Welcome to the Official Beta Thread for:
What is Forza Tunes?
The overall idea for ForzaTunes.com was inspired by the "
TUNERS DATABASE" post which was pinned to the top of these forums. The gist of the project is to provide a catalog which users can filter and search for cars by any number of arbitrary criteria. Search Criteria Examples/Features will include:
- Make
- Model
- Year
- Class
- Track
- Tune Type (Pure Grip, Balanced, Speed, Drift, Drag)
- Garage
- Release Date - Thanks redneonrt4d00r1!
- Tune participants (example: painter, authorized seller, tuner) - Thanks kylero22!
- Limited Edition statistics (Quantity, Off-Market Date) - Thanks Darque!
- Token Car (AH token sold in place of "real" car)
- Full, sortable list of all Garage Rosters
Once a user has located a car that meets their criteria, the application would provide a "writeup" with images, and a link back to a sales/catalog thread on FM2.net where they can order and purchase the car the same way they do now. Please note that I am NOT proposing storing the entire tune at this time. Much like the excel file referenced in the "TUNERS DATABASE" thread,
this will only provide an easy, centralized, highly searchable
repository of tunes available on FM2.net.
Where I need help is deciding exactly what criteria should be tracked and made available for searching purposes. I want the application to be light and efficient. If it won't help people find the tune they're looking for, I'm probably not going to include it.
This is a project to support you guys. It is important for me to know what you want to see.
With that said, can you guys throw out some parameters you'd like to see included?
I'm a Tuning Garage Head. Why should I care about this project?
The
Tuning Shop Catalogs subforum was a great idea, but it requires a lot of work to maintain a useful catalog and properly advertise it with the current setup.
Obviously the purpose of maintaining a catalog is to provide potential customers with an outlet to locate, review and order cars. There are a few aspects to a proper catalog. Some are addressed quite nicely by the forums, some are not.
Right now if someone wants a tune for say, an s13, they have to either
rifle through ALL of the tuning shop catalog threads or make a post and
hope that someone responds. This is what I like to call a "sub-optimal user experience". Regardless of whether the user is searching or if they make a post, they are likely to miss at least one quality tune available for the car they are looking for. This means they didn't get what they want, and you missed out on a potential sale and all potential sales that could have been generated by word-of-mouth via that potential buyer.
Also, right now there is no REALLY good way to manage offerings on a "per-shop" basis. We can do pretty well by having an "official" shop catalog and some "official" forum sig's so people know who's who when it comes to the various garages. However, there is no solid way to make a single post and allow any authorized shop members to update the "main" catalog. To date, shops are getting around this by designating a "sales manager" and having them maintain the whole shebang. Again, "sub-optimal". I can provide shop-level offerings that will allow anyone designated by the "Garage Manager" to upload and manage tunes for the entire shop. This facilitates a rapid time-to-market and customer response time.
I'm a Tuning Garage Customer. Why should I care about this project?
Find it fast. Get it now. Like it? Find more by the same garage/tuner/painter/test driver/class/type/model.
Any questions?
Lots of people have tried this before and failed in a spectacular blaze of glory. What makes you so great that you think you can pull this off?
Well, the short version is: "I do this for a living."
My primary occupation revolves around spec'ing, designing, implementing and maintaining high availability, high traffic, data-aware ASP.NET applications. This is exactly the type of task which I solve on a day-to-day basis in order to make my mortgage payment.
That said, I'm not very good at making things look "pretty". So don't expect miracles on the graphic design end of things. DO expect very deep search abilities within a comprehensive, secure and flexibile application.
Ok, you have my attention. I would like to get involved. What should I do next?
Have your garage manager (if you're the manager, that would be you, smarty) sign up for an account on ForzaTunes.com. PM or email me the name you chose and the name of your garage. I will setup a garage for you and give you full control over the roster, then I'll PM/email you with instructions on how to set everything up.
Eventually you will also be able to add your own tunes, though that's currently under development.
If you're willing to do so and you have space, I would greatly appreciate it if you can include the following logo in your sig:
Current Status of the Project:
UPDATE #1: I'm fairly pleased with the overall response and as such I've sketched
out and hydrated a preliminary backend. I'll be picking away at
putting a few samples together and a no-frills search interface in my
free time.
Are there any garages that would be willing to let me
use their information for alpha/beta testing? I need a garage that can
provide me with a full roster, a good sampling of detailed tunes
including preferred tracks, top track times, images, writeups, etc. I
will also need some beta testers on the front end once I have populated
the database with some sample tunes.
Please PM me if you/your garage is interested in assisting with this initial phase of the project.
I do have one "major" garage on board, I'm looking for one or two more.
UPDATE #2:I am currently checking in with T10 community management to ensure I'm not stepping on any toes here.
It would suck to go through all this development and find out the whole thing was a no-no. ![Embarrassed [:$]](/emoticons/emotion-10.gif)
I'm going to proceed with the design and initial dev work
regardless, but I'll be holding off on releasing to production until I
have some kind of sign-off from them.
UPDATE #3:
SEND ME YOUR GARAGE ROSTERS!!!11!!1!1ELEVEN!11!!!
Due to the rampant duping/glitching/ripoffs that have been taking place over the last week, I think we need a central searchable/filterable garage roster sooner than later. Please send me your garage rosters in any format you choose, just so long as they're easily understandable. I will use that information to create a quick searchable list of members so people know who IN GENERAL is allowed to sell for a given garage.
*** I'll need to know the forum name, XBL tag and role within the garage for each person. ***
UPDATE #4:
I have the green light from T10 to explore this project and see how it goes.
The rosters are coming along quite nicely with over 100 individuals now in the database. I will be releasing just the roster page for public use fairly quickly. I'm struggling a little bit to come up with a color scheme and overall theme, but once I do releases should happen relatively quickly.
UPDATE #5:
I have put together a template shell to start working within. I
have a fully functional roster and car list search interface put
together, though I'm still making a few tweaks to make them more useful.
Assuming I get my tax rebate thingy tomorrow, expect to see a preliminary live beta site early this week!
UPDATE #6:
Beta Released!
Here is the BETA of the project:
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beta betA beTA bETA BETA http://www.forzatunes.com BETA BETa BEta Beta beta
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UPDATE #7:
Still in Beta....
I have created users! You can now sign up for a user account with forzatunes.com. As of this moment, a user account doesn't do a whole great deal for you. As we go along, it will allow you to manage garage rosters, profiles and tunes if you are authorized to do so.
I am currently beta testing a garage roster management tool. Once my beta testers sign off on that, it will allow all garage heads to manage their own rosters without my involvement. After that comes tunes...
UPDATE #8:I have been completely throttled with (paying) side projects and professional development obligations. As such, I have not been able to work on the ForzaTunes project in some time. I will continue to work on the project, but in the mean time I'm making all of my normalized db assets to anyone who is interested in running with it.
If that's you, let me know.
Founder of (beta):
ForzaTunes Beta Discussion ThreadOfficial Seller for Speed Tuning
GT: SurlyOldManMN