I don't really talk about the software development process here, because I figure that outside of a few technically inclined people, nobody really cares. I also don't really talk about the things I'm working on for the forum very much because it takes quite some time for me to go from "idea!" to something I can release for you to use, and I've already had a few instances of people trying to profit off of my ideas for things to do with the forum (such as when someone went and manually queried my scent family database and tried to sell the contents on eBay for about $20).

But, today, I've decided to share with you some of the things I'm working on!

Feedback

Oh, feedback. You are the bane of my existence! But I am (slowly) taming the beast. As you all have noticed, even with the sixty thousand-some old feedback reviews from the old system, it's lightning fast & nobody has login or skin issues anymore! Of course, the flip side of this is that nobody has their individual pages anymore.

Feedback Updates

I was lucky enough to be selected as a beta tester for the next version of the software platform I use for the development of our apps. I don't have it running live here (just retailtherapy, a site I've been playing with developing but haven't actually released), but I've been able to play around with development. I'm happy to announce that when this version goes live, I will *definitely* be able to finish the personalized pages for the feedback.

I consider this to be a "priority development" issue, and as such, I have decided to update it in two phases. The first phase will have the consolidated page with feedback & swaplift reports. This will eliminate the current problem of getting others' feedback mixed in with yours (for instance, feedback for the user "luna" may show up with the feedback for user "LunaKitty" right now). The second phase will have some statistics as "header" to the page, and it will probably clean up the display.

The Future of Feedback

Are these features that would interest you? Comment and let me know!

• Something for the front page to show who has recently given and/or gotten feedback - probably limited to just who has recently given you feedback.
  
• A profile tab (like "About Me") that summarizes your feedback statistics
  
• The ability to "draft" feedback, so you can start it earlier in the process of swapping
  
• The forum no longer deletes PMs (it uses a "soft deletion" that keeps the PMs in the database). I could enable something that would allow you to attach a PM to feedback (as a link, not the actual text) & give a link to recover the PM if you have left the conversation.

The BPAL Perfume Database, Price Caps, Reviews, and the Scent of the Day FB App

This database is more encompassing than just listing the price caps. It's also the back end for the BPAL site catalog database and our facebook app.

If that wasn't enough, it's *also* going to be added to the review forums, to replace the BBCode descriptions/images. Basically, the top of the page of the review topics is now going to have the description, pricing information (Lab cost & our price caps, when available), image(s), release & discontinuation dates, and a link to purchase from the Lab.

I've got the actual code written now, and am working on the integration part.

The Scent of the Day Facebook App

I believe the time has come to retire the existing SotD application. The way Facebook worked and was used when I created it is worlds different from what it is now. Facebook killed the way feeds used to work. They have also, for all purposes, gotten rid of boxes and of the profile side bars that many of us have used to display it.

But never fear: I am working on something that will allow you to "push" your forum SotD changes to Facebook or Twitter if you've got them set up. I will be starting this with Facebook first, so I can cleanly retire the app, and then adding Twitter as an option. When it is done, it'll be very simple -- it'll just attach a link to the forum's review page. This will be an "opt-in" thing, not a default.

Future Work

I have been flirting with the idea of incorporating some sort of tagging with scent families, but I can't think of a way that will do it smoothly. I thought using a poll in the topic would work, and then I could do a nightly synchronization and display the results as a tag cloud & pick the top one as a "user based The review topics will become automatically generated by the database (making it easier for us to maintain -- right now Shollin does all of that, and we'll be distributing the work between Shollin & our swap mods, Silvertree, maewitch, and Noumenon), and I don't know how to automatically add a poll (and with about 3000 topics, it would need to be done automatically). I may talk with some of the code mod developers about this, because I think having a general sense of the scent family would help find other scents you might like.

I am also flirting with the idea of using a tag cloud for the notes. This might be fairly easy to do, but will depend on how the tag cloud goes on retailtherapy.

Finally, once the SotD app has been revived, I am considering allowing people to opt into pushing their forum reviews to facebook.