Blanks and Postage Request System

[trashtreasury]

I run http://www.trashtreasury.com, an Elliott Smith download hub and forum. I have a project I'm planning that will bring in a lot of traffic, without using a lot of bandwidth, but I need a tool built for me to make it an easy process:

Here's what I want to do and what I need:

One of my top long term goals is to archive every available audio performance at the LMA (Live Music Archive, a part of the Internet Archive, located at archive.org). Once the shows are there, it makes distribution much easier, and frees up my bandwidth for things that don't fall under their umbrella.

Unfortunately, even with the archive pipe, which for our purposes is as good as unlimited, there are still lots of people out there who don't have broadband, and simply can't access the lossless recordings. And, there's a good chunk of those who end up turning to the pirates on eBay to get their fix.

Now, another common way to get shows in the trading community is B+P (Blanks and Postage; I send you blank CD's with a SASE and you send me shows). I don't mind filling these requests, but I don't want it to be a major part of my life.

My thought is that I can build a team of people with CD's burners and broadband (I'm thinking at least 20-30 in the initial rollout, and adding more later if there's as much demand as I think there will eventually be), who can download shows from the archive, burn them and send them back.


Here's where the hack comes in. You knew I'd get to it eventually, right? What I need is this:

First of all, I want all my burners to be board members. Ideally, they could have an section right in the User CP where, once I had authorized them as team members, they will be able to enter their contact information (name, address, contact email if different than the one registered with) and contact preferences (Email, PM or both) and whether their contact info should be sent directly to the requester or whether they need an option to approve/deny the request.

The requesters will also be required to register for the board. Each show page on the content section of the site will have a link to "Request a B+P." If they are logged in, it will take them directly to the form; otherwise it will take them to a registration/login page. The form itself will automatically populate the show that they linked from, ask them for their name and contact info (so that it's available to the burner in case it's not legible when they receive it from the requester), and submit a request to the top person in the database, who will then be shuffled to the bottom of the list. If they have chosen to automatically accept all requests, their name and address will be PMed/emailed to the requester who can then send their B+P on it's way. If the burner is set to manual authorization, and the request goes unanswered for 48 hours, or the burner denies the request, it will be bumped to the next person on the list.

If a burner denies more than 3 requests in a row, they will temporarially be suspended, and I will take it up with them; this process doesn't need to be automatic, but the system should generate an email/PM to me regarding this if it's not. (This is not a vital feature)

The requests should stay in a queue for the burner, and they will have the ability to mark them done once they have been done. Once the burner has marked this completed (actually sent the mail is the goal), a pm/email will be sent to the requester, letting them know and giving them an option to send any feedback if the materials do not arrive or are damaged on arrival. (If they haven't been done because there is not enough postage or insufficient media, the burner can mark the request incompletable, which will notify me and the requester, and we'll work something out. If it's a postage issue, I will probably end up covering that out of my pocket, but I'm certainly not going to say that up front).

Last, but not least, of course I want it to keep records of all trades, and a database of contact info for all involved users.


I think I've hit all the high points. Let me know what you think, or if you have any questions. I know I've described the hack with a very narrow application, but I think this is something that could be customized for various types of trading on other forums as well. Heck, perhaps something is already out there that could be customized for this use...

Edit: Oh, one more thing. When a requester submits a request, they should receive clear instructions as to exactly what is required of them (i.e. include postage, include address, include sufficient blank media and make sure that media is mailed in a protective case to prevent damage).