We have released a new Mac Dashboard widget this week with which you can see constantly refreshed information from boxedup’s lists and activity feeds. We are using ours at the moment to follow our “Friends Activity” which shows us anything added or moved from any of our friends accounts – perfect at this time of year! If you don’t have a Mac you can use the available feeds in any RSS reader – more on that here.

To install, just download the widget (click the image below) and it will automatically add to your dashboard (if it doesn’t install automatically save the file to your computer then click the downloaded file)

To use the widget follow these steps

1. Click the ‘i’ button on the bottom right to get to the back panel
2. Add the username of the user you want to follow (this is the name at the end of their URL, without any spaces)
3. Choose which list or activity feed you want to display with the drop down
4. If you want to see another list the user has created (not on the drop down), select “Other List” on the drop down and add the list name in the box below (this is the name at the end of the list URL, without any spaces)
5. Click “Done” and you will return to the front panel which will show your automatically updating feed

We hope you enjoy using our site after the latest round of developments, we’d like to thank Aimee Daniells, who has been helping develop all the great new features we have added in recent months – many thanks!

We hope you’ve been using all the new features on the site, we have been busy rearranging our lists as it’s now so easy to do! Our latest updates bring you some really useful tools, so here goes!

RSS Feeds

You can now get RSS feed for every public list and also activity streams.

• Watch your friends lists and see updates of what they add
• Watch your network activity to see updates of everything all your friends add
• Watch your own lists so you can access them easily

This means you can get constantly refreshed updates anywhere there is an RSS reader – on your iPhone, on your Google homepage, on your Mac dashboard!

If you are new to RSS feeds they are really simple – just a URL that you add into an RSS reader.  To get the RSS feed URL just click the RSS icon next to each list / activity stream or the RSS icon in your browser address window – simple! Your RSS feeds willl keep updating frequently to make sure you can see any recent changes from boxedup.

RSS readers can be found for free or very cheaply all over the web, or you can use our Mac Dashboard Widget to which will allow you to access all your RSS feeds easily.

List Tags

Did you know that you can add tags to each of your products so that you, or anyone visiting your list can filter the list with those tags?

• Just want to see everything tagged with DVD’s or Music?
• Just want to see Clothes or Shoes?

To add tags you can edit each product and add as many tags as you want. Once you’ve added some tags, they appear on the right hand side, and just click one to add the filter! (click remove to go back to normal view)

Homepage

Lastly we’ve updated the homepage  so you can see the last few posts from our blog, which will keep you up to date with any changes we make – in fact you might be reading this now on our homepage. Happy Shopping!

We are very happy to have launched some more improvements to your lists, helping you organise them even more easily.

Drag + Drop reordering

• If you look at your lists now, you can change the order really easily by just grabbing each item (there is a button in the bottom right of each list item) and dragging it up and down to reorder.

• If you can’t drag your list items – please make sure you have javascript turned on in your browser.

View more items per page

• At the top of your list are new buttons allowing you to show 10, 20 or 50 items per page.

• You can use this with the reordering function above to reorder your whole list and make sure the things you want the most are right at the top.

We’ve been updating the site this past week and wanted to let you know about the changes. We’ve got more updates planned this week, helping you use your lists more easily, so we will let you know as soon as they have gone live.

Bookmark

• We’ve improved the bookmark so it is better at getting your product data from websites. It also grabs multiple images so you can choose the best one for your product.
• Click on the image itself, or on the arrows underneath to select your image.

• There are so many websites out there that there will always be some that are really difficult to extract, but we’ve seen a big improvement since last week.

I Want / I Have buttons

• Clicking any of the ‘I Want’ or  ‘I Have’ buttons will add the item to your Want or Have list, but you will stay on your current page on boxedup.
• The link will update with a tick to show you it has been added.

List Items

We’ve also improved some list functions to help you use your lists more easily,

• Delete            - Your item is removed more quickly without reloading the page.
• Move Item    - When you move an item, you stay on the same page and the page doesn’t reload, making it quicker to move things around.
• Make #1        - Moves your item to the top of your list, but doesn’t reload the page.

We have also cleaned up a couple of the other functions at the top so they are laid out better. Why not try moving some items around to try out these new functions!

We will be improving your lists more over the next few days – happy shopping!

We hope you like the new boxedup.com site which is now fully live. We have redesigned both the front and back end of the site which means we will be able to roll out improvements on a more regular basis.

Please update your bookmarks

• You can log into the site with your existing details
• you will need to delete the old bookmark in your browser and add the new one so you can add products!
• Donwload new bookmark here

The bookmark is how you add products to your lists. You will need to add the new bookmark to your browser so you can add products to your lists. Go here to do that now.

Problems with your account?

If you can’t access your account please contact us on support@boxedup.com. The data on the new site was migrated a couple of weeks ago and as a result new items added to the old site rather than new may not be in your account.

The site relaunch will go live tomorrow  (Thursday 30^th June). We will add a blog post here introducing the main changes on the site to help you get started.

If you can’t access your account please contact us on support@boxedup.com. The data on the new site was migrated a couple of weeks ago and as a result new items added to the old site rather than new may not be in your account.

The new beta boxedup site is now available for everyone to use. For the next two weeks the existing and beta sites will run in tandem. In that time only data added to the beta site will be kept but you are free to use either. Once this period is over we will fully switch to the beta site.

Using the new boxedup beta site

• sign into the new site using your current logins at beta.boxedup.com
• get the new Add to boxedup bookmark – this is to replace all old bookmarklets and browser buttons. These can now be removed from your browser.

The beta site is by it’s nature a work in progress so we will be adding to it in the coming weeks and months. We would of course love to hear your feedback so please leave a comment below, via Facebook or Twitter.

Boxedup – come shopping.

With the boxedup beta being launched next week you will have access to the brand spanking new site. Check out some little tasters of what you can expect below to wet you appetite.

Improved Product Price Comparison

As part of the redevelopment we have managed to match a lot more user added products so you can see where else you can buy products from. As the beta site gets used more we’ll have access to a much better pool of data so by adding products you will be helping other users – come shopping with boxedup!

Improved Site Search

One of the main areas of the complete site overhaul was to make products, users and stores more accessible. The improved search functionality is available on every page and means you are never more than a click away from finding what you need.

So there’s a little taster of what you can expect from the new site. We’re sorry for any inconvenience the database lock may cause but we’re confident that you are going to love the new beta site when you get your hands on it next week.

Well it’s taken a bit longer than anticipated, but as they say ‘good things come to those who wait’. We will be launching our new site very soon, with the beta site being rolled out over the next few weeks.

Please Note – Current Site Usage

We have to move (literally) millions of products, lists and users to the new system and sadly we will need to ‘lock’ the databases during this migration.

What this means is that anything you add to your lists from today will not appear on the new site. Next week we will release the beta site to you all, and you can start to use the new site to update your lists! (the old site will still be available for a short time just in case).

Once you get access to the site next week the first thing you will notice is the totally new design. This provides a nice new interface for the really clever stuff which come from a complete rebuild from the ground up. This means we can update the site more often and more easily so over the coming months there are a number of improvements planned.

Our objective stays the same though – we want to give you the best service for keeping track of the things that you want to get, whether you’ve found those things on boxedup or on any store on the web. Now that we’ve got past a lot of the hard work getting the new site prepared, we have more time to keep in touch, so expect to see more of us here on our blog and on twitter too.

We’ll publish blog posts with hints a tips on using the new site, but we hope you will all find it easy to use. Some new features you’ll notice are the improved searching functions, price comparisons and of course (after being the top voted request on our feedback!) a print list function

We really do want to hear from you, whether it’s the good, the bad, or the ugly! If you like good, old fashioned, email then get in touch using support at boxedup.com or through the boxedup twitter account http://www.twitter.com/boxedup, so if you’re a twitter enthusiast then give us a follow to keep up-to-date with developments, or just @ us if you want to let us know anything.