Welcome to the Retail Therapy website! We're working on the code base, but we will start beta testing this summer.

I know, it's been a long time since the last update, and I've done shockingly little since the move -- the move was hairier than it may appear by the previous message (I didn't get everything straightened out until last week!) and I had to do some forum reconfiguration before I could go on to working on the mods. The next three weeks are crazy for me -- dead week is next week, then I have finals, and then I'm moving 2,000 miles the day after my last final. Flying, really. Progress will be slow, but the forum portion of things SHOULD be up before I move.

Fortunately, then it will be summer, and instead of class 15 hours a week and class-related things 45 (extra) hours a week, and working, I'm merely working 50 hours a week, and all of my evenings and weekends are free to work on this again.


If you are reading this, you're looking at what's on the new server. Hooray!

When Retail Therapy is completed, it will have many features, such as a commerce area, reviews, and more. While we are in the beta testing phase, some of these features may not be fully operational or fully integrated. But, this rambling is the big-picture view of what I want to do. My work may never be done (but that's ok - striving for a better, more cohesive site is not a bad thing!)


All reviews will link to relevant topics (usually a topic for the company), and as I mentioned above, it'll have a link to the swaps area. One of the nifty featuers of the review software is that you can have multiple categories for any given item, to make it easier to find what you want. For instance: Chanel's Blue Satin nail polish could be found under cosmetics, nail polish, nail polish (blue), or Chanel. There may also be the ability review retailers or e-tailers (the kind that sell things they don't make, such as Soap Box or Magical Omaha) in addition to manufacturers, to let you see general things about them, such as turn-around time or customer service.

Additionally, there will be a place for video/audio reviews. The video/audio reviews will have their own section to browse, but will also be linked to and/or embedded on the review page as well. You may be able to link to off-site video reviews, such as at youtube, but there was nothing definitive. (And, of course, with the video capability, there could be other kinds of videos, like video blogs or video tutorials or whatever.)


There will be an integrated swapping area, that lets you list items individually, so you can better track who you sold/swapped with and what for, that also happens to link to the reviews and perhaps lets you limit who can make offers (by feedback, by the amount of time since they joined/started swapping, or by both).

As part of of the swapping area, there will be links to product reviews, if not have the most recent product reviews embedded as "Additional information". There will be "wish lists" that are shared with other users, to indicate what you're wanting to swap for (or potentially purchase!). One of the things that I want to do is for swaps to highlight what you've already listed against the wish list for someone you want to swap with. The swap management area will let you readily let people know if you want to accept their offer or decline it, and when you accept one, it automatically notifies everyone else that hasn't been declined that you've accepted something. There will be status buttons for shipping, arrival, feedback as the swap progresses.


There will be galleries to show what you love, what you're wearing (clothes or makeup), the state of things you're swapping, images you want to share with the community, and so forth.

One of my long-term goals is to get a personal portal up that lets you pick your favorite forums/topics & lists the 10 most recent topics, add "favorite items", add RSS feeds, news from me, and so forth.