EMC Shop Database

It works, and is ready for YOUR shop!

That's right! The EMC Shop Catalog is ready for everyone to start adding their shops and letting people know what they sell easily! Anyone with a shop is welcome and encouraged to visit the site and add their shop information, and keep coming back to keep it up to date and find other shops.

http://www.emcshops.org

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Additionally, a great suggestion was made to me to include quick links at the side to allow users to easily "search" shops only on specific servers. I'm planning to add this, but part of the suggestion also included designating each server a mob image. To that end, I've create a google docs form to allow users from each server to rate their first through eighth choice mobs for their server's icon. The link to the form is below:

Vote for your server's icon!

Please vote, and may each server get the icon they hope for!

Voting will end Sunday, March 31st at 12pm CDT (5pm GMT). Get your votes in!

A rundown of the features currently included:

• Easily browse through all shops, sorted by those most recently updated, right from the home page.
• Search for specific items, and even look for shops that sell ALL the items you're looking for. The list of items you're searching for should be comma separated.
• Search for shops only on a specific server, or by a specific owner.
• You can even search through shop descriptions, looking for shops that are advertising a sale or special items for sale that aren't in the list.
• Login through the website each time you want to edit your shop, OR bookmark your unique quick-edit link to be taken directly to the edit page for your shop. Unique means that even if you create a listing for more than one shop (if, for example, you have a shop on more than one server), that shop will have its very own quick link.
• A shop "derelict policy" is in effect, in which all shops that have not been updated within ten days of the time they were created or last updated will be hidden from searches or browsing. I'll be adding an option to allow you to perform a search that includes derelict shops should you wish to. You don't have to actually make any changes to your shop to update it's timestamp, either. All you have to do is login via the site or your quick-link and it will be considered up-to-date.
• "Markdown" has been added, allowing users to easily add formatting, links and images to their shop descriptions. For instructions on the syntax of Markdown, click the link at the beginning of this bullet. Also please note, though the syntax instructions show that inline HTML can be used with Markdown, I have all raw HTML disabled for user input, and thus the only HTML you can use is what is generated by the Markdown script.

As with all newly created applications, websites and related things, this will not be considered "finished" for quite some time. I've got more features I plan to add (list to follow), tweaks will likely need to be made, and there's even a chance that a bug will pop up that needs to be squashed. I humbly request that any errors that come along that I haven't noticed be brought to my attention as soon as possible, preferably through a private conversation here on the forums, or via email at: shops@emcshops.org.

CREDITS:
Coding and layout: Raenis
Header Image: Leowaste
Great Suggestions: EMC Players!

Project Status:

• Create Listing [Complete]
• Edit Listing [Complete]
• Delete Listing [Complete]
• Main Page/Browsing [Works]
• Search Page [Works]
• View Shop Details Page [Complete]
• Aesthetic Design [Complete - Maybe some tweaking needed]

ANY issues you find, let me know what page it was on at what the issue was so I can track it down and take care of it!

Planned Features:

• Image uploads for your shop -> Up to three images pertaining to your shop. These can be screenshots of the shop on your lot, or other images (A logo, maybe?) that can help shoppers get a feel for your shop. I've added a way for users to format text, add links and images to their shop descriptions without uploading them. This method is called "Markdown", and gives you a lot of control over how text appears in your shop description. In light of this, I'll also be adding an additional field to the shop creation/edit pages allowing you to create a Headline for your shop listing to be displayed on the browsing and search pages, as the markup for Markdown would probably look kinda silly in plaintext format if you use images or links in the first 50 characters of your description.
• Enchanted Item listings -> Some of you sell enchanted tools and armor outright through chest shops. I plan to add a way for you to add listings of what you offer for sale to be shown with your shop inventory, instead of listing the info in your shop description. Upon request and if I can get someone to supply me with the ID numbers required for shop signs for each type of enchanted item, I'll add a display of the required ID number for your in-game shop sign to aid you.
• Items You Buy -> Many of you wish to also include a listing of items that you allow other players to sell to your shops. This shouldn't be too difficult to add, and all the styles should already be in place, so as soon as I get the chance to do it, it's going in. I'll work the same way as selecting what you sell, except there won't be any stock indications. When viewing shops, I'll add a tabbed view like on the editing pages allowing you to select the list of items for sale, or items you purchase. [Added. Seems to work perfectly, and on the first try, too! Neato!]
• Item Demand Indicators -> One suggestion I received was to add a way to provide an indication of how likely an item is to be stocked. Obviously, the consumer demand for an item will affect how easily the shop owner can keep that item stocked. As a service to the shoppers, the shop owner may wish to indicate to them how likely they are to be in-stock so customers aren't shocked when they find that they have sold out. [Added. Might tweak the visuals, but the functionality is good!]

Suggestions for new features or changes to current features are welcome, and all will be considered as long as they're not absurd.

Sounds awesome would really like to see that maybe you could partner with someone who can do graphics to make it nice

That's a definite possibility. Right now I'm creating arrays of all the blocks and items that could be sold for use in buiding lists for searching and creating entries.

Hahah, two of us were actually chatting about this yesterday as I'd toyed with the idea of doing something like this.

Your system is far more complete, and whilst I would welcome something like this, I think you are going to have your work cut out for you in that the database would quickly become out-dated and incorrect if Players failed to keep them updated.

You would need to create some form of weekly login requirement to show that they're still active.

Perhaps base it off the 10 Day Derelict policy. If you don't log into your shop account in ten days, it's presumed you haven't in MC either and your Res has been deleted, thus so does your shop listing.

This would apply to Supporters for ease as well.

Otherwise, hell yes, good luck!

That's a good point, although I wonder about it due to the number of players that nearly never visit the forums, but frequently are found on the servers. Of course ( ) then again I would think that a shop owner would definitely like to keep their shop available and visible to players in a catalogue, so I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem to just update a date-time field whenever someone logs into their shop listing, even if they don't make any edits.

Maybe give them a quick-update link when they create their shop that will automatically take them to their shop editing page, so all they have to do is bookmark the link and click it from their bookmarks to quickly mark their shop as up-to-date or make edits.

Good stuff!

You raise a good point about the number of people that would use it.

If you were to develop it, I'd certainly approach EMC and ask them to officially endorse and utilise it to gain it as much exposure as possible. This would then avoid the prospect of it being underused.

Best of luck!

im sure if it was done well justin would happily put it on the site and advertise it on the servers

Right then!

I've already begun, since I've got this horribly strong urge to code something. We'll see where it goes from here. In the meantime, I still welcome more comments or suggestions, as everything can be discussed and considered!

For the layout, I have a rather nice image in my head of the way it could be laid out.

Using the in-game icons for each item, the shop-keeper clicks on whatever ones he stocks and that's what appears on the Shop page, broken down by category.

That would be quite nice, I agree. I'll probably do something like that once I get it fleshed out and operational.

This would help out a lot. It would get rid of people spamming the chat "WHO SELL COAL!!!!!!" because other people are too busy to answer them
+1 to this idea

Still a good ways from finished, but this at least displays all the items as I have them categorized. Let me know what kind categorization edits you might suggest, as well as pointing out any items I haven't included. I think I missed a couple.
http://www.emcshops.org/

And 800 lines of CSS later, I've got all the style classes needed for the item sprites. Wasn't too difficult, just tedious.

With that done, the rest of the development should stream by pretty quickly. ETA for beta testing is approx 24-48 hours. Huzzah!

I just wanted to add that I think it is awesome the community is coming together to do things like this

This is a great idea which can supplement a point that I made a while ago, the //keyword command. Possibly that command could use this catalog? Also, I think that because very little players visit the forums on a regular basis, the idea of having the shop tag reset should apply only if their residence is derelicted or they are banned. This will make it so if they do not log in for over 10 days, they will lose their shop and the shop tag.

Awesome idea. Could be easy to create log ins and a database, then each shop owner add thr info them selves. Also, add an option for chance of having stock, in %.
Ie. I sell all wool colors, but black wool is hit or miss while yellow wool is always fully stocked. So i would puy yellow wool at99% stock chance and black wool at 50%.

Just idea.

Also i can do graphic if needed

You are missing sugarcane on the list

Two cents:

Excellent idea, period ! I've longed for something like this myself, but have had a lot of the same questions everybody else has that basically boil down to application... and that it would be a lot of work unless you made something everybody can update on their own. Can you swing something that ppl can update all by themselves? I don't think anything fancy is even necessary... just a simple database accessible to anybody to view.

• If this were available and reliable then customers and shop owners alike would likely reference it all the time as a more efficient way to compare prices and know stock, rather than scavenging for responses in town chat.
• So 1) it's in everybody's interest and 2) that goes for customers and shop owners alike... this means that if you require people to update it frequently or get bumped from the list, then shop owners will just keep it updated in their own interest, or lose business and free advertising... not really your problem, right? I think ppl would try hard to keep their sheet updated. But there's no way to police their accuracy, save customers going there and finding things inconsistent with the sheet... which would make them less likely to go back.

I guess I'm just saying that if you could make it bump ppl after a short time period then the thing could just police itself because nobody wants to lose business. But things can sell out in a matter of hours... I mean you'd probably have to give a 24 hour threshold, right? My shop, for example? I would personally update my stuff all the time [read: at least daily] because (1) I want to draw business, and (2) I don't want ppl leaving there disappointed because of an unstocked shop... I'd rather tell them before they get there.

I really enjoy EMC, and I enjoy programming, so doing something like this you might say is a labor of love. I'm happy that there's lots of feedback!

I've included a timestamp field in the database to check how recently the shop was pinged/updated. Translates to a shop listing "derelict policy".

I can play around with an option for this, though at launch it will probably be dependent on the shop owner simply editing their shop to uncheck anything they don't have in stock on a given day.

As for graphics, I may take you up on that, once I'm further along.

Fixed. Thanks for letting me know!

So much detail! But yes, I agree that I feel any good shopkeeper would make the effort to keep their stock updated. As for prices, unless there's an overwhelming number of people that feel it's a good idea, I'm opting to leave them out of the catalogue, for the sake of preventing players from simply searching up the cheapest shops and never checking out other shops.
The search listings and browsing pages would be sorted by most recently updated, so players would be able to tell which shops have updated most recently without even trying.

Thanks for all the feedback, y'all! It really helps keep me in the loop of what people are looking for instead of blindly building it just based on what I'd like to see.

A project we started shortly ago (Delta Team) It's http://www.mcdeltateam.com/shop what you can see it's actually just the main design, all the code and stuff it's being run by powerdan, maybe you can contact him and we can partner on this

Obviously we would credit you
EDIT: My idea would be to take shops and make categories, depending on what they have, each shop will show the items as the imgs themselfs and price below, all that could be designed based on the code. Hosting and domain would be provided by us

This would apply for enchanted items, and an auction system for players to do them via our website