Well, it’s been a hot minute since the last post on the pipe tool. The site has been running pretty good over the years but it’s time for an update. I’ve been collecting suggestions and also have my own list of items that I’d like to focus on for the next version of the site. So in 2025 we’re going to start work on a new design and layout and new functionality.
Data and Backend:
Currently, we separate brands and blends in two separate tables, and when you add a brand and blend, they get joined in your cellar as one. We’re going to look at joining the more common ones ahead of time in a new data table.
We’re going to expose the brands and blends and the descriptions and allow community to update the notes on these as well as carvers and we’ll cross link to pipedia.
A blend may have had multiple owners of a blend – for instance Dunhill tobacco is now owned by Peterson – we need to have a notation of that.
API: We’re going to work on an API and connect up to turbotin so if you’ve got something in your cellar or your wish list you can quickly see where you might find it.
API: One of the premium features in the option to mark your item for sale or trade – its been used minimally. We’ll look to connect up to tinbids so if you mark your pipe or tin for sale – we can look at creating the item on tinbids for a set time. (This will require a discussion with Tinbids that I briefly mentioned but we’ve not followed up on.)
Add: Column for artisan carver
Nested Tags
2FA – we’ll look to add some 2factor authentication.
XML standard – we’ll look to implement an XML standard on a tobacco brand and blend. With this we’ll work on improving importing and exporting – ability to export more data including reviews.
Collection field – allow users to tag certain pipes and sort by collection for example show me all the sherlock holmes classic collection pipes.
Resolve the password reset issues.
Look, Feel and Search
We’re going to work to improve the search functions – search across your cellar for certain aspects of blends by tags and other data points, including the way you might have rated your blend.
When it comes to images – the original thought was that the image of pipes was a square like Instagram but the platform didn’t resize that correctly. We’re going to allow a couple options for images and look to use amazon s3 storage for those images. Also the hero image on the page we’ll allow for you to upload a picture of the pipe for that hero/header image and then have a couple more places to store it.
Also the ability to add a picture of a receipt for the pipe.
We’ll be adding some additional columns in the cellar, pipes, and reviews and the ability to sort by those – maybe you want to sort by flavors – you can do a filter of that.
We’re going to look to implement multi-select to edit more than one item at a time.
We’re going to look into the ratings scale and allow user defined ratings ie – maybe you want a 7 point scale or a 10 point scale – you’ll be able to set that.
We’ve got many years of people using the system and not enough recognition of that so we’ll improve the badge system and award system.
If you’ve sold a pipe or removed a pipe from your log – we need for that to drop off your view – you can still go and see all the pipes you had but remove from your page by default.
Light and Dark Mode
Improved mobile experience.
Exposing More:
Reviews will be made where they are viewable by anyone else on the app.
Cellars and Pipe Collections will be shareable by a link if you’d like to share or show someone your cellar.
Removal and Changes:
We’re going to remove the forums – it was a nice idea but rarely anyone uses them and there are a zillion places where people chat in the pipe community. We’ll look to setup a pipetool discord channel for the community to chat and we’ll see if there is some integrations we can make with that.
New Features and potential:
We may add a place to track cigars/cigar boxes. We’d include a review for this but the data when it comes to cigars is just as immense if not more so this would be a much longer project.
Tobacco Labels – we’re going to look into the ability to link and or have mason jar labels to tie to your blend and print – there are multiple places that people have gathered labels together that we can tag and bring into thepipetool.
So that’s a preview of what we’re thinking for the updated site, if you’re in the pipe community and do web development and would like to help out, shoot me a message.