Its been a long time since the last posting.  When I saw the "new" tag edit feature of the december post I knew there had been some changes.  Lots of new purses are coming.  Right now I can't keep up with the local demand and the tax season.  My husband has been hard at work on Zetsy.  It doesn't look like the program first posted here.  Hopefully you'll find this as an improvement.  The latest tag form looks like the following

A new web site is now up and running (it has been since early January).  Still not everything has been put on at www.zimpro.co, but we're trying!
All of this needs to be uploaded to the web site.  So many things to do and so little time.

We just release a new version of Zetsy  tonight.  No new features on this one, but quite a few changes in trying to improve the reliability it.  Lots of behind the scene changes in preventing Etsy rejecting tag changes when things are not just quite right.  The changes are the following.
1. Fixed issue with shop info download caused by an incorrect ID column.   If you had problems with this before you won't now.
2. Added sorting by last listing modification to the shop listing output; previously the listings were random and things were hard to find.
3. Added renew listing button to shop listings form.   This is part of some new advanced features we're working on.
4. Adjusted shop listing form to get better fits on the screen, still some issues, but it is better
5. Added urls for all images to be downloaded routinely.  This has more to do with multiple downloads.
6. Added the ability to download all full images of an item from the shop listings. (Important for a new feature down the line)
7. Now checks to see if a changed tag is truly unique, this prevents Etsy rejections when the change created duplicate tags in an items listings
8. Added a check to see if at least one tag change was added. This Prevents Criteria loss if it was blank and a blank view
9. Now errors are prevented if multiple tag deletions of a single listing occurrx.
10. Modified the tag change form and added additional logic to guide user through the steps needed.
11. Discovered issues with quotes and single quotes in the listing description upload. When uploading descriptions, Etsy html quotes are stripped which prevents the errors occurring when updating

Updated Zetsy Coming Soon : With Tag Update!

There has not been much time for the blog.  We;'ve been really busy with making and getting all the Christmas items ready for shipping plus our own holiday decorations.   It didn't help that the entire family had a nasty stomach flu virus.  My husband has managed to continue to write some code and updated the program to the latest Etsy library from tools4Etsy.  This library along with new things at Etsy will allow things like updating tags.   Speaking of tags, the next release of Zetsy will allow one to quickly and easily update your shop's tags.   We're hoping to ge this out this Sunday - but we will see.  Hubby is still testing the functions and trying to make it as intuitive as possible.  Since our program also allows a backup of the tags, the old tags will also still be around (assuming you saved them of course!).    The one downside to the update is that it breaks the previous versions database.  The program is still young enough these things unfortunately happen.   Without going inot the details the structure changes are necessary for all of these improvements.  There are several other improvements as well which we touch upon later.

Zetsy Plans and the next release

The current initial beta of Zetsy has a non-operational transaction tab.   Etsy decided to launch the application area sooner than we expected and before we had the transaction area ready for release.  The next version of Zetsy will  have this available.   We're hoping for the end of the weekend, but sometimes life has a way of interfering with these plans.  The real goal down the line for Zetsy  is to be able to change multiple listings at once and upload them back to your Etsy shop.   The groundwork for this has been laid in the current program and we want to get at least some parts of this operational as soon as possible.  We're interested in hearing from the community if you find this program useful and if not, what could we do to make it useful.   Being an Etsy shop owner we know of the limitations and hope to improve upon them.    

ZETSY is NOW Available for Download

Lots of activity, just not much on this blog! I have been busy creating all kinds of Christmas items which I hope to share soon. On the programming side my husband just uploaded the links to Zetsy, our windows application program which allows the seller to download product information, including images, to a local file. One of us will be going through the various features of the program. The program is beta so we welcome any comments and suggestions. We don't like to hear about bugs, but we need to know about them too. At this time just leave comments here until we get something more formally set-up. The eventual goal of the program is also to allow uploading of changed items, including images. My husband is working on documentation as well. Unfortunately I've had him busy mailing out packages here recently! A big thanks to Tools4Etsy which has made available the .NET engine behind this program.
The first thing one should do when loading Zetsy is to look at the program options. Currently one can save 4 different shop name defaults. These defaults will appear on the opening page drop-down box. The location of the image files are also listed. Generally the default location should be used, but other locations are possible.
The main feature of Zetsy is the ability to download all the product information from a shop, including expired and inactive listings. To get at inactive and expired listings one has to give the Zetsy application permission to obtain these. This is accomplished by using the Oauth process which also can be found in the Program Options menu. We'll go through that in a posting within the next week.

Really LARGE Bag

I tried my hand at a very large bag, the largest I've ever made.   It has lots of pockets and storage.   As with all of my new design I tinker.  I'm still tinkering with this one - it may be a while before this one gets to Etsy.  I'm still in the R&D stage of this purse.   The Etsy application is still coming along, but not a lot was accomplished on this in the last few days.   My husband had to many other chores to do around the house.
We should have more about it in the next few days.  Stay Tuned - I think it will be worth it.

Ladybugs (Again)

In case you haven't noticed I have a "thing" about Ladybugs.  I've included a couple of pics of my newest creation.  I had a request for a "big bag" and I've been working most of the night in trying to create one.  We will see how this turns out!   All I can say is it will be the biggest bag I've ever made.   I get excited about making new stuff.

My husband has been working on the Zetsy program and continues to make progress.  Some new insights came tday about Oauth.   If you don't what that is or what it means to you check out the Etsy site today as it will tell you what this means for you.

New Tree Skirts and Screen Shots of Zetsy

Two post in 48 hours. That equals the entire summer output.

The very crude opening screen is shown to the left. Not very pretty is it? It is functional however. At the moment one can pull down all of a public shops items including the pictures associated with the item. I have a screen shot example of that output. It is essentially a grid of information. My husband is now working on a method of "saving" heart information and tracking that over time. Another possibility is to be able to upload changes across a description or tag. I don't know how many times I've had to manually change tags. It is possible this could work with this program. This program is a bit different approach from most of the applications which are out there which are web based. There are pro's and con's for this type of approach. Still a whole lot of work to go before this could be released. In the meantime it might up help us get organized ??!!






Enough of the boring programming work of my husbands.  I spent way too much time at the fabric stores today.  I have been working on all kinds of new stuff. My latest is working on Christmas tree skirts. I have some examples posted here. Despite the very warm temps it is time for me to try to get a jump on Christmas items. Not sure when I will get these up on Etsy