Group Buy Visualiser

[bueller]

I've been thinking about the GB's section lately and I feel like it's becoming a little bit too difficult to keep track of what's going on in there with the levels of traffic that GH are getting. Obviously this problem is only going to get worse as time goes on so I'm hoping I can come up with a solution that would allow people to know at a glance what GB's are currently running and at what stage in the GB process. I've posted a bit of a mockup below to demonstrate what I mean, you'll have to forgive my skills; I'm a programmer not a graphic designer  )



One of the biggest advantages to this is that I think it will mean people can quickly hit the drop down and see what's currently available for ordering, I know I missed out on several GB's in the first few months I was here because I was still getting the hang of hows things worked here. Another advantage is being able to get a visual indicator on the color scheme before even opening the thread.  We could add another drop down to filter based on GB type as well (keysets, PCB's, cases etc) which would definitely make items easier to narrow down.

Each image when clicked will take you to the GB thread and for GB's with multiple mockups or sets I'd loop through each image on rollover or do a popup dialog with the additional info. My web skills are limited to Google Web Toolkit and I'm happy to write it using that but I'm open to suggestions if someone wants to give me a hand. I should be able to handle hosting as well seeing as traffic shouldn't be too crazy.

What does everyone think?

[YoungMichael88]

This seems like a pretty great idea 

[regack]

I like where this is going.  Sort of.  Finding stuff easier might make it easier to part with my hard earned wages.

[bueller]

Updated the mockup to better illustrate my idea.

[MOZ]

I really really like MD does their GB.

The whole presentation makes you want to throw your money at the screen. Maybe if we somehow could get that sort of presentation we might hit those darned GMK MOQs.

[bueller]

I really really like MD does their GB.

The whole presentation makes you want to throw your money at the screen. Maybe if we somehow could get that sort of presentation we might hit those darned GMK MOQs.

They're a big inspiration for this idea. We've got a lot happening here and I feel like if things were better organised and there was some standardisation around GB threads it would make things a lot easier for the uninitiated. This won't even really be that difficult to write if people are happy for me to do everything in Java, just a simple DB with entries automatically generated from threads in the GB section. Once new entries are generated I'll just need to add them to the appropriate categories, approve the photo and make the entry live. With decent keyword checking I can probably do a lot of that automatically on the back end as well.

[MOZ]

Yeah, I am a programmer too, and I can see that execution is not going to be that hard, but I can't say for sure as I haven't worked with SMF.

However a couple of extra fields in the OP of a GB thread for status, photo, etc is not hard.

[bueller]

Okay so thinking about it and I definitely want to add in countdown timers for each item as well, that will give people a good grasp on how long they have left to make their minds up. Looked around and I can't really find much info on getting info out of SMF threads so I'll probably just parse the XML for each thread to get the information I need, shouldn't be difficult at all from what I've seen in the source.

[MOZ]

Okay so thinking about it and I definitely want to add in countdown timers for each item as well, that will give people a good grasp on how long they have left to make their minds up. Looked around and I can't really find much info on getting info out of SMF threads so I'll probably just parse the XML for each thread to get the information I need, shouldn't be difficult at all from what I've seen in the source.

I think there are 4 important details:
1. Time left for order
2. MOQ status
3. GB status
4. Atleast one photo/concept image

[bueller]

Okay so thinking about it and I definitely want to add in countdown timers for each item as well, that will give people a good grasp on how long they have left to make their minds up. Looked around and I can't really find much info on getting info out of SMF threads so I'll probably just parse the XML for each thread to get the information I need, shouldn't be difficult at all from what I've seen in the source.

I think there are 4 important details:
1. Time left for order
2. MOQ status
3. GB status
4. Atleast one photo/concept image

Noted! One of the requirements for this will be that there be decent photos or concept mock-ups for each entry - kind of defeats the purpose of the whole thing if we half-ass the most important visual aspect.

That leads into another thread I'll be creating soon, the Open Source PSD thread. Basically just a bunch of PSD's for each layout with easy to edit layers for legend colors, mods, alphas etc. I'm no wiz at Photoshop though so I'll probably need some help figuring that out.

[Belfong]

Isn't it easier to stickie the group buy?

[joneslee85]

great idea, i am wondering if CtrlAltDel shop could share their source code, it'd be great to reuse their store code to build up a new site for GB. The worst case is I will code it for the community if I could get any freebies (no obligation)

[bueller]

great idea, i am wondering if CtrlAltDel shop could share their source code, it'd be great to reuse their store code to build up a new site for GB. The worst case is I will code it for the community if I could get any freebies (no obligation)

I'd prefer to keep this to an informational site, I don't like the idea of having a storefront as there is a chance of liability if a GB goes awry.

[rowdy]

reaper used to have a stickied thread listing active GBs and their status.  No pictures though.

Although he kinda stopped that before I really started paying attention, it was a great idea, especially as the only other stickied thread is the rules.

But someone would need to maintain it, so it would need to be quick and easy to use.

[CPTBadAss]

But someone would need to maintain it, so it would need to be quick and easy to use.

Keepers and I can step up and work with bueller and anyone else. If you want us to maintain it we can do that. That is, if everyone is ok with that. I asked once about reaper's thread and someone told me it was really out of date. I never chased it after that but I think bueller's idea could be pretty cool.

[bueller]

But someone would need to maintain it, so it would need to be quick and easy to use.

Keepers and I can step up and work with bueller and anyone else. If you want us to maintain it we can do that. That is, if everyone is ok with that. I asked once about reaper's thread and someone told me it was really out of date. I never chased it after that but I think bueller's idea could be pretty cool.

No worries, I don't think this will take me too long to get something functional up and running and I'll have some time free in a few weeks so I'll crack on with it and see what I can do.

[Stevenator21]

Honestly I think this idea is genius!