Every year there is a lot of talk about trading T-Shirts, Buttons, and other team merchandise, but often times a team you want to trade with isn’t at a regional you attend or it’s to hard to set up a trade with a team you want to trade with. Currently the only way to trade is at competitions or asking around on the community forums. There is no simplified way to trade merchandise or view teams who are willing to trade. I began to ask my self “why is there no easier way to do this?”. Well i want to change this. Right now this is just an idea i have in my head and i was wondering what people think. I want to create a website that allows users in the community to post their teams merchandise in a way much like ebay or an online store except there’s no prices. Instead people could look on the website and if they find something they want to trade for they could simply “propose a trade” to the poster with what they have to trade and the poster can either accept the trade or decline it. Now I’m not trying to take away trading at comps and such i just want to make it easier for people to get in contact to make trades. Like i said before this is just a very basic idea with no details or anything, i just want to see what people think about this and having an easier way to trade with other teams.
The idea is sort of like Steam trading. Each person has an inventory of certain items (shirts, buttons, etc) and can put a trade offer up to other people.
I am interested in working on this.
Yah that’s kind of what i was thinking maybe
There were shirt trading Google Spreadsheets for Dallas and Lone Star this year which made agreeing to trades a lot easier. I really like the Idea of a refined website for doing this on a larger scale.
I would love to actually create something like this but i would need a lot of help with designing functions and logistics of a website like this. Not to mention how i would even create it because i know nothing really on creating websites. I mean I’ve done a little website design but on on like square space where its all layouts and no real programming.
Well you could also use the site to facilitate trading at competitions. For each trade you could have three options, something along the lines of:
- Trade at Competition
- Trade by Mail
- Trade Otherwise
It sounds like a cool idea, and I would definitely be willing to offer my experience in web design and building.
Those are some good ideas! i’m just wondering, what do you use to create websites?
I’m really looking to move this idea forward and begin to the phases of planning and design, figuring out how this would actually work and then move into actually building it. That being said I’m looking for some people who are serious and would be willing to help out with a project like this. PM me if you’re interested in helping with either design/ planning or more of the technical aspect of the project, or willing to help out in some other ways.
Thanks
As in what software I work in, or do you mean what frameworks I use?
I would be interested in helping out with this project wherever is needed
Le-craigslist of FRC t-shirts.
I love this idea and wish it had been thought of sooner! I know some HTML and CSS. Next year I start learning JavaScript so I could try helping but with my insane schedule, I don’t know how much help I’d be.
If people want to help out PM me your Skype account and il add you to the group. Currently working on figuring out how this whole thing will work and getting the idea off the ground. Once we figure out how it will work we’ll get right into building it.
I would recommend having the site open source (Github works great) and honestly I would personally avoid handling any user-auth let something like OAuth handle that.
I love the idea of steam trading like system for shirts it may be difficult to identify every shirt or allow people to make new “items”
If you need any help ill throw some of my nonexistent free time at it when I can.