I’ve created this page as a To Do List of sorts. I post what I’ve done in the blog, but I needed a place to keep track of what I’m going to do. I had originally made a blog post for that, but going back and finding it every time I wanted to look at it or edit it was kind of a pain. This one will be in the sidebar, so I can get to it quickly and keep it up to date.

These features and additions won’t be coming in any particular order. They’ll be added as I have time and as the need pops up. A lot of things I’ll just be adding without them ever being mentioned here. Events, new releases, new shared universes, etc. I’ll add them as they occur to me, while trying to keep up to date with the stuff I’m already working on.

Here’s what I’ve got in the pipeline!

TPB Content Updates

DC Universe – Still a few unplaced books, mostly rarer ones and new or upcoming releases. Many books  need covers, character tags, and end dates set so the chronological and split crisis lists work.  That’s kind of my first focus right now. Secondary focus is adding in new releases.

Wildstorm Universe – I need to add a ton of books and create the order. Currently they aren’t really ordered at all.

Marvel Universe – We’ve started this, but are trying to complete the order offline before uploading it in full. Currently have about 2000 books in some stage of readiness.

Image Universe – The least complete list! I’ll get around to it eventually.

America’s Best Comics – Needs updates. Maybe a couple other releases that aren’t on here yet.

General Content Updates

Updated “How To Use This Website” Page – I’ve started adding some of the information and diagrams, but I’ve still got a lot to do here. A lot has changed since I’ve started, but I want to wait until I feel things are finished to really make this match what you see!

Design Updates

Tag/Taxonomy/Category Headers – This will always be an ongoing battle. Theoretically, every character could have their own picture header. I just have to add them one at a time. They’re low priority, since they’re not actually that useful, but I add some now and again. Likewise, everyone could have a description. Only a few do, so far, but I try and make sure all the important lists are covered.

Page Designs – Each page could look nicer – I mean the About page, Feedback, How To Use This Website, and so on. I’ll do the custom page designs with some graphic headers at some point.

Functionality Updates

Book Counts for Auto-Lists – Right now the main reading order lists show a count of how many books are included on that list. I also want counts to be generated for the character, creator, and series/event lists.

Filter by Custom Taxonomies – Ability to include custom taxonomies in the filtering. Right now they are accessible through a drop-down, but can’t be used to filter out a list along with the custom fields (so, for example, you can’t look for a certain issue within “Alan Moore” tagged books, at least not easily. Characters work fine, since they use the wordpress tag system, not a custom system.

Custom Category Orders! – This is a big one! Currently the only lists that display correctly are the ones in the set reading order (Recommended Reading Order for DC, Buffyverse, Ultimate Marvel Universe, and Fables). The ones that are supposed to display chronologically will only work once I’ve got the data set in every book in that order, which means it will have to wait until I’ve got every book updated. The more complicated one, Split-Crisis Reading Order will take some work, as I want it to display the Pre-Crisis books in chronological order by included issue date and the Post-Crisis books in recommended reading order. I think I know how to do it on one page, but that will kill the server, so I have to figure out how to do it with the paginated system we’ve got going.

Export To Checklist – I’d love to make the site more useful by having a link on each order (ones I’ve made and ones that are automatically generated by tags and database info) that allows the user to display a simple printable list of the books they’d need to collect. This seems simple in theory but I haven’t had a chance to really look at it. Not sure if I want to export the lists in some kind of rich text or html format or somehow generate a PDF. I think the lists would just have the title of the book and a checkbox next to it (less information allows you to put a lot more books on one page, which matters for printing.)

Interactivity Updates

User Submitted Tagging System – I’ve seen mention of this kind of thing before, but I haven’t really worked on getting it going. I think, at least at first, I’m going to have to do the heavy lifting for tagging, since I want to have a very complete database. I’d still have to check and approve every tag, so it wouldn’t really help me populate the database quickly, but it would be useful in the long run for helping me catch errors and unintended oversights. It will be a challenge to get it to work with all the custom taxonomies, I think, but it’s doable in theory.

Quickchat – A kind of quickchat thing where current site visitors can interact with each other. Just a little sidebar or floating thing. This is a low priority thing, but it might be fun.

New Book Form – Add a book submission process like the review submission process. Waiting until we’ve finished uploading all the books we’re ready to upload – it will mainly be for filling in gaps.