LaToya's Newsletter February '11

Hi Toy Collector!

It's been quite a start to 2011! For one thing, we debuted  the new 2.0 version of the Toy Collector site, an adventure 1.5 years in the making! And for another, we became the first collector community to exhibit at the Nuremberg Toy Fair! Oh, and ToyPedia crossed the 100,000 item line! 

If you haven't checked out the new site yet (What are you waiting for?! Just click here!) we're sure you'll find it a marked improvement over the last one. We've kept all your favourite sections, like the Yellow Pages, Events and, of course, ToyPedia, but we've also added some great new sections and given the profiles and community page a facebook-style facelift with a lot of added functionality, like apps you can install to see where your friends are located and walls you can write on. And we've gotten rid of some of the things you told us you didn't like about the first version of the site.

Next month, we'll go back to the more usual newsletter format with Member of the Month and all the other regular features, but for right now, I want to highlight some of the great new stuff you'll find on the new site...

Galleries, Easier Image Insertion in the Blogs & Forums, Groups, News and ToyPedia!

Galleries

We've been aware for a long time of the limitations of our previous gallery software, so you'll be ecstatic to know that we've now replaced it with a far easier-to-use alternative!

Now, you don't have to specify write in your own gallery directory any more - you just hit Create New Album, give it a name and a description, select the Category from the drop down and click Save. You'll see the page with all your galleries and then you just need to click "Add New Photos" under the gallery you've just created (or, indeed, any of your others) to upload photos. For right now, you'll need to use the standard uploader, but rest assured that the much faster Java uploader is on its way back and will be installed soon!

Image Insertion in Blogs & Forums

You'll also be glad to know that we've made it FAR easier to insert pictures into your forum posts and blog entries! Now, there are three ways to do this in the blogs and four in the forums.

Central Control for image insertion (and video insertion) in both forums and blogs are the four white buttons you see here:

You can us these to upload an image direct from your PC, insert the URL of an image hosted on TC or elsewhere or use our brand new image browser tool to find and insert an image directly from your Toy Collector galleries, or someone else's!

Groups

One of the features we're most excited about bringing you is the new Groups function. This allows you to create meeting points for likeminded collectors and modellers about any subject you like.

Groups can share announcements, photos and videos, and communicate directly with each other via posts on the Group wall. They also get their own dedicated forum, which can be accessed via either the Group homepage or the forums. 

You can start a group based on anything toy or model related - for example, why not start one for local collectors (like the New Zealand collectors group that RVRevo has already set up) or for users with a shared interest like Nobleco's Restorers Group. The choice is yours! 

We are still fine-tuning the groups and plan to add more functionality very quickly (for example, we intend that groups will be able to opt to keep their forums private and have multiple forums of their own) and we'd like feedback from you about the groups. Tell us what you'd like to see in them in terms of technical features, and we'll see what we can do about building it in.

News

In this new 2.0 version of the site, we're upping the emphasis on Toy & Model news, as we want TC to be your one-stop source for all the important stories in the collecting world - the CNN of Toys and Models! We've made it easy for manufacturers, auctioneers, dealers and everyone else who's got something to announce to upload their press releases and news items directly to the site (don't worry, we'll be policing to make sure nothing goes up that shouldn't!) so if you fall into any of these categories, just click here for details!

ToyPedia

And last, but definitely not least; ToyPedia! We've made the ToyPedia browser far easier to use. Now, you can still browse through the list of all the Makers whose products are listed, but you can do so by scrolling - no more having to click on page numbers under the list. You can also search the entries by typing the first few letters of the maker's name or browse by interests. We've also enhanced the filtering ability and we're expanding the browser so you can search for other types of content - more coming on this subject soon! We'll also have the Filter working very shortly too - this should be up and running this week.  

Plus there's now more listings on there than ever - we crossed the 100,000 mark in early January and now have listings for around 130,000 items in total, with 200,000 more in the pipeline. As ever, if you'd like to help out with the project (and we can use all the helpers we can get!), please just drop me a PM!

OK, so, that's your overview - and of course, we want your feedback on all these improvements and features, what you like and what you don't like and what you'd like to see added and what you want banished! As always, you can PM me, or we have this new forum here for discussion of the new site.  

You can also use it to post any bugs or issues that you come across. We did have a few bugs with the site at launch, as some of you will be aware, but our development team did a great job of sorting them out. (A big thank you to them and to all our users for being patient while the issues got sorted!) A few minor glitches are still cropping up here and there, though, and we are still working on a few detail aspects of the site, like getting the menus 100% in the order we want them. As such, we are aware of some stuff, so if you come across something you'd like to report, please do check that nobody else has done so already before adding it.

After all that, there was also the Nuremberg Toy Fair!  

For the first time, Toy Collector, and our partner sites Hobby Talk, the Wings Group, ModelTrainForum, LGBWorld and our latest family member, figurecollections.com, had our very own stand there, building bridges with buyers, collectors and manufacturers alike.  

We are the first collectors' group site to exhibit and we were very pleased to have members from Toy Collector and the Wings sites join us in manning the stand.  

Our display of vintage toys - and our screens showing how they are displayed on ToyPedia - went down a storm, and we can't wait for next year! In the meantime, I'm blogging about everything we saw there as I did in 2010 - you can find all my posts here.

On Action Figures & Robots... 

Action Figures 

Also, as above, we're happy to welcome to our fold figurecollections.com! FigureCollections is a great site aimed at figure fans and collectors, with an action figure database (and you know how much we like those!) plus reviews, pictures and more. If you're a collector, you may know Josh Crawford who did such a good job creating the site and who'll be working with us on some of the exciting plans we have for going forward.  

Figure Collections plays a huge part in those plans, so if you're into action figures of any sort, take a look and watch out for all the developments we have planned for the site over the next few months!

And One Last Thing: The Robot 

You'll also have noticed that as part of the site redesign, we have a new logo featuring a Red Robot!

Red Robot's design is, in fact, based on Tin Toy Arcade's Mr. D Cell Robot in Red with Silver Chest (which you'll find on ToyPedia here) who is, in turn, based on a classic vintage toy robot design. We think he nicely represents the appeal of vintage and modern toy collecting - but don't worry, he's not here to replace me in any way shape or form; he's just my minion. I'm still in charge here at TC and it's going to stay that way!