The past few days I’ve made the following changes, let me know what you think.
- Added a compatibility rating. Once you are logged in you can navigate to any other users page and it will give you a rating depending on how similar your tastes are. You can see this at the bottom of the left hand panel on any users page, except your own page of course.
- Combined all the search functions, you can now search books, authors, users and tags. I realise this is still quite limited so I will be adding an advanced search option over the next few days which will allow you to search by book and author at the same time.
- Captcha added to signup page.
- Book score chart updated. Now only books which have a certain number of ratings will be counted. This prevents a 10 vote from one user propelling a book into the top 100.
- Added a reply link on all comments.
- You can now tell bookwormr for which events you would like notification. For instance if you would rather not be sent an email when someone comments on one of your reviews. You can change these settings on the options page under Email Notification Preferences.
Well that’s it for now. I appreciate any feedback on these new features and on the site in general.
Thanks.
Hi, I just joined the site because I wanted an online to-read/have-read list that I could share. I found yours via a blog I found with Google. The site seems pretty new, so I’d like to give you some feedback/suggestions if I may. 🙂 This is all according to my own likes and dislikes and how I want to use the site.
– It seems that many of the books have several different versions present in your database, which splits the number of readers between them. For instance, two versions are 1984 are in your top 100. I think it would be easier to choose one, basic version and consolidate in order to have more accurate ratings and numbers (and also because I’m a stickler for efficiency).
– I would like the option to move a book from my Reading list back to my Would Like To Read list. I started reading Freakonomics when it came out, and really liked it, but then I started reading something else and haven’t gone back to it yet. I guess I’m technically Reading it, but I’d rather have it on my Not Read Yet list, because I’m not actively reading it right now. I suppose I could delete and re-add, but being able to move it makes more sense to me.
– I love having the images of the bookcovers (I actually was hoping for that specifically when I was looking for a site like this), but I think it would be extremely useful to have the title of the book pop up in a tooltip when your mouse hovers over the image. The words on the image are often hard to see, so I have trouble identifying books I haven’t already read. And an interesting cover of an unfamiliar book will often hook me in. 🙂
I’ve only been using your site for about an hour, so that’s all I have for now! I appreciate your work on this!
Hi ML,
Thanks for the feedback, I really do appreciate it and it helps make the site better for everyone. I guess you had 3 points.
1. Having the books title pop up when you hover over the image.
This is such a useful idea I am ashamed I didn’t think of it. I have just implemented it and it should now work. I don’t have any Windows machines handy so if anyone wants to let me know if it works on Internet Explorer that would be great. It definitely works on firefox though.
2. Being able to move a book from Reading status back to Wishlist status.
Another good idea and that should be working now too.
3. All books which are the same but with different isbns numbers (i.e. versions) should be grouped together.
This is something I’ve thought long and hard about. I agree that this is the way it should work, however there are various technical problems in coding this behaviour. So until I can find a good solution to this the problem will remain. I hope it’s not so annoying it makes people stop using the site.
Thanks again.
I really like the idea of the site…I wish that I had thought of it 🙂
Like ML, I get a little frustrated when there are numerous editions of the same book. This is especially true of the classics. There must be dozens of Tom Sawyers. I don’t think that the technical issues are too hard but doing the consolidation would take man years of effort. There are ways to accomplish this but, it would involve trusting others and giving up some control.
I do find the site to be a bit cumbersome to use. The search has no memory of what I just did. I often search by author so I have to select that search and then enter the author, select a book, put it in the read list than then start the process all over. Thanks to cut and paste I don’t have to retype the name but it would be nice to do a search, select multipls books and then have a list of them to score. Even if I had to go back to the main list to score them it would be faster than the repetitive steps necessary now.
I am finding that some authors that I read decades ago are not well represented. Martin Caidin was prolific in the 60’s and 70’s with many of his titles forming the basis of movies and TV shows (The $6 million man was his) echoing to today yet, I only found a handfull of titles. There will probably always be books that are missing from the sources that you use. Perhaps a way for users to add them could be developed.
When I select “Show all” I want show all, not show more.
Enough for now. I think that you have a winner.
Regards,
lynn
How can we add books that aren’t showing up in the system?
Hi!
I just discovered this wonderful site. As I am from Austria, i wanted to ask, if it is planned to add more german books to the database?
Christian,
I do plan to interface to a users choice of amazon sites. Amazon currently have sites for the USA, UK, France, Germany, Canada and Japan. Once this becomes available you should see more German books on the site.
Mike,
At the moment there is no way for users to add there own books. As I see it the main problem would be ensuring the accuracy of user added content. I would like to see this feature added though and eventually this will happen.
Lynn,
My main priority is making it easier to add books. This has been the main complaint I’ve had about the site and I plan to fix this as soon as possible. The Show All issue is really a problem with the images. If you had read say 300 books and someone clicks on show all the page would take too long to load. I might incorporate a real show all but only with text and no book images. What do you think?
Once again, I appreciate the feedback and it helps me focus my efforts in the right places.
The images in a long list are less important to me than having the list be useful. To be more useful, I would like to be able to sort it into orders other than ranking. Fist priority would be author (with title in order under the author) and then just title. I add books a couple of ways. First is I pick up a book and just add it. The other is by recollection or reminder. Once the list goes beyond a single page it becomes rather easy to accidentally enter duplicates. As the site becomes more popular, I am sure that you will pick up more and more people who read (or have read) a lot. I agree, reducing the barriers to adding books is important to the long tern success of the site.
Your work is appreciated. Thank-you.
lynn