Official BlokBlok Updates

4 posts · started 20d ago by Shimku

#1
📢 Update
ShimkuOld GuardAdmin
20d ago· edited 20d ago
BLOKBLOK WEEK 1 UPDATE
Hey y’all – a quick update as BlokBlok has been live for 1 week now. TL;DR: damn.
Hats off for everyone who created an account, contributed item data / features / bug reports, and helped mod all of thus. Massive, massive legends! I think we might be onto something!
Below’s a big ahh list of updates, shout-outs and priorities for the near future. If I forgot something or someone – do forgive! It’s a super impressive start, and I am really positive about BlokBlok’s place in the Mega community.
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Highlights, Shoutouts and Stats
- We got 74 users on BlokBlok, and counting!
- We have 6 active stores with items for sale, and a few more who are working on opening their stores. Shoutout to Rashman’s Bricks and @Flame of the West for conducting BlokBlok’s first ever real transaction
- We had whopping 6,412 contributions over the past 7 days or so (insane!) spanning a ton of stuff, incl. 1,199 new items added. Your contributions are what driving the platform forward, so a genuine thank you. You can see who contributed what at the bottom of item pages, or on public profiles. For those who are new, you can contribute via UI on item pages or via this menu.
- We had 20 new features / updates added and a bunch of bugs fixed thanks to your ideas and reports – more on that below
- Meet the mod team, and a massive shoutout to them all for contributing, to call out (not doing nearly enough justice):
- @Padraig is the GOAT for all things Dragons and Pyrates, added a huuuge amount of data even before BlokBlok went live alongside all the reviews
- @TheMEGArchive is the GOAT for all things Pyrates and Dragons, a kiloton of contributions (even item weights!) and reviews
- @RashmanP226 is the GOAT for Halo and CoD. Insane 2.5k+ contributions and counting – idk how it’s physically possible
- @Dark is the GOAT for Halo and CoD! He did amazing work on his own database and we will be working to integrate it into BlokBlok over the next few weeks
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New Features (which hopefully work)
General
- Completion Tags: massive shoutout to @5N00P1 for this and other ideas. Each item now has 2 tags that signal the completion of the item:
- 'Details completion' – Incomplete / Complete. That's stuff like year released, brand era, pic, etc. Includes part & figure counters on top of page – these are 'official' counters that can be different from the factual ‘logged’ (at least so I heard). If no 'official' count is present, then the counter defaults to ‘logged’ inventory counter with a clear note, or to zero in case there's nothing
- 'Inventory completion' – Nothing / Partly / Looks Complete / Verified. That's the actual accuracy of the inventory.
- Submit for verification – One can signal the set to be ready for review via a button near the inventory that says 'Looks complete? Mark for review'. If (almost) all details are complete and / or all inventory is verified → marked as such. If the 'official' inventory counter is different from verified ‘logged’, the 'official' is replaced by the ‘logged’ one
- What is it for? So that we have some sort of benchmark for when an item is fully catalogued & verified → means we can reliably use it as source of truth, and direct our efforts elsewhere. The dashboard to check the overall statuses is here w/ filters
Inventorying & Suggestions
- Bulk Cap: bulk set inventory upload ceiling bumped from 200 to 500
- Inline New Items: you can now create new items right within Set/Minifig/Gear inventory edit (for both single-line and bulk suggestion), instead of first creating an item and then separately adding it to the set. You can also suggest new items right from (sub)category pages, e.g. on top of ‘Halo 4/5’ subcategory
- Inline New Colours: similar to above, bulk uploader now doesn’t reject colours missing from BlokBlok – it allows you to add them inline. Otherwise, you can suggest new colours here or on the Colors page.
- Link to Set/Minifig/Gear Inventory: suggest that e.g. Part X is part of Set Y right from Part X’s page. Prior, you had to go to Set Y’s page first and only suggest inventory from there. Nice
- Empty (sub)categories: now show in taxonomy trees for everyone to see (before they were findable only via /contribute which was confusing)! For example, CoD – Modern Warfare has 0 sets so far
- Merging: more robust back-end for merging items (e.g. in case of duplicates) to ensure no data loss
- Cataloger’s Note: you can now suggest notes to both sets and minifigs, e.g. to show blind bag codes for a minifigure
- Gear: the Gear category works much better now, and Gear can properly be added as inventory to other items
- Minifigs Inheritance: minifigures should now correctly inherit parent set’s (sub)category, just like boxes and instructions. Which means that if you categorise Set X into (sub)category Y, Set X’s minifigures will follow – cutting the work of recategorising minifigures separately. In case the same figure is present in several sets of different (sub)categories, the earliest one wins unless there is a manual intervention. Exception: Pyrates and Dragons since their minifigs follow a crew/faction system
- Inventory Replacement: there is a checkbox to replace set’s inventory in case of bulk upload – cutting the work to remove wrong pieces, if present. You can choose whether to replace only parts, minifigures, or both. Use only when absolutely necessary!
- Progressive Suggestion Cap: a limit of 30 ‘pending approval’ suggestion was introduced to prevent spam. Since y’all are amazing at adding stuff, the cap is progressively increased the more you suggest, going 30→100→300→600
- Contribution Notes: some notes included in suggestions can be viewed in a dropdown at the bottom of item page (e.g. if a contributor provided a source – for everyone’s reference)
Other
- Part Out: you can now Part Out an item to your Wish List / Collection / Store (if you are a seller) – happy to see this one working!
- My Collection: better, richer filters (both for private and public collections)
- Storefronts: you can now sort items by colour, and search in-store (incl. colours via natural language), alongside other improvements
- Colours Sorting: sort colours by family and alphabetically (by colour name or by colour code ID)
- Forum: edit messages, click on user to see their profile
- Notifications: reworked emails into digest / ‘missed’ instead of spamming emails on every DM. Sign-in/sign-up and transaction-related notification remain unaffected
- Mods: better mod tools for bulk upload, part management, etc. And also proper attribution for mod edits which went silent before that!
- Light/Dark/System Mode: a dedicated switch at the bottom of the website to help you not burn your eyes at night
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Bugs (which are hopefully fixed)
- Minifigure Inventory: fixed being able to suggest not only parts but other items for minifigure inventory
- Click Out Fix: clicking out of a menu (e.g. suggesting a part) doesn’t kill your effort anymore
- Gear and Set ‘Part of’: Gear and Set items correctly display they logged in another item’s inventory, e.g. CDs that came with sets or sets that are part of a combo set
- Other: many other issues solved, incl. reported checkout issues, Gears not being hyperlinked in inventory, not all known colours displaying when trying to add an item to store inventory, and items suggested via (sub)category pages landing in Uncategorized
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Roadmap
There are a lot of ideas floating around! Here are some:
- Data Merge: a lot of you kindly reached out with your own archives and cataloging efforts. We’ll be working together to ensure that all the cool work can be properly integrated into BlokBlok
- Instructions Hosting: While I am not ready yet to host instructions on BlokBlok (they can be hefty), there should soon be a place to put links to 3rd party resources with instructions (many ran by y’all, once again!)
- Data Upload / Download: not BlokBlok-wide just yet, that’s too big of a task for now. But being able to easily import and export stuff into and from your Wish List / Collection / Store inventory. Exploring XML for that too
- Items on Sale: aware that there are many items and a few stores, working on ‘items for sale’ view – a list of all items currently available to buy across active stores
- Items by Colour: we have a great page for all the known colours, but no global way to see all items in said colour
- Community: planning to write some guides (how to suggest things, set up a store, etc.), and kickstart some convos in Forum. If Discord is a platform that would be useful instead or in addition to Forums – lmk! And in general – any help and activity with Forum is much-appreciated!
- Mainpage and UX: some great suggestions to make the mainpage feel less static, incl.: better notifications, contributions feed & easier access to community/stores/customs
- General: continuing to polish UI and fish out bugs with your help
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If you want to chip in some £€$ to help run BlokBlok – thank you. You shall be rewarded with a nice lil badge to flex on your profile
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Massive thanks to everyone once again. I hope it’s just the beginning for BlokBlok, and Mega’s legacy can be properly preserved for everyone to enjoy. And look, now there’s a place to log & find new sets if they ever arrive!
#2
📢 Update
ShimkuOld GuardAdmin
8d ago
BLOKBLOK WEEK 2 UPDATE
Hey y'all – yet another hyper-productive week for BlokBlok, and it ain't slowing down.
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TL;DR: damn x2.5
It's been awesome to see all the contributions, feature requests, bug reports and activity on the Forums. Big nod.
If I have been a bit less present in replying to your messages and posts this week – apologies, it's been a grindy one! Below's another big ahh list of updates, shout-outs and priorities for the near future.
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Highlights, shoutouts & stats
- We got 92 users on BlokBlok, and counting!
- We have 7 active stores with items for sale, and a few more working on opening theirs.
- Going super strong with 6,889 contributions over the past 9 days, welcoming 485 new items. This is insane and I am at loss for words, thank you. You can see who contributed what at the bottom of item pages, on public profiles AND now on mainpage! For those who are new, you can contribute via the UI on item / category / colour pages or via this menu.
- We had 15+ new features / updates added and a bunch of bugs fixed thanks to your ideas and reports – more on that below.
- Your friendly mods have been stellar at both contributing stuff and reviewing a lot of contributed stuff. On top of that, welcome @Mark-of-Zee⚔ as the newest mod! Humbly, he also contributed 2,531 edits, dayum...
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New features (which hopefully work)
General
- Instruction Links: at last, you can see and contribute set instruction links. For now it will be hosted on 3rd party resources but in the mid-term we can transition to full BlokBlok hosting of official instructions. See the links at the bottom of the page, 9392Dread is an example.
- Mainpage: it’s is bigger, better and more dynamic. I am sure you all saw new cards for Catalog Health, Community & Marketplace, and a live feed for community activity (refreshes every 5m)
- Items for Sale: you can now see all items currently for sale across all stores under the Marketplace tab
- Collection Items & UX: add Gear, Instructions and Boxes to your collection and / or wish list. Plus a better UI to log whether you own instructions and / or boxes for a set. Thx @user:TheMEGAArchive!
- Collection Stats: your Collection stats are now visible on your profile if you choose to share them
- Your Activity: activity thread on your public profile, good opportunity to flex
- Custom Items / MOCs: easier UX for selling Custom / Modded / MOC items
- Image Cropper: for item image suggestions and store listings uploads
- Link Posts: Forum UI reworked slightly – you can copy links to particular posts, and pasting them into your message will auto-link that post. Here's an example a post by Shimku (thx @Mark-of-Zee⚔!)
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Inventorying & suggestions
Massive thanks to @griimnak for pointing out many of the above & below!
- Alternative IDs: big one. We can now capture mold stamps, regional ID variants and such – displayed near regular ID with an alt ID type (example on top of AM01462Bar 1 x 3 x 8)
- Unofficial IDs: for some items there is no official ID in existence. Community-derived IDs can get marked as such, making it easier to track them (and contribute ‘official’ ID if ever found). You can filter by items with unofficial IDs on (sub)category pages for Parts and Minifigs. An example would be AS-HKT15-10Helmet, Spartan Mark VII - White w/ Grey Detail.
- Item Variants: another big one! You can add item relations that share the same mold – and easily find them, e.g. for printed or stickered items. Appears below Inventory for Parts and Minifigures – here's an example AS-GLB66-05Chest Armor, Male, Spartan Default - Red w/ Printed Knife (Reach Armor).
- Inventory Colours: you can now edit colour on existing inventory items via the ‘pencil’ icon
- New Item Names: you can now add names for new items right when you suggest them (instead of having to first add an item and then go name it)
- Set Status: more accurate inventory 'health' status that now counts minifigures. As a reminder: we introduced a ‘status’ for each set / fig to help us determine items whose details and / or inventory are fully logged and confirmed accurate. You can recommend any item for ‘final’ review on the item page.
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Other
- Orders UX: orders got a much better filtering. Also, after adding items to cart in a store there is now a clear label that the item is already in your cart
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Bugs (which are hopefully fixed)
- Mobile UX: much better display of items and inventories on mobile
- Order Count: storefronts now correctly show the number of completed orders
- Expandable Item Descriptions: item descriptions no longer get cut off
- Minifigure Colours: fixed a bug which allowed to choose a colour code for a minifigure. Only Parts get a colour ID, figs get their colour mentioned in the name
- Colour Picker: fixed a bug for part colour picker not working when trying to link a part to a parent Set / Minifig (thx @user:@destinationbrick!)
- Restocks: fixed restock not happening if the cancelled order was trying to purchase last of item’s inventory
- Primary Images: correctly auto-promoting suggested pic to primary if one is missing
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Roadmap
There are so many contributions and ideas, love it! Here are some (most pending from earlier):
- Prototypes: in a great thread a post by Mrs. Johnson started by @user:@mrs-johnson (sorry, am yet to reply!) a question was raised on logging prototypes. We had a chat with the mods, and we think we have a suggestion on the approach – and the new Alternative IDs + Variants + Unofficial IDs features will help us support it all properly. A priority for the upcoming week!
- Notifications and UX: better notification system site-wide (you might have already noticed off-site improvements, such a daily digests vs email on every occasion hehe) + several UX improvements, such as grid mode display for stores
- Data Merge: a lot of you kindly reached out with your own archives and cataloguing efforts – we gotta merge 'em
- Data Upload / Download: not BlokBlok-wide just yet (too big for now), but being able to easily import/export your Wish List / Collection / Store inventory. Exploring XML for that too.
- Items by Colour: we have a great page for all known colours, but no global way yet to see all items in a given colour.
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If you want to chip in some £€$ to help run BlokBlok – thank you. You shall be rewarded with a nice lil badge to flex on your profile
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Kudos to everyone once again. I think I'll keep this EOW email fairly regular for now and we can transition to less regular 'formal' updates once the platform matures. Here's to another week! 👌🏻
#3
Mark-of-Zee⚔Old GuardMod
8d ago
Correction, as of typing 3,615 edits
#4
↩ in reply to Shimku
griimnakOld Guard
7d ago
Awesome 😎👍