Ooga-Mooga is Ooverdue for an Ooverhaul

My tiki matchbooks... waiting patiently for the day to come that they can be in Ooga-Mooga.

Ooga-Mooga launched nearly seven years ago (whoa!). Thanks to you guys adding all of your beautiful collections (and oh so many pictures, almost 70,000 of them!), it has grown into an outstanding resource for tikiphiles.

There’s so much to love about it… it’s fantastic for learning more about tiki mugs and other collectibles, seeing what others are finding for their collections, trading and connecting with other tikiphiles, all that great stuff. It’s so lovely to get lost exploring everyone’s collections on Ooga-Mooga, and you guys make it fun.

But not everything about Ooga-Mooga is loveable, and frankly, you guys deserve something better…

Ooga-Mooga is getting a much-needed overhaul!
To learn about what's in store for Ooga-Mooga, please read the full announcement at Ooga-Mooga:
Ooga-Mooga is Ooverdue for an Ooverhaul

FWIW, i'm very happy to read this announcement! I was just thinking today how I ought to get my new mugs added and at the same time dreaded doing so.

Looking forward to seeing the new site.

Knowing just how much work goes into a website upgrade like this
you must be a masochist? Thanks in advance for taking it on & I look forward
to a remodeled Ooga-Mooga. :)

SHOOUUTZZ!!!! If we can upload more than one picture at a time I'm down!! :wink:
Mahalo's again Humu for the great resource you've provided for all of us Tiki Heads too..
Aloha

I just woke up and saw the announcment to this on Facebook. Personally i find the site quite easy to use already. I do understand that after seven years it might be time for an upgrade, i just hope that the 'improvements' are for the better and not worse. I definitely agree with some of things mentioned that could/will make the site more user friendly although there's also a couple i'm not sure about. Especially a name change. I like the idea of being able to add other tiki related paraphernalia like matchbooks, postcards, etc. Either way, i'm confident Humuhumu will do a good job.

Mahalo for all the support, guys!

Beachbumz -- being able to add multiple photos at once is definitely on the list, though it may not be in place by the time of launch. The biggest gain out of this, though, is that new features like that will be much easier to add, so it's coming, for sure!

swizzle -- I understand, considering a name change felt weird to me at first, too. But I've been using the new name long enough now that it feels weird to call it "Ooga-Mooga"! It'll sit a little funny at first, as these things do, but I think that with time and patience, the new name will grow on you, too.

Ooga Mooga is also overdue for an Overture! Of praise! Although I am not an active collection sharer and trader, I have many times fallen back on it for my research, or to just communicate about a certain mug in question. Especially when I am in Europe, it is always a trusty tool. Thank You Humu for all your work and commitment to Tiki, and I can't wait for the new christening!

Im with Sven on this one. Im not a active user either. But it is cool to fall back on and do some research on mugs and some other things that you find. You have done a great job HumuHumu. Mahaloz for all your hard work. :)

Looking forward to your upgrade. Thanks for all the great work you do.

Who is this "Humuhumu" person?

Her name is Michelle Trott. She is the one who created Critiki.com and ooga-mooga.com. Been a major contributor to the tiki scene for awhile.

forgotten tikiman, Grog was making a joke
He knows Humuhumu FYI :D

I am very excited about all the up-grades. However, I too like the current name, but it is your baby.

Great news! If the database is heading towards having more than just mugs it makes sense to change the name.

This is GREAT news!

This is GREAT news!

@ Atomic Tiki Punk. Ah! Gotcha. I was all WHAT!!! All cool. Aloha!!!!!

Is this where I post my wish-list for the new version? Well, I'm doing it anyway!

Sounds like adding postcards and other ephemera is in the works. Please add a way for us to add a date for our item if it has one. i.e. I have this postcard in my collection and it is postmarked October 1965. That sort of data will help us figure out some dates for places and objects. And it isn't just postcards. I have matchbooks and menus that have dates penciled on them.

Now for the biggie! So, we're gonna get to put in postcards and matchbooks right? Well, that likely means there is an address and phone number printed there. If we can add that info, then that could meld with Critiki and make a true database of locations. That is a project I have wanted to do for years. And as you ID a location via that sort of info, it can dovetail into matching mugs to them by their drink menu. They may not have had a mug with their name on it, or they may have some that do not, but, those mugs are already in Ooga-Mooga, so they could be tagged as being used in that location. Really swanky if the menu image could be tagged Facebook style to link to the mug entry...

A thorough database of this sort would create a completist version of a location information. You surf to Islander Stockton and there is every mug, both marked and unmarked, and their postcards, menus, etc. And you surf to the Imperial Glass gold leaf bamboo glass and see it was used at the Kahiki and X, Y and Z locations as well.

That is the website of my dreams... Go H! You can do it!

My request:
There are so many great places listed in Critiki that are, alas, long gone. Could you please add programing that will allow us to plug something into our brains, and go visit those places in the Matrix,... and drink from our choice of mugs?
Some of us might never unplug.

It’s amazing how something so simple and fun to collect, became an obsession! I’m truly grateful to have found OM and the ever growing tiki mug collections cataloged inside. Vintage, standard, rare, artistic, revival, unusual… something for one and all mugheads to share and explore! I’ve met and traded with amazing peep’z because of Ooga-Mooga, including our dearly missed Tiki Kate.

You’ve created a gem Humuhumu and although it may be outdated technically and in need of an intuitive refit… that is just a bit of it’s charm. :wink: Kinda like Trader Tom, right?!! :wink:

Anyways, I’ve always enjoyed Ooga-Mooga simply for being just what it is…”Ooga Mooga”. So call it what you wish and scratch that 7-year itch. Please, I beg of you, don’t make it too flashy, neon, metallic or brightly lit. I still enjoy a musty dim-lit corner, where the blowfish lamps are dusty, the floor is sticky from spilled Mai Tai and the tiki fountain is cracked, splintered and filling a mossy lagoon of koi.

Mahalo’z for creating, maintaining and updating “Ooga-Mooga”, -please keep paradise, avoid the parking lot and just say “NO” to walgreens! :wink:

YES! So nice to hear! Drinks all around!

Great news Humu! Im looking forward to the new additions. Thanks Trader Tom for keeping is up to date with what? A couple
Thousand new templates? Cheers Humu and Tom once again :)

Thats great news,I havent put anything new on for a while but cant wait for a revamp,It is quite difficult finding some templates with some mugs and look forward to matchbooks and postcards etc(Also menus? and other odd finds like treasure craft stuff etc)

Fantastic! I'm sure it'll be amazing, and although I'm partial to the name, I'm sure I'll love the new just as much. (I mean you came up with both right?)
Can't wait to see the changes!
Thanks for all you do!

ooga mooga!!

Swanky, the gold leaf bamboo glasses you referred to actually were not used at the Kahiki. Several sellers on Ebay are using the Kahiki name to get newbies to shell out more money. They are nice glasses, but just that- not Kahiki related. Thought I would pass this along so TCers aren't buying something they think is Kahiki.

Could this mean that the ooverhaul is being worked on???!
Or just regular maintenance? :(

Sorry, but it's just regular maintenance. The site has been down for a little while. Humu is working to get it fixed.

Looks like the site is back up and working fine. However, we lost some recently posted pictures, so if you added some recently, please double-check. You may need to erase those that show as blue squares with question marks and add new pics.

On 2012-11-26 12:41, Trader Tom wrote:
Sorry, but it's just regular maintenance. The site has been down for a little while. Humu is working to get it fixed.

Drat! :)

This is what I see when I attempted to look at the old "upcoming changes" blog post (at http://www.ooga-mooga.com/blog/?p=71. Just FYI...

On 2012-11-27 11:33, Capt. R.H. Falernum wrote:
This is what I see when I attempted to look at the old "upcoming changes" blog post (at http://www.ooga-mooga.com/blog/?p=71. Just FYI...

As do I. And there's machine gun sounds.

Thanks! I totally missed that. Everything else appears to be working okay. I left a message for Humu, so hopefully she'll be able to iron out the rest soon.

So, how's the overhaul progressing? Just curious...

Humu is focusing right now on her three-month-old, which is why the grand revised plan has not happened yet. As soon as it starts to move forward again, I'll post on this thread and keep you updated.

Three month old? Congrats! But I'll betcha we won't be seeing updates any time soon. :wink:

ADORABLE three month old. Four at this point.

[ Edited by: Hale Tiki 2013-05-30 10:10 ]

Once Humuhumu gets a little of her life back (LOL!) and the Ooga-Mooga updates happen, I thought this might be a good place for suggestions. Here's a few of mine:

• EBay prices should include shipping. The idea of posting mug priced indicates what someone is willing to pay for a mug, and that includes shipping. If someone buys a mug for $20 and pays $15 for shipping, didn't they really pay $35?

• The ability to upload multiple photos at one time and choose which one is the "cover" image.

• Ability to sort mugs by things like price, size, color, etc.

• A way to mark mugs as one-offs and exclude them from searches, so I'm not seeing people's handmade mugs in the search results.

Wanda trumps OM...and what a cutie she is.

I never got to use OM much as I think there was a member pay issue...can't remember what it was. Hopefully credit card or PayPal is acceptable.

I'm a paid member and I'm pretty sure I used PayPal without any issues at all.

Hmmmmmm...don't remember what it was then. :(

Now that Humuhumu is back in the saddle, maybe it's time to revisit this thread? I gather that quite a bit of work had been done before Wanda came along, and I know a lot of people had a lot of ideas about what they'd like to see Ooga-Mooga become. I'd love to hear from Humuhumu a little bit of what she's got in mind, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

On 2012-04-16 09:28, Swanky wrote:
Now for the biggie! So, we're gonna get to put in postcards and matchbooks right? Well, that likely means there is an address and phone number printed there. If we can add that info, then that could meld with Critiki and make a true database of locations. That is a project I have wanted to do for years. And as you ID a location via that sort of info, it can dovetail into matching mugs to them by their drink menu. They may not have had a mug with their name on it, or they may have some that do not, but, those mugs are already in Ooga-Mooga, so they could be tagged as being used in that location. Really swanky if the menu image could be tagged Facebook style to link to the mug entry...

This would be great! Imagine if a mug page could automatically list the restaurants it was used it based on menus, photos, etcetera.

Edit: Cone to think if it, if you could create mug listing templates based on this info (for example, using an image from a menu for the template) it would be a huge boon for crypto mug hunters.

[ Edited by: TikiTacky 2014-06-07 14:38 ]

I've always wanted to see Mooga integrated with TC somehow. I used to do some webmasterin' in another life and used frames quite a bit to avoid opening lots of tabs and windows (Humu does use frames in Mooga btw). In fact, using something like frames could bring in Ooga-Mooga, Critiki, Humu Kon Tiki, HH, some sites that could be revived and reactivated. But it would probably have to be flexible enough to stay as-is for those not interested in other sites/pages.

Another thing that's taken over the web in the past couple of years is the endless vertical scrolling (a la Google results and Facebook). It takes more resources but the world lives by it now. No more paging through results, more is simply added as you scroll down. But threads would have to be reversed (like Facebook with last entries first) or configurable through search options like Google.

As to updating Ooga-Mooga itself, a rundown of tiki ceramics for sale on eBay, Etsy, Tiki Farm, et al (kinda like a Google search) would again reduce creating tabs and windows. I'm amazed at how non-tiki people refer to O-M for pricing their mugs. It's the #1 resource out there.

On 2014-06-07 14:42, Zinctiki wrote:
I'm amazed at how non-tiki people refer to O-M for pricing their mugs. It's the #1 resource out there.

I live in Colorado, where tiki mugs are pretty uncommon. I can attest that most of the time when I've found a tiki mug in thrift stores, they're almost always identified using the same name as on Ooga-Mooga and they're priced about 10-20% higher than the "average price" listing. It's very apparent that this totally inaccurate number is being used as a guide for junkers and thrifters who are selling things they picked up at estate sales and what not.

I'm really conflicted on the price guide. On the one hand, I feel it's helpful for collectors to be able to get a value on their collections. At the same time, I really worry that it's ultimately bad for collectors. I know a number of users who said they never list when they get a bargain on a mug because it drives down the "value" of it. At the same time, they're more than happy to list a high price that they've seen for an item already in their collection because it could benefit them financially. In other words, it's driving the prices of mugs higher and higher.

I agree that the tool is useful, but I really feel it's detrimental to the collector market in its current design. Maybe the price guide should only be available for paid users? I'm definitely curious to hear what others think about this.

That being said, I still believe that ebay purchased items should include the shipping in the value of the mug. If you pay $5 for a mug and $15 for shipping, then you paid $20 for the mug!

I also feel that when users enter a value for a mug in their collection, that it should invisibly be included in the "average price paid." This would make the numbers much more accurate. We don't need to see publicly what someone paid, but those numbers should be aggregated into the whole.

I'm wondering that too, since the prices are reflecting asking prices but not always final sale price that doesn't mean the realistic retail value is what is listed. In some cases people are desperate/impatient and willing to overpay.

It's fun to think about the possibilities, isn't it? I'm not going to talk about what's in store for the new site that will replace our dear old friend Ooga-Mooga. I understand it's frustrating, wanting to be able to look inside my head and know what I'm thinking, but now isn't the time. That time will come later, when it's closer to being in your hands.

It's not frustrating. This is the equivalent if talking about what we'd do if we won the lottery. :)

I'm sure whatever you have in store will be amazing!