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Nathan Robinson
myArmoury Admin


myArmoury Admin

PostPosted: Thu 06 Jul, 2006 6:29 pm    Post subject: NEW Bookstore features         Reply with quote

I've been working hard on reworking our Bookstore to make it even more useful to the members of this site. My efforts have been split between bringing in more community-driven features and making it function more efficiently.

Please note that many of these new features are related to member reading lists, so if you have not yet created your own list or are not logged in, these features will not be available to you. The bookstore's real value is finding titles of interest to you and seeing them discussed and ranked by the members of this community. To get the most out of the bookstore, I encourage each member to create a reading list and always use the bookstore while logged in.


New Features:

  1. I've added a fully-functional shopping cart! Users of the bookstore can now add books to their shopping carts right from myArmoury.com without having to go to Amazon until the final checkout. When I originally created the bookstore, I made its main purpose that of research and focused on making it a useful tool to find and discuss books. Originally, the actual "store" part of it was secondary, but I've since changed my mind and decided that actually getting the books into people's hands and doing it with a simple buying experience is just as important. Every transaction is secure and guarenteed by Amazon.com. They handle all personal customer information, including payment details.

  2. I've brought in more pricing information for the books. In addition to the Amazon.com prices, available third-party offers are now visible for both used and new copies. Any of these third-party offers can be added to the new shopping cart and purchased in the same transaction. These third-party items are fullfiled and guaranteed through Amazon's merchant network.

  3. A new Reviews Section was added that lists the most recent, most helpful, and most frequently reviewed books. This was added to make it easier to see new and valuable content as members submit it to our database. Members can now go to this page to view any new reviews that may have been added since they last visited.

  4. A new Wish List Section has been added that now separates all wish list items from the reading lists. There are many ways to use the bookstore features, but as one example it is now much easier to track what you own from what you want to own.

  5. You can now compare other member's reading lists with your own, showing or filtering out common titles between the two lists. This is a cool feature because it allows you to see what you have in common with other members. Looking at titles they have listed that are not on your list gives you ideas of things that might be of interest to you. These features are available right from the page of all Member Reading Lists, Your Reading List, or while browsing a specific member's list.

  6. A brand-new Book Suggestion feature has been added that picks personalized suggestions by comparing the items on your reading list and your wish list to the activity of other myArmoury.com members and customers of Amazon.com. The calculations are fairly complex and the results are often surprising. The more items your lists contain, the more suggestions you get and the better suited they are to you.

  7. I've added the ability to list all Recommended Books. The system shows how many recommendations each title has received and sorts them, showing most recommended books first.

  8. Both our Bibliography and Reading List have had many titles added to them. Our bibliography is already one of the largest, most detailed searchable hand-picked lists of books related to arms and armour on the Internet. I keep adding titles in hopes of making it increasingly better.

  9. On each book's page of details, additional editions are now also shown. For example, while looking at a paperback edition of a book, its hardcover edition may also be shown when available.

  10. Many books that are not available on Amazon.com are now available on our bookstore, including many hard to find and out of print titles that are on our bibliography and reading list.

  11. Members can now add any and all titles found on our Bibliography to their reading or wish lists.

  12. The bookstore can now display book cover images even on titles where Amazon has no cover image. For example, many of the titles on our reading list are now shown with cover images that were previously not available such as Armi Bianche Italiane

  13. The bookstore is better integrated into the rest of the site. The login/logout buttons, favorite pages, profile buttons, etc, are all there as is the ability to add the bookstore home to your favorite pages.


Performance tweaks:

  1. Many pages, such as the page of Member Reading Lists have been greatly improved for speed. The page shows up much quicker now and doesn't load the server as it did before

  2. Many, many other parts of the code were rewritten to make things much more efficient and improve the visitor's browsing experience



I'll be adding more, but I need to move onto other things and so this marks a good time to announce these new features.
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Jason Elrod




Location: Winchester, VA
Joined: 25 Aug 2003
Likes: 48 pages
Reading list: 38 books

Posts: 717

PostPosted: Fri 07 Jul, 2006 3:38 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Thanks for the changes. I haven't gone through them all yet, but the "book" section of myArmoury is the one section that I keep on overlooking.

Maybe I'm missing it but I'd like to see a way to return from where you started once you add a book from another members booklist to your own wish list. That way I don't have to search through their list to find where I left off.
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Jason Elrod




Location: Winchester, VA
Joined: 25 Aug 2003
Likes: 48 pages
Reading list: 38 books

Posts: 717

PostPosted: Fri 07 Jul, 2006 3:49 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

It would be great if there was a way to print out whole wish lists or reading lists. Also to make things more complicated for you, I'd like to be able to search through my own lists and reorganize them either from most wanted to list wanted or by price or in print verses out of print. Specifically the last option. That way I can check my list from time to time and see if something that I want has become available again without having to go through my whole wish list.
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Jason Elrod




Location: Winchester, VA
Joined: 25 Aug 2003
Likes: 48 pages
Reading list: 38 books

Posts: 717

PostPosted: Fri 07 Jul, 2006 3:56 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

More suggestions.

1. How about the ability to do a search through member lists recommended titles?
2. What about being able to search through other member lists by newest/latest added items.
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Chad Arnow
myArmoury Team


myArmoury Team

PostPosted: Fri 07 Jul, 2006 6:53 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Jason Elrod wrote:
I'd like to be able to search through my own lists and reorganize them either from most wanted to list wanted or by price or in print verses out of print. Specifically the last option.


I can't speak for the master coder/mad scientist Happy of course, but I'm not sure that sorting by in- vs. out-of-print is possible, since Amazon doesn't list that. Also, just because it's out-of-print doesn't mean Amazon doesn't list used copies for sale. I've gotten many OOP books off Amazon. It's a pretty good source for OOP books, actually.

Happy

ChadA

http://chadarnow.com/
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Jonathan Hopkins




PostPosted: Fri 07 Jul, 2006 7:33 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I love the bookstore update! I am glad I can add publications such as the Peter Finer catalogs. I have two books that are printed privately, but are available from the dealer's website and on eBay (they are both in print). How can I recommend them to the myArmoury community (or can I?)?

Jonathan
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Nathan Robinson
myArmoury Admin


myArmoury Admin

PostPosted: Fri 07 Jul, 2006 3:23 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Thanks for the suggestions, Jason. I'll respond to them later today. One of them is getting coded later today.

J.G. Hopkins wrote:
I love the bookstore update! I am glad I can add publications such as the Peter Finer catalogs. I have two books that are printed privately, but are available from the dealer's website and on eBay (they are both in print). How can I recommend them to the myArmoury community (or can I?)?


Thank you for the kind comments. If there are books that you'd like to see add to your lists that are not on Amazon, they may very well be on our Bibliography. If they are, you can add books from there to your lists.

But, if they are not in the blbliography and not on Amazon, you can Contact us and give us book info so we can add it to the database ourselves.

Idealy, we'd like to have as much of this info as possible: ISBN #, Title, Author, Binding (hardcover/softcover), Publisher, Publication Date, Number of Pages plus a scan of the cover.

.:. Visit my Collection Gallery :: View my Reading List :: View my Wish List :: See Pages I Like :: Find me on Facebook .:.
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Nathan Robinson
myArmoury Admin


myArmoury Admin

PostPosted: Fri 07 Jul, 2006 6:30 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Jason Elrod wrote:
It would be great if there was a way to print out whole wish lists or reading lists.

Good suggestion. I'll add printed versions of the lists to my to-do list.

Jason Elrod wrote:
Also to make things more complicated for you, I'd like to be able to search through my own lists and reorganize them either from most wanted to list wanted or by price or in print verses out of print. Specifically the last option. That way I can check my list from time to time and see if something that I want has become available again without having to go through my whole wish list.

I may add sorting options to the lists: by title, date added/updated, etc. Regarding listing if a title is in or out of print, Amazon does not have that data available. It's often easy for a human to determine it based on the detailed listing, but it's not tagged in the data-feed unfortunately.

Jason Elrod wrote:
How about the ability to do a search through member lists recommended titles?

Based on your suggestion, I've added the ability to list all Recommended Books. The system shows how many recommendations each title has received and sorts them, showing most recommended books first. While this isn't exactly what you suggested as it does not show recommendations per user, I think it's much more compelling to see which books have the most recommendations throughout the database. One can still browse each member's lists to find the "recommended" graphic.

Jason Elrod wrote:
What about being able to search through other member lists by newest/latest added items.

Member Reading Lists and Member Wish Lists are already sorted by newly added/newly updated date first.


Keep up the suggestions. No promises I'll add them all, but they're fun for met to consider Happy I already have about 50 other things I'd like to do, but some will require far more time than I am able to put into them. Other ideas I have are probably too grand, as I have yet to figure out a good way to do them.

Cheers

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Nathan Robinson
myArmoury Admin


myArmoury Admin

PostPosted: Fri 14 Jul, 2006 8:33 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I've really tried to focus some attention on one major shortcoming of the bookstore: the actual shopping experience:

New Features:

  1. I've added a fully-functional shopping cart! Users of the bookstore can now add books to their shopping carts right from myArmoury.com without having to go to Amazon until the final checkout. When I originally created the bookstore, I made its main purpose that of research and focused on making it a useful tool to find and discuss books. Originally, the actual "store" part of it was secondary, but I've since changed my mind and decided that actually getting the books into people's hands and doing it with a simple buying experience is just as important. Every transaction is secure and guarenteed by Amazon.com. They handle all personal customer information, including payment details.

  2. I've brought in more pricing information for the books. In addition to the Amazon.com prices, available third-party offers (such as these) are now visible for both used and new copies right on each book's page of details. Any of these third-party offers can be added to the new shopping cart and purchased in the same transaction. These third-party items are fullfiled and guaranteed through Amazon's merchant network.



You don't need to be logged in to use the shopping cart, but shopping carts belonging to registered members will stick around for 30 days. Guest shopping carts expire after about an hour of inactivity.


Enjoy.

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Kenton Spaulding




Location: Connecticut
Joined: 18 Jul 2005
Reading list: 12 books

Posts: 287

PostPosted: Fri 14 Jul, 2006 8:38 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

You're the man Nathan
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Jason Elrod




Location: Winchester, VA
Joined: 25 Aug 2003
Likes: 48 pages
Reading list: 38 books

Posts: 717

PostPosted: Fri 14 Jul, 2006 8:53 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Very nice. I know where all my extra money is going. . . if I ever get any extra.
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Pamela Muir




Location: Arlington, VA
Joined: 23 Sep 2004
Reading list: 34 books

Spotlight topics: 2
Posts: 282

PostPosted: Sat 15 Jul, 2006 4:07 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Nathan Robinson wrote:

[*] I've added a fully-functional shopping cart! Users of the bookstore can now add books to their shopping carts right from myArmoury.com without having to go to Amazon until the final checkout.

The shopping cart combined with the wish list feature will certainly make my husband's life easier when it's time for the next gift occasion. Wink (Too bad my birthday was last week.) Sad

Way cool, Nathan. Cool

Pamela Muir

Founder/Lead Instructor
Academy of Chivalric Martial Arts


"I need a hero. I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night. He's gotta be strong, And he's gotta be fast, And he's gotta be fresh from the fight." ~Steinman/Pitchford
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Bill Grandy
myArmoury Team


myArmoury Team

Location: Northern VA,USA
Joined: 25 Aug 2003
Reading list: 43 books

Spotlight topics: 2
Posts: 4,194

PostPosted: Sat 15 Jul, 2006 8:32 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Kenton Spaulding wrote:
You're the man Nathan


You said it, Kenton!

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-Inspired by History, Crafted by Hand


"For practice is better than artfulness. Your exercise can do well without artfulness, but artfulness is not much good without the exercise.” -anonymous 15th century fencing master, MS 3227a
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Jonathan Hopkins




PostPosted: Sat 15 Jul, 2006 12:07 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

The bookstore is one of my favorite aspects of myArmoury.com. It has been a great resource for exposing me to books I had not heard of (and has resulted in a huge wishlist!). Some scholarly inquiry into arms and armour occurs in the form of articles that are published in journals. I think a list of journals (past and preesent) that cover our field of interst would serve to bolster the pool of shared knowledge on myArmoury.com. (examples include the Metropolitan Museum Journal, Arms Collecting, The Canadian Journal of Arms Collecting, Classic Arms and Militaria, The Connoisseur, Journal of the Scottish Military Collectors Society, Man at Arms, American Society of Arms Collectors Bulletin, Journal of the Arms and Armour Society, ect.)

Thank you for all of your hard work, Nathan!


Last edited by Jonathan Hopkins on Sat 15 Jul, 2006 3:01 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Nathan Robinson
myArmoury Admin


myArmoury Admin

PostPosted: Sat 15 Jul, 2006 2:36 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

J.G. Hopkins wrote:
The bookstore is one of my favorite aspects of myArmoury.com. It has been a great resource for exposing me to books I had not heard of (and has resulted in a huge wishlist!). Some scholarly inquiry into arms and armour occurs in the form of articles that are published in journals. I think a list of journals (past and preesent) that cover our field of interst would serve to bolster the pool of shared knowledge on myArmoury.com. (examples include the Metropolitan Museum Journal, Arms Collecting, The Canadian Journal of Arms Collecting, Classic Arms and Militaria, The Connoisseur, Journal of the Scoyyich Military Collectors Society, Man at Arms, American Society of Arms Collectors Bulletin, Journal of the ARms and Armour Society, ect.)

Thank you for all of your hard work, Nathan!


I really should include a list of journals/ individual articles, etc. That would be a lot of work Happy I have a lot of it already compiled that I've put together over the years, but it is not as complete as I'd like. I also don't have any purchase info or really much in the way of help in steering people -to- them, which has really held me back.

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Jonathan Hopkins




PostPosted: Sat 15 Jul, 2006 3:04 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Nathan Robinson wrote:

I really should include a list of journals/ individual articles, etc. That would be a lot of work Happy I have a lot of it already compiled that I've put together over the years, but it is not as complete as I'd like. I also don't have any purchase info or really much in the way of help in steering people -to- them, which has really held me back.


I will see what I can come up with, if anything, to help you in this endeavor.
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Chad Arnow
myArmoury Team


myArmoury Team

PostPosted: Mon 17 Jul, 2006 7:38 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Nathan,
This is great stuff. I just used the cart and it is very, very easy and intuitive. Nice work. Happy

Happy

ChadA

http://chadarnow.com/
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Jonathan Hopkins




PostPosted: Mon 17 Jul, 2006 5:53 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

J.G. Hopkins wrote:
Nathan Robinson wrote:

I really should include a list of journals/ individual articles, etc. That would be a lot of work Happy I have a lot of it already compiled that I've put together over the years, but it is not as complete as I'd like. I also don't have any purchase info or really much in the way of help in steering people -to- them, which has really held me back.


I will see what I can come up with, if anything, to help you in this endeavor.


Nathan, I emailed you a short list of mainly arms and armour focused journals and publications, along with links to where subscriptions/other info may be obtained. I hope it is helpful and is not redundant considering what you have already complied.

Regards,
Jonathan
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Nathan Robinson
myArmoury Admin


myArmoury Admin

PostPosted: Mon 17 Jul, 2006 5:55 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

J.G. Hopkins wrote:
J.G. Hopkins wrote:
Nathan Robinson wrote:

I really should include a list of journals/ individual articles, etc. That would be a lot of work Happy I have a lot of it already compiled that I've put together over the years, but it is not as complete as I'd like. I also don't have any purchase info or really much in the way of help in steering people -to- them, which has really held me back.


I will see what I can come up with, if anything, to help you in this endeavor.


Nathan, I emailed you a short list of mainly arms and armour focused journals and publications, along with links to where subscriptions/other info may be obtained. I hope it is helpful and is not redundant considering what you have already complied.

Regards,
Jonathan


Thanks, Jonathan. I got the email but haven't done anything with it other than mark it as needing a "follow-up". My quick glance at the information was that much of it is new and extremely helpful to me. I haven't really thought of a way to integrate it just yet, but I have a few rough ideas I need to explore.

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Jason Elrod




Location: Winchester, VA
Joined: 25 Aug 2003
Likes: 48 pages
Reading list: 38 books

Posts: 717

PostPosted: Wed 19 Jul, 2006 7:30 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

How about a way to organize your wish list perhaps alphabetically or by subject?
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