I thought it would be a good idea to keep a blog about how the IndieBound.org community—and the website in general—are developing. If this is a subject that interests you, then, buddy, have I got a blog for you.

First of all, it's been really exciting to watch this community fill with beta testers, ABA staff, and other indie business fans. While I was testing it and tinkering with it it was sort of a ghost town with a population of one, and when I tested out features like the personal contact forms or user profile notes, I was talking to myself, which made me feel more than a little crazy at times. I created fake personalities and added myself as a buddy several times to test the buddy notification emails. This is the sad, lonely life of a developer. To see the energy and enthusiasm of real people—that's wonderful.

So as I mentioned in my original beta test email, the finalized design for the community pages is coming. Stay tuned.

Here's a list of other features I'm working on:

• Site-wide search. Search store names, comments, user profiles, etc.
• Stores I've Added. A new sidebar block that lists stores you've added, how many fans each has, and when the latest activity (comment, etc.) on that store was.
• Email notifications. Give users the option to be notified whenever anyone adds a note to your page, for instance.
• Email preferences. Give users the option NOT to receive emails from IndieBound.org.
• Add a store, become a fan. An option to become a fan of a store you add automatically.
• A system so that you can manually arrange your friends and favorite stores.
• Blogs. This one here is the guinea pig...I'll be tweaking things on this one until I get it right. More will be coming, though.

And some non-community things you can look out for soon:

• Fall '08 Kids' Indie Next List. Coming in mid-to-late-August, around the same time the Kids' Next List flyers hit stores.
• Indiessentials. Giving the backlist titles some love, too!

Let me know what you'd like to see!