I recently noticed that when ever there is a store update that I have to look through ALL the pages to find the items.
I find this quite annoying and time taking.
So I was thinking, why not give users the option to arrange the items?

With the option for us to search items on:
-Price (0-9 and 9-0)
-Name (a-z and z-a)
-date added (oldest first and newest first.)

Hn.. a friend and I had just quickly discussed this a moment ago. xD
It is definitely a good idea I know it's quite annoying myself.. I had to go through every store listed. xD

There was actually a topic about this when we first switched over. (I think temmon made it)

edit: here it is

Yes, it's been brought up, Kinmotsu, but the last post in that thread was at the end of April/early May. Almost 4 months ago and NOTHING has yet been done about the arrangement problems with the stores still. I think it's a good idea for Jack to bring it up again, especially when his suggestions make sense. May be this time Ken will have "the time" to fix it 8D.

I definitely agree.
While being arranged by price is handy, they're not even correctly arranged by price right now. Just by the first digit. And personally, I think cheapest to most expensive would be the best way to organize by price, rather than most expensive to least.
I mean, think about it. A newbie joins the site, goes to look in a shop, and the first thing s/he sees is 800 gold items. That's enough to scare some newbies off, if they don't take the time to look deeper into the stores. Because most shops that organize by price on avatar sites have the cheapest first. So they'll probably assume that our cheaper items are 800g.
Secondly, the more expensive items are less frequently bought. Simple as that. 1000g dresses are not bought as frequently as 500g shirts. It's more convenient for ANY user (new or not) to have the cheaper items up front.

And of course, having them organized by release is very handy for shop updates.
So I definitely agree with Jack's suggestion to just let you pick which way you want to view it.
And even if we can't pick, just PLEASE fix the organization. Right now it's not really organized in ANY good way since the current way is messed up.

I agree with it needing to be more organized. I don't like looking through every page to find the new items. I also think the whole price thing would be a good idea too, especially if you're on a budget and are looking for an item that's under a certain amount of gold.

Yes please. The items are in absolutely no order right now, they're impossible to find. e___e;;
Organizing by the first digit of the price is fairly senseless, and it's annoying as hell to have to jump through all the pages of a shop just to find X item.

I know the store organisation is crappy. But as I explained previously, Ken's only one guy, and he has a million and one other tasks to do on Mene and a number of other sites.

And I know that people tend to say"well get another coder then" when we say this, but hopefully you can all see that it isn't as simple as that. Mene doesn't make enough money to warrant another coder. That would be a big financial outlay for a small site.

I have my own ideas of how I'd like the stores to end up looking and what sorting features I'd like, hopefully we will end up with a set-up that pleases everyone in the end.

Right now, I doubt we can even switch back to how things sorted themselves initially, which was by ID number, because those altered drastically when we switched to vBulletin.

I'll ask Ken and see if he can do a quick fix so the items are properly sort from cheap to expensive, as they're supposed to be now. But if he has time to do that, please be aware that the items themselves will still be mixed up within the pricing.
By this I mean, all 500 gold items will be in whatever order, price sorting doesn't mean sorting within the price by set.

I'll see what can be done though :)

Wouldn't it help or make sense if we had it sorted by name instead of by price? Because at least then we'll have a more general idea of where the items will be than if it's by price seeing as how it's harder to know the price of an item than it is to know the name of it.

I don't think so Seiki, people generally prefer sorting by price, sorting by name would mix the prices up even more than they are now when more than one differently priced item from a set is in the same store.

We need sorting to be a combination of the two really.

We need user-changeable sorting, actually.

That way you can choose to sort by whatever column you want by simply clicking.

Yes, we do. But that simple click will require one heck of a lot of coding to back it up..

The stores need a massive overhaul, which they will get at some point. But as we've mentioned before when people bring this up. There's nothing actually "wrong" with the stores. They're not broken, just not especially user-friendly right now. And they're fighting for position with everything else that's not especially user-friendly either.

Only one thing can be worked on at a time, and the stores will be a huge project that needs approaching with duly circumspect caution to acheive the required results, instead of some kind of retail disaster (they're that already ><)..but they WILL get that overhaul. Just not tomorrow, you know?

I get that, but with each new update of store items, the new items WILL be unsorted when they get in the stores. As long as the unorganized problem in the stores exist, it'll continue to be unsorted and the stores will be even messier. Isn't that more hard work? The more you wait for it to be "important enough" to be handled, the more problematic it would be for users to go through.

When will it be important enough to be handled? I just don't understand why it would be more important to add more new things (be it new items, events, etc.) than to fix the current problems (yes, they're not broken, but the messy stores IS still a problem) the site has first?

I completely agree with sho's statement about resolving existing problems before adding new stuff... it's actually something I was considering bringing up before but never really got around to it XD;

Anyway, yeah, I really think ken (since he's the only coder?) should focus on fixing all the small things before going about coding new features... I mean it shouldn't take more than a month to fix all the little things that have been brought up lately, but hey, what do I know? Personally I'd rather have things like shops more organized and Recent Forum Activity fixed, than have a new feature (that could even have bugs of its own). I don't think most people would mind waiting for a new feature for a while if it meant having all these little things fixed.

(on a random note, I think pretty much the same thing was talked about on zantarni. though menewsha isn't half as glitchy as zantarni, when tom owned it he kept popping out new features but never fixing any glitches, so almost half the things on zantarni you couldn't do because they were so messed up. In the end once he sold the site things started getting fixed and I think most people were more than happy about that XD; )

I agree with Creps and Shosho.
Especially with the Zantarni example. That's one of the reasons I stopped going on Zan - tons of new things, but everything was messed up. So the whole site seemed unprofessional and sloppy.
Now, of course, Mene is MUCH better than that. But I think it would be better to have a nice, sleek Mene that was glitch, bug, and mistake free, and then have new things added, that can then be perfected.
Rather than a ton of mostly-working-but-not-perfect things, I'd rather see our current things fixed.
Or at least a mix. Fix a few things, work on a few new things, then fix a few more things. Rather than putting ALL of the less-than-perfect things on the backburner.

As much as it would be nice to have those small details fixed immediately, we are brainstorming some things on the backend. Of course you all know Ken is our one coder, you should also know he doesn't just work specifically on Menewsha all the time. Right now we have to come up with things to keep the users entertained, then when we get the time we go back and edit the small details that need fixing.

I believe the "Spy" feature is also a mini-substitute for the "Recent Forum Activity" section. Our major thing is that if we go back and start fixing everything and neglect new features for a month or so we'll have more and more whiners. We have to cut a fine line in between the two groups. Things will be fixed eventually, but there are always things that require more attention it seems (like glitches).

A month doesn't seem too long a wait for new features to come out if it means things like stores being fixed up and other things getting fixed. I'd actually be happier that way. That's just my opinion, though XD; I think it'd be good to do it like that.

There's only one 'new feature' that's coming out soon that I can think of, and I think you guys would prefer that to fixing the shops, to be honest. You'll know the new feature when it arrives, so you can tell me.

And I think if there was a poll to ask, "Halloween event or Ken fixing the shops?" people would choose the event. >_> (And I'm not saying coding the Halloween event would prevent Ken from working on shops... I'm just using it as an example.)

I can't really comment on the rest of it, because things have already been said. (By both users and staff.)

Hmm, okay, I suppose if Ken's already working on stuff I'd rather have him finish up what he's working on and not start anything new until he's fixed all the little things. And as far as the halloween event goes, or events in general... now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I don't like having a new collection method each time, but do we really NEED to have a new collection method for each time? If it gives Ken more time to work on other stuff I'd gladly use the same method for collecting event items as a previous event. (of course, that only applies if you meant he was coding a new method for the halloween event >__> if you meant something like he has to code the WHOLE event... somehow... then I dunno xD; )


(another thing I wanna see fixed is the inventory drawers, I wanna organize them >__> just throwing that out)

It may lower the amount (but of course, not totally eliminate) of whiners if the fixes that are made are announced, rather than just mentioned somewhere obscure, if at all. As long as users can see progress is being made and stuff is getting done, there will probably be less whining.
Of course, someone will ALWAYS be bitching about this or that. That's inevitable, really. But it might give Ken a bit of room to fix some older stuff without getting his ear chewed off as much for not doing new stuff.

Yeah, I agree. As long as we can see that stuff is being done, progress is being made, then nobody will have a reason to complain, really. I know I won't be complaining, and I know of quite a few other people that'll be more than pleased.

as a n00b i would love the option to arrange the price list from most to least expensive

With regard to changing the event collection methods. Why we do that is not actually to give you guys something new each time, not in the main anyway..it's in an effort to find a way that stops people from cheating..

We got tired of seeing people saying they just sat there and refreshed on one page to collect stuff during the previous events, we want a way that prevents people from doing that. Actually the vast majority of what we do on here is in an effort to stop people from cheating .__.

But Ken wasn't spending time coding new event features just for the sake of having new features, it was for a very good reason :)

I would love an option to search for items in shops too.

That would be a really amazing thing if that happened or a search engine where we can type in the name of the item and it will come up and tell us which store/page it's on. =]