Guess what? We’re getting to the point where we can start announcing a timeline for completed features! Today’s post is all about lifting the veil that surrounds the process of PucaTrade’s development. I’ve been hesitant to write about this in the past because previously the dev process has been a bit nebulous, and I had no interest in setting deadlines that we couldn’t meet. But as we make progress, a timeline for completion is becoming a bit more clear. Anyone who’s checked out PucaTrade’s forums knows that we have over 14 pages of features we want to build. So it’s been a challenge to identify the mission-critical features, and organize the rest by priority. Ordinarily, this might not be the most complicated task in the world, but for those of you who don’t know, my previous developer quit about a year ago and I (Eric Freytag) don’t know any code beyond basic html and css. The new development team consists of some awesome dudes named Mitch Trale and Chris Powell. They’re both visionary developers, masters of code, and MtG enthusiasts. In short, they’re perfect for the job of building a better PucaTrade. So part of the challenge that faced us was that the new dev team basically had to start from scratch. Our original plan was to release all of the version 2.0 features at the same time, but we quickly realized that it would be way better to start making improvements and releasing them incrementally. This would enable you guys to enjoy the progress as soon as possible, while allowing you to participate by offering feedback and suggestions for improvement. So we set about clustering these changes into categories. Since PucaTrade is currently in the “Beta” stage, we decided to continue using this lexicon and started defining the feature-set for “Revised.” The Revised feature set is essentially a re-build of the existing site, with a few awesome improvements mixed in. It turns out that there were some inefficiencies with how the original site was written that would prevent us from scaling the site properly as our membership grew, so first priority was addressing things like that. So the major purpose of Revised is just to get the existing site transferred over to our new platform, and make sure that this transition happens smoothly and seamlessly. This is a huge job, but the good news is that once it’s done we can start releasing features with incredible agility and ease. But don’t worry—along with these (somewhat invisible) back-end improvements, we’ll be able to pick some low-hanging fruit that will really improve your experience of the site. Here’s a list of the new improvements we have scheduled for the Revised stage of development. The site will look way better (thank Godsire). Recipients and Senders will both have visibility on the address information for their trading partners When you log in, you’ll be able to stay logged in. The signup process will utilize 2-factor authentication and e-mail verification. All members will have access to e-mail notification settings, and be able to adjust these from their Profile. The bulk card adder will accept .csv files Lists can be exported into common text-based formats (MODO, mtg workstation, .csv). The Search will include parameters for price, card-format (Standard, Legacy, etc.), and min/max Converted Mana Cost The Search will include sorting mechanisms for Alphabetical, Most Wanted, Most Offered, and Highest/Lowest Price I’m sure there’s a couple items on that list that will cause you to all to collectively breathe sighs of relief, but much of the really cool stuff is scheduled for the next stage of development, which we’ve titled “Legends.” I’ll save some discussion of Legends for another blog post, but to save you from the agony of anticipation, I’ll leave you with this tidbit of inside knowledge: Our goal for the release of these Revised features is early September. PucaTrade levels up this fall.
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