Does anyone have any information as to what's going on with the photo gallery? There haven't been any updates and I'd really like to know if it's coming back or not.
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Information on photo gallery?
- Thread starter Richard Avram
- Start date
Richard.......I'm getting to the point where I just don't care if it comes back, or not. It was a nice feature to see what's new from other turners, though. It's probably best to just think of the member's gallery as never coming back.....let it go in your mind.......until it does come back. 🙂
ko
ko
Steve Worcester
Admin Emeritus
I honestly do not know
It was nice to have an outside link for public consumption. But the upgrade before it died was awkward to navigate.
Most forums, including this one, provide for attachments in posts; more than the gallery in fact. That's probably good enough. For serious WIP threads, you can "reply" to yourself with added material.
For outside links, I've used our club's Show-n-Tell content.
Joe
Most forums, including this one, provide for attachments in posts; more than the gallery in fact. That's probably good enough. For serious WIP threads, you can "reply" to yourself with added material.
For outside links, I've used our club's Show-n-Tell content.
Joe
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This hasn't been an easy nut to crack. There isn't any product out there that is the same as PhotoPost. ZenForo has a pretty good image posting capability, but it would be a major shift from look and feel of what we had. On the other hand, our memory of what once was is probably getting a bit faded. I'll try to see if I can find out any news tomorrow.
Transparency is good. Perhaps I missed a post somewhere, but there didn't seem to be any info on "wha' happened?" Sounds like you're having to find a completely different program/software suite to establish a new gallery? Did PhotoPost go belly-up? If this info is somewhere here, a link is fine.
Why not a new Gallery Forum to compliment the Main Forum, Newbie Forum etc.?
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PhotoPost is out of business. Apparently, it was a one-man show and customer support for fixing bugs and keeping it compatible with browsers had been on the decline for a long time. A web search brought up a lot of hits to discussions on other forums about the status of PhotoPost.
You know......I think Doug might be onto something here. It might be possible to have a gallery using the existing hardware. With a little creativity, maybe it could work.
If anyone has suggestions, let's hear them........😀
Off the top of my head......As Doug suggests, a dedicated forum where a turner may start a thread with a photo of their current work. Comments and discussion in that thread. Subsequent turnings in the same thread, by the original poster to that thread?......a new thread?
There probably ought to be some sort of "rules" for posting.......suggestions?
As for the old gallery, I always thought a limit of 2 photos for one specific turning was too restrictive for giving a "complete" understanding of the turning by the viewer.....three at the minimum, I would think......above view, bottom view, and profile view. Not suggesting this as a "rule"......just commenting about the restrictions in the old forum. The number of views a turner wishes to post to a thread would be up to them.
If there needs to be some limits to the number of photos in the "gallery forum", then maybe some kind of time limit, or quantity of threads limit can be considered, if necessary......
I have no doubt a few here can think of some creative ways to make a "gallery forum" work.......😎.....very very 😎!!!!!
ko
think outside and inside the photo box
An idea for posting in forum messages and elsewhere: It takes very little time with a photo editing program to combine several views into one photo. For example:
At the same time, I generally reduce the file size significantly to make the photos quicker to upload and take up less storage space. I target most of my photos to less than 100K which is the limit on another forum.
I use the full version of Photoshop for this but you can do something similar with nearly any respectable editing software. Photoshop Elements can be bought for less than a new turning tool and will do this and far more from now on, great for forums, family, and fun. Even those lacking technical experience or confidence in working with images can learn the steps in a few minutes, especially woodturners, typically more creative and smarter than the average bear! 🙂 I would be happy to provide the A-B-C steps to making these with Photoshop if anyone is interested.
JKJ
An idea for posting in forum messages and elsewhere: It takes very little time with a photo editing program to combine several views into one photo. For example:
At the same time, I generally reduce the file size significantly to make the photos quicker to upload and take up less storage space. I target most of my photos to less than 100K which is the limit on another forum.
I use the full version of Photoshop for this but you can do something similar with nearly any respectable editing software. Photoshop Elements can be bought for less than a new turning tool and will do this and far more from now on, great for forums, family, and fun. Even those lacking technical experience or confidence in working with images can learn the steps in a few minutes, especially woodturners, typically more creative and smarter than the average bear! 🙂 I would be happy to provide the A-B-C steps to making these with Photoshop if anyone is interested.
JKJ
I've used this image reduction tool for several years: http://www.sitereportcard.com/imagereducer.php
It provides about 10 candidate reductions to fit posting limits. Simpler than Photoshop. And like I said earlier, you can "reply" for added pictures.
A separate gallery forum is hardly needed. "Today's Posts" today has only 9 threads. Woodworking Australia ( http://www.woodworkforums.com/ ) typically has more than 50 each day for the same search.
Joe
An easy, free photo editing program
Paint.net is a very good, free photo editing program, I've used it for years. http://www.getpaint.net/features.html
Paint.net is a very good, free photo editing program, I've used it for years. http://www.getpaint.net/features.html
That may be, but consider there are no Gallery posts here now, and I haven't seen too much work being posted. This is the flagship forum for the AAW. It seems to me that a place to post and view work would be a priority.
Doug
Not only that, but there were quite a few turners who posted regularly in the member galleries, who seldom, or never posted in the forums. Some were newbies, and some were very experienced turners......plus all levels of experience in-between. Also, some of these turners who posted in the galleries, were from outside of the USA.......and, were superb turners! These foreign turners probably wanted a place to show their works, and didn't know of anyplace else they could do it. All these people mentioned here, are completely out of loop now. That, I consider to be a great loss! 🙁
The great thing about the photo gallery, is we were exposed to a great deal of creativity from other turners. The galleries were an "idea incubator", so to speak. Some of the most creative things I've seen were from the newbies.......because they don't know what they "can't" do yet! The experienced turners were a source of "awe and inspiration" to the rest of us, as well. 😎
I was never one who liked giving stars, or rating others turnings.....so, I usually gave everyone 10 stars. There were times some of us showed our work, because there were questions as to how well this or that looks......and, this includes me. 😱 I believe the galleries were a source of discussion in the regular forums, too......it inspired us to ask questions, or comment, with or without that person being directly involved with the discussion that ensued.
I agree with Doug......having a place to show our work should be a priority, because there were benefits for all of us, whether actively posting, or not...... 😀
.
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Here is the latest information. Phil McDonald and I spoke this morning about the best two options that Michael Seufer identified. Of the two, it appeared to me that Xenforo forum software was by far the best based primarily upon the photo gallery capabilities. The plan is to direct Michael Seufer to put together a forum and gallery with similar capabilities to what we had before PhotoPost went out of business. Once that has been done, there will be a functional evaluation period by the moderators which I hope will go smoothly enough that it will be ready to go live in the shortest time possible. I don't know the scope of effort required by Michael Seufer to pull this rabbit out of the hat, so I can't estimate his time frame. I'm hoping that the functional evaluation can be done in a couple weeks or so ... but, if we want to implement functional changes then that will obviously stretch out the evaluation time. Once we give a thumbs up, it will probably take no more than a few days before the new forum goes live.
While a major goal is to have the least impact on the look and feel of the user interface, the reality is that things will look a bit different because it will no longer be vBulletin and PhotoPost. Folks like me who are somewhat set in their ways don't like it when we are faced with changing the way that things are done. So, maintaining a familiar user interface is a top priority.
While a major goal is to have the least impact on the look and feel of the user interface, the reality is that things will look a bit different because it will no longer be vBulletin and PhotoPost. Folks like me who are somewhat set in their ways don't like it when we are faced with changing the way that things are done. So, maintaining a familiar user interface is a top priority.
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Well said Odie, I completely agree. That being said, it's just nice to have someone talking about the situation.
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There's no need for panic nor predictions of doom and gloom. Phil McDonald has made it very clear in his direction to the IT people that having a first class photo gallery is the very highest priority. But, it's like a machinist told me when I wanted some custom parts made for a lathe project -- he will do it quick or he will do it good, but he won't do it quick and good. Identifying software that has all of the features that we want, has comparable user customization features, allows private messages (they are called "conversations" in Xenforo), has a user friendly interface that has a similar look and feel, and allows us to port all of the existing threads over to the new forum along with a photo gallery that meets our needs takes a lot of effort and time to do it right.
Some other forums have ditched their history when switching to new software. It makes things easier, but past threads hold a great wealth of information. Likewise the thousands of images in the gallery are a great resource. I could be mistaken, but I think that preserving all of the the past threads and doing a top quality job are worth the wait.