Now that there is at least a small stream of orders coming through the co-op, I've just realized how many manual tasks there are on the "back end" to process the payments, send receipts, account for Co-op and PayPal fees and transfer payments to booth owners! It's doable now, but as the co-op grows it'll soon be too much for one person to handle! Plus, it came to a grinding halt last week when I was out of commission due to weather problems.

Sooo ... that means more automation! I'm working on this now, and thought I'd let everyone know what's coming. It may take another several days or a week, but every booth owner will have another item added to your administration menu: "My Account." This will contain a concise listing of all your financial transactions: orders and their status, fees, payment history and the current balance of your account (for orders that have been placed but not yet paid, for example). This will all be automated, meaning faster information for you and less work for me! It'll also be a permanent record of all your co-op activity in one place, for your own record-keeping. Stay tuned, more info as it comes online.

Another piece of functionality I'm adding is automatic random rotation of the items on the "Featured Today" sidebar on the main Co-op page. You've probably noticed that this hasn't always been updated every day, and the rotation of featured items hasn't been truly random, just my own recollection of what hasn't been featured recently! I'm writing a routine to fix that, but I need your feedback.

It turns out this is not quite as trivial as it seemed at first blush. The problem is simply that some booths have a LOT more items than others, so if we just choose three items at random from the entire product list each day then Booth A, which has 20 items, will end up being promoted on the front page ten times as often as Booth B, which only has two items! Maybe this is logical, but it seems a bit off to me.

My proposed solution is a two-step process: first choose three BOOTHS at random, then choose a random product from each of those booths. This will give each booth a comparable presence on the front page regardless of how few or how many products they have.

So what do you all think? Does that make sense to everyone, or would you rather have a truly random selection of products displayed each day without regard for what booth they are in? Inquiring minds want to know!

Love,
Greg

Well, the problem with the second approach would be that products belonging to booths with few items will get more exposure as they will tend to appear more often as compared to the products from booths with lots of items.

I would tend to lean towards the earlier approach. To me, it's a foregone conclusion that if you have more products in your booth, you have a greater chance of making more sales than someone with limited products in their booth.

Ultimately, so long as all products get featured at some point of time, there is no unfairness involved, as no matter how many times you feature a product, the ultimate choice is in the hands of the shopper. IMHO.

Quote:

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Well, the problem with the second approach would be that products belonging to booths with few items will get more exposure as they will tend to appear more often as compared to the products from booths with lots of items.

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I tend to agree with that. To minimise this, here's my two cents' worth:
(i) Random search for booth number - Say, this is x
(ii) Within the booth, random search for product. Let this be Y
(iii) If X and Y, taken together have appeared in the "featured today" within a partcular time, say system_date minus 3 weeks, they get disqualified.
Does this work?

Heh, heh ... well, I can see that point of view ... although I still don't really agree with it.

Here's my concern: right now we have 113 "products" that are online, and we have a dozen online booths with a wide variety of items. One of these booths has nearly half of the total number of products (56 items) while a couple of others have only a single item, and the rest fall somewhere in between. If we feature 3 products daily, the booth with the most products will have a featured product almost every day, and two featured pruducts about half the days! ... while the booths with only a single item will have their product featured less than once a month (about once every 38 days on average)!

Now to me, even if that's "fair" on the premise that you'd expect booths with more items to generate more traffic and sales, it's still not the best thing for the co-op as a whole, because it gives a lopsided picture of the really wide variety of things offered here ... which I personally think is one of the most attractive things about the co-op!

Don't forget that those of us having this discussion are regulars who can see what's listed today and tomorrow and next week and next month ... but even though our site has an unusually high percentage of regular repeat visitors, we are still in the large minority ... most folks will stop by once to see if anything catches their eye, and that may be the only visit they ever make! Another large group may only visit two or three times in the course of a year. So if our featured items don't reflect the wide variety of items in the different booths by regular rotation, the "general public" will mostly only ever see items from the few booths with the most products. And since people are all different, with different interests, tastes and desires, I think that gives us less of a chance to "catch the eye" of a bigger percentage of the surfers who pass through!

I'll go along with the majority thinking about this, 'cause it's everybody's co-op, but think about it!

Love,
Greg

Ani Your approach may be the right direction to look for some balance between the two approaches ... although three weeks minimum between successive listings for a one-product booth may still be too long ... but that can be tuned!

Love,
Greg

Well, if you put it that way... That sounds pretty logical.

You know, Greg, if exhibiting the variety we have here is one of the main concerns, then probably we should feature categories instead of booths. As in, instead of picking a product from three different booths for display on a particular day, we pick a product from three different categories. That way, we always have variety and all products and booths continue to get the same kind of exposure as they would get with different booths featured.

With Ani's method, we could build in another level for categories. Pick three categories at random. Pick a booth from each selected category at random. Pick a product from each selected booth at random.

ROFLMAO. This is way too technical and mathematical a discussion for me to even touch. Can you get one of those machines with all the ping-pong balls popping around inside that they use for the lottery?

Maria

lol. I was thinking of rolling in one of those machines, if we don't reach an agreement on this

Hi Greg. It occurred to me when I was looking at the co-op...maybe there should be an easier "front door". On the main page you have to click on Member Booths to go in. Can you make a link out of the large "Now Open" icon? Or maybe even the "Community Co-op" at the top of the page? Just seems like you have to look a little to find the way "in" and I'm wondering if new customers would find it easier to have a bigger target.

Hi Greg

I recall you mentioning in one of the earlier threads that a person could have more than one booth. So, I created one more booth for myself. Now, when I want to upload files to this new booth, I get the following error messages:

============================================
Warning: OpenDir: No such file or directory (errno 2) in /var/www/consciousevolution/co-op/boothadmin/booths.php on line 124

Warning: Unable to create '/var/www/consciousevolution/co-op/booths/28/booth_tn.jpg': No such file or directory in /var/www/consciousevolution/co-op/boothadmin/booths.php on line 151

Warning: Unable to move '/tmp/phpBVWpla' to '/var/www/consciousevolution/co-op/booths/28/booth_tn.jpg' in /var/www/consciousevolution/co-op/boothadmin/booths.php on line 151

Warning: OpenDir: No such file or directory (errno 2) in /var/www/consciousevolution/co-op/boothadmin/booths.php on line 157
=========================================

Please help

Ani

My apologies, part of the process of creating a new booth still has to be done by me manually ... I haven't said much about it or worked on automating it further yet because I didn't know anyone was contemplating it!

The part that was causing the errors was the lack of a new booth directory on the server to hold your images. I just went in and created that directory for you, so it should all work correctly now. Please let me know if you still have any problems.

Suchi, the "categories" rotation could work well ... except that I'm not really happy with our categories yet! I just more or less threw them together as products came online, and they really need to be more consistent and better reflect the variety of content. Anybody want to volunteer to work on a "real" category scheme?

Sky, you may be right about the entrance to the booth area being needlessly hard to find. I deliberately put it at second level on the assumption that lots of folks would want to browse by category (or full-text, when that's implemented ) rather than going straight to the booth area, but that may be a false assumption ... the booths ARE really the central focus of the co-op. Let me think about this a little, and if anybody else has any good suggestions please chime in. We definitely want to make everything as easy and obvious as possible!

Love,
Greg

You're welcome Greg. I just find that when I pop on there, it seems to me that there should be an easier way in. It's always easier for someone who didn't design it to think of these things, since I'm not involved with the development. You had your own logic that works for what you're designing. So, maybe there's a way to incorporate both.

Anyway, great job and thanks for all the hard work.

Greg, Ani did offer an alternative list of Categories in one of the previous threads. Maybe you missed it.

Yike, you're right Suchi, I did miss it! I guess this was posted right as we were in the final throes of November's Metamorphosis. I'll re-post it here so we can look at it together:

Quote:

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Greg and all , how's this for the category and subcategory list:

• Astrology & Spirituality
  (i) horoscopes & charts
  (ii) I ching
  (iii) Tarot
  (iv) Others
  
• Readings & Counselling
  (i) horocopes & charts
  (ii) Tarot
  (iii) Dreams
  (iv) Intuitive
  
• Healing & Prayers
  
• Personal items
  (i) Clothes
  (ii) Jewellery
  (ii) Toilette
  (iv) Others
  
• Gifts
  
• Crafts
  
• Nature Store
  (i) Incense
  (ii) Toilette
  (iii) Curios
  (iv) Others
  

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Thanks Ani. Yes, I think this is a definite improvement, what do y'all think?

Love,
Greg

PS Ani, your new Two Leaves booth is looking great!

It looks like the items you have in there so far are based on your excellent metamorphosis articles on the fundamentals of Vedic astrology ... are they printed volumes, or are you delivering them as "e-books?"

Love,
Greg

Greg,

Did you get the request for LoisJean's booth?

Hey folks, I was thinking that folks who are traveling over the holidays could maybe bring flyers along and hang them in places they go.

Maria

I'm not sure on the categories there ... it seems a few sub-categories get repeated and some products get kind of glossed over. I'm thinking more along the lines of how retail shopping is typically set up, like at a department store or mall ...

Typically, you've got your ...

Toy store (we've got that in Libra Sun's booth)
Jewelry and Accessories store (we've got that in Rachel's and Vikki's and Rena's booths)
Bath shop (we've got that in Foxtip's booth)
Book and Stationary store (we've got that in Ani's booths)
Home Furnishings (e.g., the wooden shelves and leather pillows in Vikki's booth)

... I think these kinds of basic "known" categories above are good because people know what they are.

Then that just leaves the hippy headshop stuff to organize. Just kidding about calling it hippy headshop stuff, but the stuff you don't typically find in a department store or mall ... That might go something like this:

Astrological Reports & Readings (Greg and Firesong's, Libra Sun's, Terri's when she gets hers going)
Oracle & Intuitive Readings (Rena's and Kelly's)
Spiritual and Meditative Aids (My smudges)
Esoteric Gifts and Arts (some of Rena's)
Spiritual Intention / Prayer Support (Rainbow Light)

We can always add categories if we get clothing, herbs and such...

Comments? Ideas?

Maria

Hippy Headshop - ROFL!!!

I like Maria's "shopping mall" approach. It might be a little more intutive for customers to find what they are looking for id its organized along according to a model they already are likely to know well.

Love,
Terri

I Like the hippy approach too. Looks more organised and neat, as if it is a real supermarket with signs dangling from the ceiling. Except for one suggestion : instead of bath shop can be have a more generic term for soaps etc.? Because, tomorrow someone may come along offering home-made scrubs, lotions, creams etc. Just thinking..

Greg, about the books, I was thinking of taking prints from the home PC, binding them and mailing them across. And maybe also throw in a bookmark with each book if I am in the mood to make them The only thing is, the first few orders may have one or two pages slightly misaligned while I hone by book-binding skills. Or maybe the gum will be dripping all over the cover page.

Hi Greg, I haven't heard from anyone about my booth yet, not to worry if everyone is very busy at the moment, this is just a reminder in case you had forgotten. I understand you must have lots to do. Evy

Hi all

I did get Lois' booth request, Maria and set her up with a booth and temporary password last week. I also asked her to send a short description of her booth and products for review by the co-op panel, but haven't heard back from her yet.

Evy, sorry nobody's contacted you about your orgone generator booth yet. We've discussed this on the co-op panel and I think the general consensus seems to be that everybody really likes the idea, but a few folks are a bit nervous about possible legal implications. Given that Wilhelm Reich died in prison as a result of selling orgone generators, this may not be a totally misplaced anxiety! I will go ahead and set up your booth account and send you a temporary password this morning, but we would like to request that you hold off putting it online until we've had a chance to review it and feel comfortable about the "medical disclaimer" that the US F.D.A. requires of all devices that purport to have an energetic effect (this includes things like Linda's Purple Plates as well as radionics equipment and orgone generators.) I think the disclaimer you have on your own site is a pretty good one. Does that sound cool?

I like the more "traditional" approach to product categories too. Maybe the bath shop could be "Bath & Beauty" giving it a wider latitude? "Oracle & Intuitive Readings" sounds a bit obscure to me for a recognizable category, even though it's accurate. I know we're all sensitive to the term Psychic Readings since it's often abused and misused, but it is widely recognizable and may draw more folks into the category. What do you think about "Oracle and Psychic Readings?" And in terms of subcategories there, I'm wondering if Tarot should be somehow qualified to include Kelly's Angel card and Star Card readings? Neither of these are actually Tarot decks, but they are card readings and I think most folks would likely expect to find them in a "Tarot" category rather than "Other." Just a few thoughts, I think we're definitely on the right track now!

Ani I really like your idea of binding these series into book form, and I wouldn't worry a bit about minor misalignments ... that kind of thing just differentiates you from mass-market publishers and has its own charm!

Love,
Greg

Thanks Greg,that sounds great! I understand the concern about the generators and Wilhelm Reich. We'll include the same disclaimer as we have on our site Evy