The Progressive Rock Used CD Shop

November 16, 2003: The site has been moved from nexus.carleton.ca to my own domain at www.toib.net. This server move was necessary because Nexus is supposed to be a Carleton student only service. Somehow my account was allowed to stay active for over two years after my graduation, but it appears the proper authorities have realized what is going on and have been gently prodding us old people to leave. I am actually technically a student at Carleton right now but I don't know how long that will last so it's best to play things safe and move the site.

Some things that used to work will now be broken. This is because Nexus allowed me direct access to crontab, mail, and news-posting software. I do not know if my host here allows all of this so I must make changes to accommodate whatever is not present. For now, adding and removing CDs will work as before. Adding new vendors will probably not work, so best to e-mail me if you have trouble there.

I would like to do some new feature development on the site in the next couple of months but this will depend entirely upon how much time I have. The server move to this point went smoothly enough that I could squeeze it into my schedule. I appreciate everyone's patience with the intermittent access issues to the old site.

January 25, 2002: Wow, long time no fix. I guess this site can be considered a reasonable success based at least on the little amount of effort I need to put into keeping it going. Heh.

Just a small fix this time; with the new year I had to fix the filter form so that you can search for stuff listed in 2002. Yay.

I'm hoping to get back to this site in February and do a partial code re-write and UI improvement. As always comments and suggestions are encouraged.

December 31, 2000: Support in the "item filter" menu has been added for multiple years. Hear at the shop we believe in being Y2K+1 compliant, and it won't even cost the global economy 200-million dollars.

December 16, 2000: Since the vast majority of items posted here do allow trades, and because some vendors were having problems about being approached for trades even when they did not list items as "TRADE ACCEPTABLE", I have changed the page that lists items so that item trading is assumed by default. If someone does not wish to allow trades, the item is listed as "NO TRADES", but items are no longer listed as "TRADE ACCEPTABLE". The "TRADE ONLY" option is still accessible, of course.

November 26, 2000: Two main things to report this time around, both having to do with prices:

• A script has been written that will remove from the list any items which are in contravention of the pricing policy.
• A new option in the "Filter Items" menu allows items to be listed only if their price falls below a certain value. Therefore if you aren't interested in seeing any items which cost more than $8 (for example), you can go to this page and filter such items out.

Small improvements, perhaps, but ones that fit into my schedule and will hopefully make the site more useful.

October 15, 2000: I have put a price control policy in place for the site. It is as follows:

1. No CD may exceed
   • $12 in price if a single CD, or,
   • $20 in price if a double CD.
   There is no price limit on multi-CD packages or boxed sets.
2. Items exceeding this price may be removed without warning.
3. Exceptions to #1 are available on a case-by-case basis. E-mail the proprietor if you have an item that should exceed this price. For example, if you have an item that is out-of-print or otherwise more valuable, let me know and you will be allowed to list it for whatever price you wish.

I realize that such a policy is going to be unpopular with some vendors, however many users have been complaining over excessive prices. Although this limit might be higher than many of these users might have liked, I am optimistic that it will encourage at least some lip service to fair market value. If you have any concerns about this policy, feel free to e-mail me at the address listed above.

June 10, 2000: I have responded to a number of requests from site users, pertaining mainly to dealing with issues of scaleability. On April 30th, 213 items were added to the shop by various vendors, giving a total of 529 items for sale. At the time of this writing there are now 1,359 items for sale, and approximately 600 items have been removed since the shop first went up (in some cases people have multiple copies of items so in actual fact there have likely been more than this number of sales.)

At any rate, the increased size of the site has had certain implications; load times for the page went up, it became harder to find stuff, and some people on WebTV couldn't even load the entire page. The main change I have made in the last week, then, is to add a "Filter Posted Items" option to the main page to allow a smaller list of items to be presented to the viewer. You can view all the items for a particular vendor, or all the items posted since a certain date, etc. You can also filter out things you aren't interested in, for example if you only want to buy items you can filter out "Trade Only" items. I expect this will solve a lot of problems people have had.

Other small changes have dealt with site logic to fix stupid things. For example, if you had a CD that was trade-only you still had to enter a price. This is no longer the case, and when you display items it no longer lists a price field for items which aren't for sale. Make sure to let me know about things like this, no matter how small they might seem, because it helps improve the site for everyone when I fix them.

This is a brief list of other things I want to work on here:

• Alphabetical Filtering: This is the first thing I want to fix, and should be done soon. Basically a user should be able to enter a letter interval on the Filtering page and get a list of all albums between the first and second letter. This will allow people on WebTV, or others who simply don't want a 200k page load to view everything, to select a subset of the list to view at a time.
• Knowledge of New Items: Right now vendors register to put items up for sale. While I don't favour viewer registration since, to me, the harder you make it for someone to view the less likely they'll go to the trouble, I am thinking of an optional registration list. The people on this list would get an e-mail once a week telling them all the new items which have been posted in the last week. That way instead of coming to the shop to see what's been posted since a given date, they get it in their inbox. People could deregister from this list at any time.
• Label: Simple enough; allow vendors to optionally mention the label of an item they are selling. To some people this is good info to have, if they're looking for a version of an album with bonus tracks, or without a sound defect, or whatever.
• Multiple Item Entry: Find a way to allow vendors to enter multiple CDs at a time. I don't know how much this is necessary (you can enter stuff pretty quickly with the back button and modifying entries) but if people want it, I can try to implement it. I'd probably implement a web-form that allows entry of up to a dozen items at a time, although once more I think it's actually faster to do it the way it currently sits.
• Item Modification: Right now if you want to modify an item, you have to remove it and add it again. This could be more user-friendly. The main reason I didn't implement this when the site first went up is that it made managing the data file a bit trickier. This is something I should get a chance to sit down and do some time this Summer, although it's not a huge priority for me (if it's a huge priority for you, let me know and I might reassess).
• Stale Item Expiry: This one might be controversial, but one thing that many people find a pain about for-sale lists is the presence of stuff that is never going to sell. For example, Deyss' Grestest Hits, priced for $50, isn't going to go anywhere. Hundreds of people will have to scroll past it every week. What Stale Item Expiry would do is take any item that hasn't sold over a certain interval (say, 4-6 months) and remove it from the list, notifying the vendor. No vendor, including that one, would be allowed to re-post the item unless it was for a lower price. This, in essence, is an enforcement of fair market value for an item. There may be concerns with this one, but I think they all could be ironed out through dialogue with any concerned individuals, and the site would be much better off for it in the long run.

That about does it. Once more I urge you to let me know about things on the site that bother you and you would like to see changed. It's a service for you guys, and I want it to be easy to use for all parties involved.