DesignsToLove is finally ready...well sortof

After months of hard work, lots of caffeine and countless hours of coding, i am pleased to announce that DesignsToLove is finally ready!



For those who do not know what DesignsToLove is, here is a brief intro :

DesignsToLove is an online craft gallery and community dedicated to helping craft enthuists from around the world connect, showcase their work, share their passion, learn from each other and have heaps of fun.

Click here to read more about me & DesignsToLove

Please bear in mind that we have not yet officially launch DesignsToLove. I just could not contain my excitement and had to post something on the blog :)

We will be launching it early next week but everyone is more than welcome to explore and post your designs on the site. Have Fun!

Sneak Peak

Hello all,

Here's a sneak peak at the layout for DesignsToLove.



Let me know your thoughts!

DesignsToLove Logo

Hello everybody!

Once again i would like to apologize for not updating the blog as frequently as i promised. Been swamped with work and working really hard on designstolove. It's really close to launching and i am really excited. We have a group of people currently testing it out to make sure its bug free when it launches. If you are interested in helping me test, feel free to contact jan@designstolove.com

Spend the whole day today redesigning the logo for designstolove. A few days back i posted a logo but soon realised that it was a little too girly and would probarly discourage any potential male crafters from joining :)

So went back to the drawing board and came up with



The logo on the top right was the initial logo. The top left was a quick draft and the third was a refinement and is what i will be going with. Please let me know your thoughts on this. Do post your thoughts on what you think.

Anyway i better get back to work and hopefully you will hear from me again next week

Cheers

Jan

Couple of little changes

Hello all!

My apologies to those who received an old CraftMemo newsletter today. I was doing so much things at once that i accidentally clicked on the email newsletter button which was set to send last weeks email. I only realised after a few minutes and quickly shut it down. It might have sent the old newsletter to the first 200 subscribers. Sorry...

OK a few changes today.

Stock Updating directly from Inventory Page
You can now update your stock directly from your inventory. It seems that craft people are fairly lazy and clicking on edit and updating the stock from there is a little too much work. I am one of those fairly lazy craft people :)

Firefox Support
CraftMemo now supports Firefox!! I personally use Internet Explorer most of the time because work requires me to but i do admire what Firefox does and i know there are many CraftMemo firefox supporters out there. Go Firefox go!

3 New Colours
I finally gave in, after receiving numerous request to add silver and gold to the colour list. *Waves white flag. Also there is now an undefine colour for those craft items with erm..undefinable colours

Image Cropping
All uploaded images are now automatically crop. Meaning no more ugly white spaces in your thumbnails. Wohoo!

Auto Login
CraftMemo now remembers you. You no longer have to keep entering your email and password everytime you want to access CraftMemo. To enable this feature, check the 'remember me' checkbox when you login. To make CraftMemo forget you, click logout. CraftMemo will only retain memory of you for up to 7 days.

Thats all for today. Have fun craftmemoing!

New to do list & Shopping Cart Sharing

Hello everybody,

Received heaps of very useful feedbacks and encouraging comments this week. Also CraftMemo was featured on a couple of well known websites which was pretty cool. Thank you to all who took the time to write in and spread the word!

This week i will be adding the following features to CraftMemo:

Button to automatically update stock from shopping list.
New colours (Colourless, Gold & Silver).

Also i am thinking of adding the option to share your shopping cart. What i have in mind is you can share your shopping list and the person who wants to view it would need a password to view it. Let me know if you have any ideas on how to best implement this. It will take a considerable amount of time and effort so i will probarly only implement it if there is a demand for it.

If you have any suggestions or ideas feel free to post them under the comments section and help keep me busy :)

My new project (DesignsToLove) is almost ready. If you are interested in testing it out, send me an email jan@designstolove.com

CraftMemo is currently managing 868 Accounts and 2707 Items!

Busy busy busy

Hello all,

I apologize for not updating the blog this week. Been really busy with work and BeadCharm. We've just received some new stock of sliders and findings with swarovski beads and i've been busy taking photos and putting them up on our store. They are all finally up and you can view them here :

http://www.beadcharm.com.au/cid/Findings-w-Swarovski.aspx
http://www.beadcharm.com.au/cid/Sliders-with-Swarovski.aspx

To keep you updated on CraftMemo, CraftMemo currently has 464 accounts and manages 1404 items. I am wondering if anybody have noticed the system slowing down? There was also some problems with paging which is now fixed. Thank you to the ladies who brought it to my attention.

I've also been kept really occupied developing my new project. I've finally come up with a name after almost an hour searching for a domain name that is nice and available. I've decided to call it DesignsToLove.com. Here is a sneak peak of the cute funky shy logo for the site :



The site will be a place where craft enthuist can easily setup their own personal online gallery without bothering about coding, configuring, designing, domain names, finding hosting etc. It will also be a place where people can share their designs, comment on other peoples design, find inspiration, talk, chat etc.

Hopefully i will have it ready by this week. It is currently 50% ready. If you are interested in helping / contributing to this project, you can contact me at support@craftmemo.com

Back to work tommorow :(

My Next Project

Hello everybody,

My CraftMemo project is pretty much done and thank you to everyone who participated & helped out. It was fun and i have learned much from it.

I am now planning my next project which would be an online craft gallery.

I envision a website where craft enthuisiats can post their designs and works for people to admire and comment. I think this would be useful for people who can't be bothered setting up a website.

At the moment i am still pondering on what i should call it. The obvious names i had in mind that hasn't been taken are onlinecraftgallery.com or onlinecraftdesigns.com. I need a name which is easy to remember, explains what it does, sounds good and contain words that people would search for in search engines.

Let me know what you think...

How safe is my data?

I've received a number of emails from users who have expressed concerns on the security of their data.

CraftMemo is currently hosted on a dedicated server with MaximumASP. They are a reputable hosting company used by many large corporations.

Here are some of their security features :

Disaster Protection

• Fully managed state-of-the-art fire suppression system
• Managing company is ISO-9001 certified
• Fully isolated 2,500 SQ FT fire suppression zones
• The latest fire suppression technology using FE-25

Physical Security

• Biometric and passcode required to pass through all security zones
• All access points are video recorded and archived for one year
• Security glass, reinforced door frames, walls and ceilings at all entry points

Click here to read more on their state of the art data center

Personally i would rather have my important data saved on the server than on my personal computer because a personal computer is less protected and more open to virus / hacks / spyware / hard disk crash etc.

On top of this, the database is backup twice a week and all uploaded images every week.

Shopping List a good idea?

Hello all,

I was wondering if a shopping list feature would be useful? What i am planning is having a button in the inventory listing call "add to shopping list" and a shopping list page that list items added to the shopping list.

I personally think this feature would be useful as you can select items you wish to purchase in the future. Initially i thought that the out of stock feature would be sufficient but i noticed that you don't neccessary only buy stock when you are low on stock :) . I hope i am making sense.

As space is fairly limited in the inventory listing, i am not sure what is the best way of adding a "add to shopping list" button and a quantity textfield. One way i could implement it is change the "Suppliers Product Page" to read "Link" and move it to the top View Edit Delete Link and add the "Add to shopping list" below. I am a little worried that new users will not understand what the button "Link" does. Also is there a better/shorter name for "add to shopping list".

Please let me know if you would personally use this feature if it was available and how do you think a feature like this could be best implemented.

Export Listing to .cvs

I've received numerious request from CraftMemo users who run craft businesses for an option to export their data to a format that they could import into their financial management software such as (MYOB, Excel, Quickbooks) to avoid having to enter data multiple times.

This was a good idea and i thought it would also be beneficial for regular users who wanted more flexibility when printing their inventory.

You can now export your inventory listing into a tab deliminated format (.cvs) file which is supported by a majority of financial/database applications.



I've limited the number of items you can export to 50 items per time as to not overload the server. If any of you are finding this insufficient, please let me know and i will see if i can increase the limit.

If you are using an application that does not support importing .cvs files please let me know and i will try to find an alternate format.

New Features Added

The following features were added today :

Date Acquired for Items
There is now a date acquired field where you can specify when you purchased an item. You can also sort your inventory by Date Acquired. All items added before this will have it's date acquired set to the date it was added.

Search Items by Notes
You can now search for items by item notes. You can match partial words to match item(s). For example if you have an item with Notes "this item goes well with Sea Shells". Searching for "Sea Shells" will match the item.

Fraction for stock & project component quantity
You can now enter fraction values for stock & project component quantity. For example if you use only half of an item for your project, you can enter it's quantity as 0.5 or if you only have half in stock, you can enter it as 0.5 stock.

Deduct from components button
You can now deduct all components used for a project from your inventory by clicking on a projects "Deduct Components from Inventory" link. This link can be found when your view a project.

Total Value of Items Listed in Inventory
The inventory now displays the total value of items listed when you list items. This would be useful if you wish to see how much you have spend based on a specific supplier or category.

That is all for today. Feel free to leave comments on what you think of the new features. Also if you run into any errors, please let me know as this features have not been tested thoroughly

More Great Suggestions.

Hi Jan

I think you've started something huge here! Just reading the blog it seems there's quite a range of needs out there for different levels of information gathering. For CraftMemo users who are mainly hobby beaders it is beautiful, but for anyone who is doing craft work as an income producing enterprise, there are extra needs.

The ability to import from Excel is great, but for people using financial management software such as MYOB or QuickBooks to manage a home based craft business it would be very useful to have the ability to export inventory as well. Otherwise maintaining an accurate inventory for tax purposes could mean entering all the info into two locations. Even a single line "stock movements for month" export could be useful

CraftMemo was mainly intended for hobby beaders/crafters and that will always be the main focus. I believe that for people who run a craft business, they would require something more complex (more buttons more fields) which would probarly not be required by a hobby beader and would just confused an average user. There are a lot of powerful commercial inventory & accounting software (MYOB etc) which would cater to craft businesses at a price but there isn't anything that is easy yet flexible and free :) for a craft hobbyist. That was one of the main reasons for CraftMemo. To hopefully fill that void. However if it is a function that could benefit both hobby beaders and craft business owners and would not make the system more complex, i would be more then happy to implement it.

An export button is a great idea. However i am not sure how easy it is to implement it. Does MYOB/Quickbooks come in a fix table format? Does it import from Excel? I've not used both softwares so i have no clue how they work. I can quite easily create a button to import to excel.

Another button which could be useful would be a "value of inventory on hand" total??

Just more thoughts which could be useful!

This is a good idea. I might add it at the bottom of the inventory listing so it will show the total value of what is listed making it versatile. You can list for example how much you've spend from a particular supplier or category etc.

Thanks again for a lovely product! I love it as is, and it would be a shame to have it as complex as some inventory management software with more buttons and fields than you can poke a stick at... maybe an extra tab for some of the advanced "business" features so that those who don't need them could ignore them?

I will try my best to keep CraftMemo an easy to use inventory system. If you see it getting too complex, please let me know as i can sometimes be too carried away with adding functionalities. There is currently no plans to make CraftMemo into a "business" program. If i ever did, it will be a totally seperate program.

And another query... in the projects window, you have "Estimated Cost" which calculates the value of the components used... is the "Project Cost" field intended for use as the cost of "components plus labour" or is it intended as a "Selling Price".... or should I create an inventory item of "hours of labour"?

Project Cost was intended to be the actual total cost of the project (inc any additional/hidden cost). However there is no rule on how you can use it. You suggestion above is actually quite good and i never thought of it. For example you could add an inventory item "Labour Cost per hour" and lets say you work on a project for 5 hours, you just add a quantity of 5 to the project.

Sorry... not intending to bombard you with emails, it's just so exciting to see a specially designed crafters' product like yours!

Have a great day

No need to apologize. I am always delighted to hear from passionate CraftMemo users like yourself and thank you for taking the time to write :)

To do list

Here are some suggestions that was recently posted :

I keep a running inventory for tax purposes and would like to have things entered in the order of when they were bought, beginning with Jan. 1 of 2006. Could a "date bought" or "date acquired" be added with ability to sort by date acquired? That would be really helpful.

This is a good suggestion and it would not be too hard to implement sorting by Date Acquired & having this information displayed when you click on an item. However i was wondering if it was important to display the date acquired in the inventory listing and print current listing as there is not much room to fit another column.

Does the program reduce components inventory when you create a project? I realise it's a "work in progress" :-) ...
Also wondering if you're planning at some stage to have an automatic import of orders placed on BeadCharm? Cross-marketing :-D
I love the program... it's much more fun than my old Excel worksheet that is currently sitting on an old PC that may be dead!!!
I also love the fact that it doesn't pop-up advertsing... great!!
Thanks again
xxxx

Very good suggestions. I would probarly add a button under project components list & when you click on it, it automatically deducts what is required from your stock. I am not sure what name would be good for the button. I'm thinking "Deduct Project Components from Inventory"?

Automatic import would be a good feature but i can't think of a good way to implement it with other online stores. I understand that entering data can sometimes be a very tedious task especially after a shopping spree. There doesn't seem to be any easy way of doing this unless i can get other online stores to co operate which is highly unlikely. The only way i can think of implementing this feature is by copying and pasting your shopping list (no shipping details, cc details etc) from your e invoice into a textbox and having it run through a filter where it extracts the data and fill them into the appropriate fields similiar to how importing from excel works at the moment. This would probarly take a while as all online stores have different invoice formats and i don't really shop much online. Is there any other easier way to implement this?

When you login to CraftMemo, you are directed to the my account page where it displays what you have on CraftMemo, Latest CraftMemo Updates and items that are low on stock (<5). What other information would you like to see when you login?

If you have any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.

Hidden Intentions?

Over the pass couple of days i've received quite a number of emails from people questioning my intentions for creating CraftMemo and offering it for free.

Hi Jan,

I have a simple question. You did all this to offer it for free. Where is the catch. Just curious. I know I would not design software to do something and then not charge for it. I think it is neat you have done this but I am curious.

Thanks
xxxxxx

I've also posted on a forum and received several post expressing their concerns.

The following was my reply :

Hello Everybody,

Firstly thank you all for trying CraftMemo and posting your thoughts and comments.

I understand that some of you are questioning my intentions as it is fairly uncommon to see someone giving away a free service with no obvious financial gain. To help you understand where I am coming from, I will start by introducing myself. My name is Jan. Over the past 3 years, my partner and I have worked very hard to establish a trusted and reputable online bead-store called BeadCharm, based in Australia. It would make little sense for me to tarnish our reputation by developing and offering a service that has no foreseeable monetary benefits with the intentions of disclosing other people's trade secrets to their competitors, or using that information for our own purposes.

The initial reason for creating CraftMemo was to satisfy our needs as a supplier of beads, that of having to organize a massive and diverse inventory of craft supplies from multiple suppliers. My partner was really impressed with the functionality and decided to share it with a few friends who then suggested that the service could be universally applicable and utilised by a larger audience. Based on customer feedback received from our initial testing we decided to go ahead and turn it into a fully functional and working website that was accessible to anyone who had a need.

I am not writing to convince you to use this service, just to assuage any fears that my intentions are malicious.

Inventory Sorting

I received the following suggestion from a user yesterday :

Hello Jan,

I've just sign up and started using CraftMemo and was wondering if there is a way to arrange how my items in the inventory are displayed.

xxxxxxx

Sorting was initially done by clicking on the header of a table. For example to sort your suppliers by name you would click on the Name header and if you want to switch it from ascending to descending and vice versa, you click it again.



Unfortunately there is no header for inventory and i did not include anyway to sort your inventory. I've now added a drop down list where you can select how you want your inventory to be sorted by. You can now sort by Item Name, Date Added, Colour, Price, Stock, Category, Supplier Name in either ascending or descending order.



Enjoy Sorting!