Coin Collecting Program In The Works - Thoughts?

Steve, this is great and wonderful of you to share with the community.

As a fellow Web designer and CSS nazi, I say bravo. Very clean and professional use of CSS right there. I love when I can disable style sheets, and I just get an un-formatted wall of html.

One idea though, and you may or may not want to allow this.

I would love to see an CSV import/export function. The single biggest reason I can't seem to get on board with online collection DB's, is what happens if I spend all that time and get attached to your DB, and you decide you don't want to support this anymore. (not saying you would ever do that, just generically speaking).

If I could atleast export, then I don't lose the data, and I can reformat for use elsewhere. Pictures might be a bit harder, but you could just add filenames as a field and then on import/export have it be accompanied by a <.tgz, .rar, gzip, not sure the OS of your webserver> with the pictures in the archive.

Just a thought. There are a lot of security issues with allowing something like that, but with the right measure you can prevent issues.

I once learned about SQL injection the hard way. :(

@Namachieli - Yes, portability is very important. I actually had a text file format and JSON import-export feature, but then I upgraded the database to a different structure and I haven't re-written the import-export code yet. When I get back around to it I'll make sure that CSV is supported.

The images, as you mention, will be a lot trickier to handle exports for, but I'm sure that if I chew on the problem enough I can come up with a solution (after all, user images belong to the user; no sense in locking them down unless I'm actively being evil like, say, Facebook... *cough*.. did that slip out? Jeez, sorry... :-) ).

Also most of it is powered by HTML5 (via jQuery Mobile). Which features in particular are you referring to? Hehe it's not a kludge free system yet, I admit though and I'm always optimizing.

Working on two new features that I hope to have up some time tomorrow:

1) A "Coin Suggestion" form where users can suggest new coins to add to the public database. This will make crowd sourcing new series and foreign coins much easier. If the coin isn't "approved," since you entered in all of that data, you'll still be able to use it in your own collections.

2) A Marketplace where you can take a coin from your collection, mark it for sale (or trade), set up a payment method (PayPal, Google Checkout, check, or money order), and then transfer its profile to the new owner's account when the purchase/trade is settled upon.

There will also be a new page that showcases the Marketplace that is fully searchable, and actually links in with other users' placeholders (i.e. at the user's option, you can view a Marketplace that only shows items for sale or trade that correspond to the placeholders you have in your collections). Zero listing fees.

There are some restrictions that I'm putting in place that I think folks will find fair, but I'd like some feedback. Basically, they boil down to that the coin must have at least two genuine, unaltered photos (one of the obverse, one of the reverse) uploaded to its profile. No stock images or photoshopping. If it's slabbed, it'll auto-check the certification number (provided it's entered), as well as display diagnostics.

I'll also be working on an auction and haggling format for it soon, too.

More updates later. :-)

Just started using your awesome software and had couple suggestions based on working from an android tablet. When adding to a collection and putting dates in is there a way to have calendar to select the date instead of having type it in? The first couple times I added coins I had typed the date in using the incorrect format and had to go back and re-enter them correctly.

On my silver kennedys I noticed there is a bold 0 on the individual view page that I'm unsure of why it is there. I assume it has to do with some field that I left blank but working from my tablet makes it difficult and time consuming to investigate further.

Also, I have noticed if I leave the grade blank it will add MS to the header/title of the coin when viewing it individually. Not a big problem or anything but thought I would bring it to your attention.

Once I can take a look on a desktop I can hopefully send you screenshots.

I am still using and learning the software but am enjoying it much more than my excel spreadsheets already lol. I am a recent college graduate in computer and information sciences and a lot of my more memorable times involved testing (and usually breaking) software, so combining my two favorite pastimes means I will be definitely letting you know of more issues and suggestions as I find them.

Where is that coin suggestion form? I want to add my 2012 Presidential dollars!

A couple other suggestions I thought about:

1. For the MS, PF, CF designations why not have it just pull what grade the user assigns and leave it blank if they don't provide one? Maybe keep the CF and PF designations but I think it is confusing or misleading seeing that MS up there if a coin is from circulation.

2. If you are browsing collections or specimens without being logged in you should either hide the options button or force a login or registration if clicked. Right now it goes to the popup options window but with no options because you're not logged in.

Just my thoughts to increase the user experience. Love the progress you've been making and enjoy browsing daily. Hopefully more of the community will give it a try and we can see more amazing coins in the near future.

Awesome sounds impressive!

Also I noticed while browsing the showcase some collections show x of y for the specimens collected where x is greater than y which doesn't make sense. I assume x is being derived from the quantities listed for each specimen in the collection while the y is being derived from the sum of specimens and place holders. Perhaps x should be derived from distinct specimens instead of listed quantities. That way x would never be greater than y.

Not sure if that would affect other areas that list only the quantity of specimens in the collection such as when viewing a list of collections from someone's profile or your own collections page.