IE: chapters, levels, etc. Also allow tracking for each level.
IE: bugs181 completed Chapter 2 – Welcome To Rapture in Bioshock
Friends List Update:
Should be fairly straight forward, but having a friend list would go along great with the notification system and game progress. This would allow users to keep track of what their friends are doing. Can anybody say, some friendly competition? Who can beat the game first?
Would also allow users a one click solution for going to their friend's collections.