Site Improvements & General FAQs

[Jeff Mack]

I have some ideas about how to better organize the forum, but let me start by saying that I hugely appreciate your commitment to the site and I understand how many other, more important upgrades you are dedicated to.

I love the forum set up but there are a few things that I believe could make it easier to find forum topics. I love the way that the forums are set up now where you can see which topic has been most recently posted on, but many topics are lost for months until they are revived when someone finds it, posts on it and it appears as the most recently posted on topic under that category. I think it would be easier if topics were sorted under the month they were posted in,and maybe if you had more sub-categories under each category.

Let me just say that my favorite thing about the forum setup is the area at the bottom where the new topics show up. It is such a great feature!

That's just my 2 cents.

Forums are a funny thing. Even the most successful ones in the world have the topics that just fall off after time and most "hot topics" are the most recent. Even if I go to Bricksets forum, i really don't look past more of the recently discussed topics. The rest come from searches within the site to whatever topics are indexed by search engines. People will search for something they need at the moment, may post a question and revive it.

We are at the point now where there are thousands of topics and 10s of thousands of replies. So its hard to organize it to give love to all the topics. I like your idea and Ed and I talk about pages to show different topics.

One thing, this forum is not something I built, it is something that is its own package. I keep hearing that an update to it is coming, so until I see what this update is, I am not going to do too many changes to it. Once I know the deal, then we can look at what can still be better. This does the job, I believe it can be better myself. I went with this because it worked with everything else I was building and helped me get the site up much quicker than building my own forum.

Thank you for the suggestion.

[chess227]

I have a question. Would it be possible to either make it where people could create more than one brickfolio or divide their brickfolio up? Here is the reason why... I have a lot of sets from the early 80s that I played with as a kid. They are open and none of them are put together. I still have the boxes and instructions, so I know what I have. I would like to add them to a brickfolio to see which sets would be most profitable to possibly sell as used sets, but I don't want to cloud up my current brickfolio that I use for new sets I plan to leave sealed and turn for a profit within the next few years. I hope that makes sense.

[Blackjack]

Is there a new Brickvesting Blog article in the works? :)

[Jeff Mack]

I have a question. Would it be possible to either make it where people could create more than one brickfolio or divide their brickfolio up?

Here is the reason why... I have a lot of sets from the early 80s that I played with as a kid. They are open and none of them are put together. I still have the boxes and instructions, so I know what I have. I would like to add them to a brickfolio to see which sets would be most profitable to possibly sell as used sets, but I don't want to cloud up my current brickfolio that I use for new sets I plan to leave sealed and turn for a profit within the next few years.

I hope that makes sense.

Well you can always create a second account if this is something you want to do right this second. We will look into this option when I get back to working on the next round of enhancements to the Brickfolio. There are a few other things that need to be done first before I can really get to this, so it will be a bit.

[Jeff Mack]

Is there a new Brickvesting Blog article in the works?

There is always content in the works. Ed is juggling a few articles right now. We are quite busy.

[Blackjack]

Thanks! :)

[Ed Mack]

Is there a new Brickvesting Blog article in the works?

Yes, I have four articles that I have to look over and tweak...Two from Darth Lego and one each from Comicblast and Veegs. All articles have been put on hold until we finish up the new site feature. They will be released shortly.

[comicblast]

Yes, I have four articles that I have to look over and tweak...Two from Darth Lego and one each from Comicblast and Veegs. All articles have been put on hold until we finish up the new site feature. They will be released shortly. Gotta love the articles!! Especially looking forward to Darth Lego's since he is a teen like me! On a more serious note, how about a little site tutorial. I know that for the first month or so, I thought that the only thing that you could do was enter stuff into your Brickfolio, so for the first month I had ZERO comments (shocking, I know!). Probably just would hit the main points like the Forum, Lego Reviews, BrickVesting Articles, and Brickfolio. Just a thought...

[Blackjack]

I really only started posting a month ago... though you probably wish I hadn't... :)

[comicblast]

How about letting us be able to bold, italicize, and underline in reviews. I don't think that we need to be able to do all that quoting, font size, and color. Just at thought. That one would be fairly simple. The reason why I brought it up was because I prefer not to put words in all CAPS because it makes it harder to read.

EDIT: I have one more thing to add...I know that this has already been said...multiple times, but here it is: Update BrickPicker data more often because waiting for it is like waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve. Except you don't know when Christmas Eve is, and its 12 times a year. ;)

[Ed Mack]

Yes, I have four articles that I have to look over and tweak...Two from Darth Lego and one each from Comicblast and Veegs. All articles have been put on hold until we finish up the new site feature. They will be released shortly. Gotta love the articles!! Especially looking forward to Darth Lego's since he is a teen like me! On a more serious note, how about a little site tutorial. I know that for the first month or so, I thought that the only thing that you could do was enter stuff into your Brickfolio, so for the first month I had ZERO comments (shocking, I know!). Probably just would hit the main points like the Forum, Lego Reviews, BrickVesting Articles, and Brickfolio. Just a thought...I like the idea of the tutorial very much and have a great idea for it. I am working on the articles now and have a good idea on how I want to package the "Young Guns" articles together.

[Blackjack]

Are you talking about waiting for your brickpoints from reviews to be added?

[comicblast]

Yes, I have four articles that I have to look over and tweak...Two from Darth Lego and one each from Comicblast and Veegs. All articles have been put on hold until we finish up the new site feature. They will be released shortly. Gotta love the articles!! Especially looking forward to Darth Lego's since he is a teen like me! On a more serious note, how about a little site tutorial. I know that for the first month or so, I thought that the only thing that you could do was enter stuff into your Brickfolio, so for the first month I had ZERO comments (shocking, I know!). Probably just would hit the main points like the Forum, Lego Reviews, BrickVesting Articles, and Brickfolio. Just a thought...I like the idea of the tutorial very much and have a great idea for it. I am working on the articles now and have a good idea on how I want to package the "Young Guns" articles together.Sounds great, Ed! I really like the "Young Guns" idea, too. Definitely bring some of the old men on this site to perspective. JK. :)

[FILAS]

Simple suggestion: being able to sort the brickfolio's items by price or performance? This way each user would get a sense of the "rank" of goods within a portfolio from a performance or market price standpoint. Once the number of sets starts piling up it would be nice to be able to see that rank Cheers

[TheCondor]

I dont know if this has been said before but i often buy lots on ebay with multiple different sets so i dont know how to log them with how much each cost maybe you can make a way in the brickfolio to add lots and how much the lot cost and what sets were in it and how many of each set

[Blackjack]

New question. Do you really get about 500 new members a week? I know that there are only about 100 or so people active on the forums, so it doesn't really make sense to me.

[Blackjack]

Since minifigures without the sets are also a huge part of Lego investing, is there a way you could make review section for just the minifigs? You could give five brickpoints to each approved minifigure review of 300-500 or so characters. I'm saying this because I'm a minifigure, not a set specialist.

[Ed Mack]

Simple suggestion: being able to sort the brickfolio's items by price or performance? This way each user would get a sense of the "rank" of goods within a portfolio from a performance or market price standpoint. Once the number of sets starts piling up it would be nice to be able to see that rank

Cheers

There will be some sorting features in later versions.

[Ed Mack]

I dont know if this has been said before but i often buy lots on ebay with multiple different sets so i dont know how to log them with how much each cost maybe you can make a way in the brickfolio to add lots and how much the lot cost and what sets were in it and how many of each set

Brickfolio is not meant to be used for lots. You need to separate them out. How you estimate the individual value of a set from a lot is up to you.

[Ed Mack]

New question. Do you really get about 500 new members a week? I know that there are only about 100 or so people active on the forums, so it doesn't really make sense to me.

Brickset has 50,000+ members and maybe 200 or 300 post consistently. Many people lurk.

[Ed Mack]

Since minifigures without the sets are also a huge part of Lego investing, is there a way you could make review section for just the minifigs? You could give five brickpoints to each approved minifigure review of 300-500 or so characters. I'm saying this because I'm a minifigure, not a set specialist.

No way to classify them without proper names or numbers.

[Rich B]

Brickset has 50,000+ members and maybe 200 or 300 post consistently. Many people lurk.

Yep this is very true. For example I'm a member on Brickset, but I only post there maybe once every 2-3 months, if that.

[Blackjack]

No way to classify them without proper names or numbers.

Ok. I just though that there could be a set up like Bricklink (however inefficient it may be) for narrowing down the search to theme/movie or name.

[Jeff Mack]

Brickset has 50,000+ members and maybe 200 or 300 post consistently. Many people lurk.

Yep this is very true. For example I'm a member on Brickset, but I only post there maybe once every 2-3 months, if that.

Rich is right. I visit Brickset all the time, but rarely post. It was the same even before we built this site. There is also a big tech community called StackOverflow. I am on that site probably 5 times a day but have never answered or posted a question, mostly because I find that someone already has posted or answered a question there. My point is, everyone uses websites the way they want. Some people come here, check out the deals we post a few times a day. Others work in the Brickfolio, others look at photos. Everyone is not a social butterfly. But from time to time, a member that has been a member for months my find a topic they would like to jump into and provide their insight. There are a lot of users the cruise the forums to read what's going on and that fills their needs.

[Blackjack]

I have just found that there are only about 100 users who are active on the forums daily, and that it didn't seem to work with the numbers of new users coming in weekly. Why wouldn't you want to be on the forums!?!?! :D