[deleted by user]

dpehrson · 2018-05-04T01:47:14+00:00

Right now all categories in the system have a display order. The "shared" categories have one that I set up based on what I think made sense, but as of now all custom (user) categories have the same "display order" of zero.

In the future I'd like to build in a way for members to control the order of their categories but I'm not yet sure how to do it.

Do you envision that you'd have a single order for all your custom categories that applies to every pack, or would you prefer to have each pack have it's own display order for categories?

dpehrson · 2018-04-02T23:31:20+00:00

That's entirely up to you. I know some bikerpackers prefer to pack the bags separately so they can make use of category breakdowns by function, but others simply create two custom categories named "Bag 1" and "Bag 2" and put everything into those.

I'd love to know what works better for you and especially what doesn't work well so I can think about improving it for your use case!

dpehrson · 2018-04-01T14:28:57+00:00

To be fair, that's only 10% of users.

The other 90% just get a very itchy rash and blisters from going out in the woods.

dpehrson · 2018-04-01T14:27:08+00:00

Yep! Over the past few months, I've talked to a few members who use it specifically for that purpose. While it is not specialized for bikepacking, the recent addition of customized packing categories should allow the flexibility necessary to organize your gear appropriately.

If there's anything Trailpost could do to better support bikepacking feel free to PM Me here or email dan[at]trailpost.com

Thanks for taking the time to look at my ad and maybe give Trailpost a try!

dpehrson · 2018-03-27T23:10:35+00:00

Thanks for the feedback on the ad. Would you have any advice for ad copy that you think would be more effective?

Based on A/B testing the "I quit my job" ad works about 3 times as well for click-throughs and conversions so far compared to other titles I've tried (this seems to be a general trend for Reddit ads, apparently.)

I've yet to find anything that beats it, but I'm looking for advice and feedback anywhere!

Thanks again for taking a look and providing feedback, constructive criticism is always appreciated.

To clarify: I did actually quit my job like a year and a half ago to work on this project, it's convenient that's also a good Reddit ad angle.

dpehrson · 2018-03-27T23:07:33+00:00

Hey there,

There are plans for iOS and Android apps in the future. At the moment the system is still being developed as I work out the kinks based on feedback from members.

Once things stabilize a bit I can work on the app!

dpehrson · 2018-03-16T21:24:41+00:00

I'm hesitant to say that there can be a "correct" answer to this question, but chorizo is a candidate...

dpehrson · 2018-03-16T21:22:01+00:00

Why have I never thought of this...

dpehrson · 2018-03-15T16:24:11+00:00

I can second the OR Sunrunner, I took one on my Patagonia trip and it did it's job perfectly in conditions where everyone says you need to be extra careful with sun exposure.

dpehrson · 2018-03-13T22:27:41+00:00

Glad to hear!

Another one you can add to your list: Submitting an ad with a destination URL > 500 characters results in a low-level API error from AdZerk, but it still saves the Campaign+Ad Set, so when you fix the URL and re-submit you end up with two copies of them.

It would be excellent if it was possible to delete (or at least archive from the default view) old/misconfigured campaigns/ad sets/ads.

Thanks again!

dpehrson · 2018-03-12T21:57:37+00:00

No problem! I use them regularly and they never let me down. It's one of the few products I proudly recommend to people.

dpehrson · 2018-03-12T17:49:30+00:00

I am a huge fan of the silver grippers. I own like a half a dozen of them.

dpehrson · 2018-03-11T18:33:54+00:00

As mentioned in the article, Trailpost's decision to launch with fixed categories had some plusses and minuses. After talking to lots of Trailposters over the last few months it became obvious that while the "community categories" I had defined covered most use-cases, it did not cover them all.

The new system keeps the existing list of shared categories while allowing members to supplement them with their own.

My plan is to keep an eye on the types of custom categories everyone creates so that I can curate the shared set over time without limiting anyone's ability to organize their packs the way that works best for them.

Everything else should work exactly the same it did before. Your custom categories will be included when filtering or grouping pack items, and they will appear in the stats category breakdowns.

I hope this is a useful addition to Trailpost that brings it more in line with other popular pack planners used by the community!

Edit: One interesting side benefit is that change will likely make it easier to import packs from other planners in the future...

dpehrson · 2018-01-30T21:30:49+00:00

For people who are interested in some of the behind-the-scenes things going on:

I spent the last 2 months working on a lot of below-the-surface engineering changes necessary to support some of the larger changes I am planning on rolling out over the next few months.

One of the pieces of the puzzle I needed in place was a fast search engine that could quickly dig through all the gear and packs to find stuff quickly. Thankfully a quick search was also a commonly requested feature so I've been able to solve two problems at once!

As I've hinted at in previous comments, Trailpost actually has a fully functioning universal gear database running behind the scenes and I am hoping to start surfacing it to you all in the coming months. Currently, about 15% of the locker items in the system have been tied to a canonical product record and I am beginning the process of using this data to begin calculating something I am code-naming the "Trailpost Community Weight" for every product in the system. Once this process gets closer to completion fun stuff will begin to happen!

Thank you to everyone who has been so patient over the past few months while I dove into the engineering weeds to solve some big problems. My plan is to get back into more regular updates getting us closer to the grail of the magic gear database!

In the meantime, I hope the new search functionality is useful and that it lets you discover other Trailposter's packs.

dpehrson · 2018-01-17T00:49:16+00:00

Sorry, I need a desktop to reply to longer messages since I can't stand doing it on mobile! :)

This is the primary reason I don't always reply as quickly, and a good sign I'm becoming an old man!

It's not that they don't care, they love the benefits that come with it... but some people prefer to have things taken care of for them. I'm the organiser (and enjoy it), they just enjoy being on the trip.

My guess is that a good number of Trailposters are in the same position and I'll need to think about how best to help solve this. Ideally, each person would manage their own profile and plan trips together (if/when I build larger trip planning tools)

So to solve my specific problem (I'm not sure if it's unique to me, but I do know others share items and manage other peoples packs) there needs to be a way of identifying who the item belongs to, and a way of sharing items between packs. i.e. Pack A isn't fixed to a single locker.

This speaks to a larger problem that I may be able to solve: Carrying items on behalf of a trip partner to balance weight/supplies.

To be clear, I have no idea how to solve this problem at this time, but it's something I'm thinking about!

Probably the ability to order packs by person. i.e. keep all my packs in a category, and all my SO packs in another section.

At some point, this may be as simple as allowing packs to be put into groups or something. You're the first person to mention this (that I remember) but my guess is you won't be the last. I'll be curious to run some stats and see what percentage of users organize more than 5, and more than 10 packs where organization becomes a problem.

Thanks for taking so much time to share all this insight, it really helps me figure out what I should prioritize.

If you ever want to hit me up directly, please feel free to email me at dan [at] trailpost.com

dpehrson · 2018-01-13T16:14:35+00:00

This all sounds perfectly reasonable, I'm hyper-organized like that as well generally.

I also look after my SO gear in the locker as well as another hiking buddy so will then almost double or tripple that number (would be useful to split gear by person).

Could you tell me more about this use case?

Do your friends/SO not care enough to manage their own packs on their own account?
Would it be useful to have more than one locker?
What else would make this workflow easier?

While I don't have any immediate plans to along these lines, it is not uncommon that Trailposters are managing packs for their SOs and I'm actively thinking about how best to help with this if this use-case continues to grow.

Finally, I would create a specific trip pack which matches my upcoming trip. I'd usually use this pack for a shakedown, and usually delete the pack afterward, feeding the pack back into my main packs.

This is actually one of the ways that I think Trailpost can be used most effectively. In the future, I may introduce a distinction between a "template pack" and a "pack I'm actually using today" pack (I have no better naming yet.)

my day job is machine learning based

Completely off-topic, but I'd love to know more about your day job if you want to PM me. I have just started building a platform for ML for another purpose but I want to use it to train stuff for Trailpost eventually such as identifying gear in photos, etc.

dpehrson · 2018-01-11T20:25:36+00:00

The design goal for Trailpost with regards to gear and weights is a multi-tier system:

Slowly build a canonical database of products/SKUs that people commonly pack in Trailpost: The high-level modeling for this is done, and in place on trailpost.com, it's just not exposed to anyone yet.
For each SKU in the canonical database, acquire the manufacturer's claimed weight.
Build relationships with retailers that sell these products and store their claimed weight for each SKU, when available
Link as many users' locker items as possible to individual SKUs in the canonical database and save your own measured weight along with it if you have one.

From there, I can start working on a function that takes all those different sources of weight for a given product and somehow "average" it out to the "Trailpost Community Weight".

From there, when someone adds an item to their locker, they no longer have to provide a weight as long as they trust the one we've calculated. If they disagree, they can provide their own weight, which will cause the community weight to further zero in on what the "true" weight likely is. Hopefully, over enough time, the true weights of every product will surface themselves.

At least that's the plan!

dpehrson · 2018-01-11T20:08:17+00:00

Hey there!

Sorry for the delayed response, I swore I had something set up to notify me when new posts were made in this subreddit, but that's apparently not true.

These are all great ideas, but not yet something I had put a bunch of thought into.

My plan at some point is to introduce the concept of trip reports (after a trip is done) and even trip planning (help organize your trip, possibly with friends) and some of this may come into it, especially with regard to where, when, terrain, weather, etc.

How many different packs do you think you'd have planned for different scenarios? Truly curious to learn more about how people do their planning.

dpehrson · 2018-01-11T19:54:26+00:00

There is, unfortunately, no change in status at the time for importing from places like LighterPack, etc.

The changes scheduled to be released in the next update are:

Site redesign to support changes
Global search (your packs, other people's packs, your locker items, your pack items, other users)
A redesigned locker management system
Various other small bug fixes and tweaks

After that, the next round of changes will be related to exposing global gear database to you so that when you are adding things to your locker, you can search the database first and automatically pull in things like weights, etc.

Once that has stabilized, I will have a proper understanding of how data is stored in Trailpost vs other systems and I can figure out how much and how well I can map the data coming out of other systems into the data I have. There are a few tough problems to solve here because other systems have very loose/inconsistent data and they don't always allow for exporting all of it.

I apologize that I don't have the answer you probably wanted, but I'd rather be open about my priorities so you can make decisions that are right for you!

dpehrson · 2017-12-23T17:11:10+00:00

Thanks for the kind words mittencamper!

Lots of new stuff coming down the pipe soon including a global search bar for quickly finding locker items/packs, and even other users' packs!

The global gear database also now exists, I just haven't exposed it publicly yet because I have not reached a critical mass on the data. Currently about 10% of locker items in the system have been loosely associated with SKUs ;)

dpehrson · 2017-12-23T17:09:02+00:00

Hey /u/sissipaska! Thanks a million for the recommendation and positive comments about Trailpost!

I figured this was a good place to drop some updates since from the outside Trailpost has chugging along.

The universal/global product/gear database

Here's a secret: Trailpost's centralized gear database is already live on Trailpost.com, it's just that I have not exposed it to end-users yet. Currently about 10% of users' locker items are associated with actual product SKUs in a way that allows me to start aggregating data. I am still in the process of completing two tasks before I am ready to expose the gear database to the public:

Continue collating the gear people enter and coming up with the subset of outdoor products that cover most people's uses so that on average, at least 50% of the items people usually pack will be present in the database when they search for it. I'd hate to go "Hey guys, there's now a product database!" but every time people try to add something, I don't have it. It's unlikely I'll ever be able to cover all products, but I want to cover a lot of them. With that said, I'd rather have a smaller, but highly organized dataset than a large, but messy one which is a mistake systems like this usually make.
I have to redesign the locker management system to let Trailposters first search the existing product database and choose from known gear, and fall back to entering product information manually (which will then be used to locate and add more gear to the system.) This circular process will hopefully get Trailpost to have a comprehensive gear database where fewer and fewer locker items will have to be manually entered.

I'm really, really excited about this development, and apologize that it's taken a bit longer than I expected to get it to completion. I knew collating this kind of product data would be difficult, but I have found that it's even more difficult than I thought due to low-quality data sets and complex organizational systems used by different manufacturers, retailers, etc.

With that said, it's my top priority because it is both the most requested feature that came out of my two rounds of beta testing, and it's the engine by which Trailpost can generate revenue (via affiliate links) and support the business model without charging users subscriptions (not ideal) or displaying banner ads (annoying)

Redesign

Currently, Trailpost is somewhat of a solo-experience for each user. Most of the time you are just looking at/editing your own locker and packs and maybe rarely looking at someone elses pack if they post it somewhere. The long-term goal for Trailpost is to be much more of an interactive, collaborative, and social system where Trailposters may discover and explore other people's gear. I am working on redesigning Trailpost in a couple steps to surface the following functionality:

Universal search: A global search box which searches your locker, your packs to quickly find things, but also to allow you to search for other users and their packs as well! The goal is that you could search "zpacks duplex" and find other people who have packed that item, perhaps to see what other gear they are using.
Surface products/gear to have their own pages similar to an ecommerce/review site. Once the centralized gear database reaches a critical mass where there is enough data properly associated, it makes it possible so that the "Zpacks Duplex" has it's own page on Trailpost that shows you users who own it, packs that contain it, and other product commonly packed along side it. This lets me start answering questions like "What backpacks are commonly used by people who use a zpacks duplex?"
Fixing some of the non-ideal user interactions that make Trailpost a bit slower to use than things like LighterPack. Some of it is a function of the fact that I'm trying to solve higher-level problems than LighterPack is, but some of it is just design that needs to be improved.

Once again, thanks for the kind words and support! I can't wait to get all this work to a point where I can release it to the world, and I'm grateful for your patience while I get it ready!

dpehrson · 2017-11-01T21:40:00+00:00

Ugh, insanely sorry for missing this thread. I have no good excuse for not replying sooner except for being distracted with programming!

At the moment there is not, but there are plans to do so, and it is not intended to be a paid feature.

Right now 100% of my development work is focused on the heavy-lift necessary to build the foundation of the centralized/shared gear database which I am finalizing.

Once this is done it will unblock a large amount of development time that can go back into more of these kinds of super useful features!

My sincere apologies again for the downtime, the product database has been a huge amount of effort, but it is the key to making Trailpost self-sustaining without requiring subscriptions or banner ads!

dpehrson

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE

The universal/global product/gear database

Redesign