Features! Features Everywhere!

Hey, I didn’t forget you were here. And after two conventions and a personal move, I’m back and coding like crazy.

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been quietly adding new features to the site over the past couple of weeks, like…

RSS Feeds

You asked, we listened.

Folks have been asking for ways to subscribe for ages, so we went ahead and created feeds for just about everything. Now you can get the latest projects in your favorite categories and get in on those discounted early backer levels, see the items ending soonest so you don’t miss out, or just see what the latest KickingItForward projects are out there.

Now you can nab the latest feed directly from the top of any project page, specialty category, or just jump to the subscription page and pick your poison.

Hotlist Updates

With more suggestions from you fine folks, and some features I’ve been wanting to implement, a new streamlined Hot List has emerged – now with 274% more images! Ok, I made up that last bit, but we did add project images for you along side the rank so you get that nice visual pairing when tracking your project.

Also, we’ve re-arranged some of the data and added both funding percentage and goal information so you can see it at a glance without having to go all the way to the project page.

We’ve thought about RSS feeds for the hotlist, but we’re not sure if folks would find that useful with as fluid as the hotlist can be. Let me know what you think.

Advanced Search Beta

A couple months ago I wanted to find some playing card projects in a specific category and realized I couldn’t easily accomplish this and realized I needed a more robust search tool. However, in lieu of a big menacing “advanced search” form, I wanted to go more the google/gmail route and just add in search operators to perform more advanced searches.

So, I’ve been playing with various advanced search and sort tags in the search tool for awhile now, and decided I should share them with you. So, I’ve taken out the more experimental ones and released the first round of beta tags with you to play with.

I’ll be adding more as we go along hopefully soon, but I’m trying to get a big set of features wrapped up and released by the end of the month before embarking on beefing up the search tool.

Status Tags

Status searches use the prefix “is:” with the status directly after the colon, like is:closed or is:active.

For example, to find card projects that are closed, try…  card is:closed  or to find all successfully funded and closed arduino projects, try…  arduino is:closed is:successful

The list of available status tags currently are: closed, active, successful (includes active and funded), canceled (canceled by project owner), suspended (canceled by Kickstarter), and deleted

Category Searches

Category searches are easy too and just use the prefix “in:” with the category directly behind the colon and in quotes if it contains spaces.

For example, to find card projects in the Tabletop Games category, try…  card in:”tabletop games”  or to find all graphic novels in the comics category, try…  graphic novel in:comics

With Their Powers Combined

All these are combinable, so if you wanted successful and closed graphic novels in the comic category, try… graphic novel in:comics is:successful is:closed

About Us Page

Last, but not least, I’ve updated the “About Us” page after multiple suggestions about putting more information out there about who on earth this person is who stays up late working on this crazy Kicktraq thing. Also, I’ve popped in some of the most recent quotes from folks who’ve been nice enough to share their kind words about how Kicktraq has helped them. I might break this part out later, but right now it’s a good enough place.

Uh, contests, or something?