I would never abandon photo.net, but...

Right now p/n isn't doing what I need it to do. That is to provide a clean, orderly, logical gallery to display my photographs, in the order taken. Uploads are scrambled in order sometimes and Firefox and Safari have a different look. The top of the page photos in the galleries keep changing. "photo.net/photos/sanford" isn't clickable any more as everything after the first "/" does not highlight and is not a direct link to my page, so I can't direct people to my galleries like I used to be able to. Time to start researching alternatives. SmugMug and Zenfolio seem to be the most popular. Are they easy to navigate for a low tech individual? How much space would be required to host a thousand photos?

Sanford, I use SmugMug and its really easy (imo) to navigate and upload, etc. You can also elect to have public or private folders. Best of all, their staff are really responsive and helpful. They have different $$ plans and a free trial. (Note: I'm not associated with SmugMug in any way).

I feel your pain, Sanford, as to date I have been unable to upload an image from my computer to a forum thread. Have cleared cookies to no avail. Crazy part is I can upload images directly to my portfolio, and can upload images from Flickr to a Pnet thread, but when I try to do that from my computer, all I get is an error message.

 

By the way, these are known good images that fit the Pnet size requirements, and had been uploaded successfully previously with the old forum software. Very frustrating! Using a Windows laptop, running Vista Home Premium and an up to date Firefox browser - which is the exact same configuration used with the previous forum software. Go figure. :(

I doubt that I'll totally abandon photo.net, but it's now so clumsy that I cleaned out my small gallery and know that I'll be participating much less. The old link to my homepage is broken. If you start browsing and then sign in, you wind up back at photo.net's main page instead of where you were looking. "New Posts" doesn't replace the old "United Forum" because the order keeps changing every time somebody posts anything. And I really don't like having in what forum we were "last seen." I've been a paid subscriber almost without a break for over ten years (which is no longer listed when we post) but I don't know if I'll continue to subscribe. Come to think of it, I don't even know when my subscription is over--I don't see it on my account page--but it's sometime this summer. What a mess.

This is a test of uploading an image on my MacBook Pro using Safari 10.0.3.<br><br>

That worked, and I included two br brackets to get the carriage returns. Where are uploaded images stored when not done through the Portfolio?

... Time to start researching alternatives. SmugMug and Zenfolio seem to be the most popular. Are they easy to navigate for a low tech individual? How much space would be required to host a thousand photos?

The problem imho is to find a site that will last and is managed by professionals, on top of being good for its purpose. Anybody has an idea about Flickr as a stotage/display site? And another one for serious photography discussions?

DPR has some good discussions and forums. Their problem is that they are too popular and your question or discussion gets buried by new ones fairly quickly. You will get answers there but I think they cater to a younger crowd that us old f..ts here.

I expected PN to be a perpetual elders tree, with grownup amateurs like me listening to wise men, while kids were playing outside the shade. Time to find another baobab..

As hard as the staff are working I'm wondering if it wouldn't be easier to just go back to the old site. I worry that corrections are not coming fast enough to keep our members active.

I saw a post earlier by GPalm saying that they will not be going back to the old site.

There is a trouble in making solutions fit together to accomplish what PN is. Why our worthy staff keep rolling this thing out half baked really eludes me... o_O

....

There is no single community like PN out in the innernutz. Sure, there are galleries and forums--each have their limitations and restrictions on conversations. I am quite surprised that this version was rolled out like it is--after the complete disaster the first attempt was a few months ago. While not as bad--the forum works reasonably well except for a few very obnoxious faults--the remainder seems to remain a work in progress. Very slow progress.

....

I would fire the entire development "team" if there is one that cobbled this thing together and hire a group that knows what they are doing--and can accomplish it quickly. Hopefully, we won't lose too many members beta testing another amateur night out adventure in web development. I will stick it out--but will not even try to do anything with the non-forum side of things until the dysfunction is rooted out.

....

Stay calm, and shoot pictures... :p

OK, been away a little while and the site is still nowhere close to being right. Its just too much hard work- most of which seems to be performed by contributors. The email I sent with important (to me) omissions a day or two after "launch" has not been acknowledged never mind actioned. I just can't see me ever participating in Photo.net at anything like the same level, and certainly there's no incentive to communicate what's amiss. And I have to say that in a well-run business , if there are plans to make changes to people's status then they are told why in advance. Photo.net just does not have the volume and quality of resource to make this type of change without major issues.

This site needed to be upgraded about 10 years ago IMO. I think it's too late to bring many new users here.

This site needed to be upgraded about 10 years ago IMO. I think it's too late to bring many new users here.

Current modalities would lend credence to catering to smart phone users who comprise the majority of new "photographers". Try giving your your 10 year old a digital SLR and see how he responds? He or she will likely start trying to swipe the screen or touch the controls displayed. Camera sales are so far down Nikon is taking a 70 million dollar loss this fiscal year. There will always be a high end pro market but to attract new people to photography you have to have something which bridges the gap between a smart phone and digital SLR that doesn't require a 50 page manual to operate. Point and shoot digital cameras are really dead too. Smart phones killed that market as they killed the intermediate digital SLR market. New and young photographers use Flickr and Snapfish as the are direct to the web. No monkeying around with images on a computer first before uploading them. There's nothing here to attract new image makers. Because the nature of their image making has totally changed.

The point raised by it (two above), is one that I've raised several times in discussion about whether or not its possible to successfully re-orientate Photo.net. To achieve that you have to know who you're aiming at and why your new offer would be good enough to persuade those people to stop what they're doing now and come to you. It is never good enough simply to modernise a look and hope, especially if you compound that error by implementing badly. Phil_Light's point above is well made- I can't imagine that this new Photo.net is going to attract twenty or thirty-somethings in droves. Other products seem to meet their needs well enough and pointing out that Photo.net's layout and look are different now just isn't enough. I'd have thought that the right way forward might have been to invent something completely different, innovative and appealing to a totally different user group and market it alongside the original Photo.net. So you don't have to worry about failing to keep existing users happy as the price for attracting a totally new market. Neither do you have to worry about transferring pictures, votes, comments and so on from one site to another, or whether your existing tech function has the right expertise/experience to migrate a product from one to another. Building in a vacuum is a lot easier, just so long as you have an idea that is going to work.

To me this is a reboot. I would agree - photo.net needed an update 10 years ago (how could i not!)....but it didn't get one, the parent company didn't want to invest in it until recently and even then we had to go through some bad developers to make traction. Trust me, getting this far wasn't easy. Photo.net was one of the first in its space (online photography community), but slow (an understatement) to adapt and change with the times - fully agreed.

 

 

Is an upgrade in photo presentation and an upgrade in forum functionality (IMHO) and streamlined navigation on a site that is now largely responsive moving in the right direction? - I think so, and so do many others. Many that are in the negative camp, only wanted 1.0 to "stay as it was " because it was familiar to them but in the next breath wanted change. More and more people treated it kind of like driving their classic car - they'd do it on Sundays, maybe, if the mood struck them, but the traffic trends showed that people were relying on it less and less for dependable community. Now over those 10 years since we "needed a redesign"- the space blew up, so there were many other shiny sites to explore. Wants and needs change in time - nothing is static with the internet (well very little - photo.net v1 was a rare case).

 

The analogy made in the first few exchanges this thread was accurate - then the conversation seems to quickly veer into bug talk towards the middle and end - many of the bugs have already been address and organized in other threads but you will get the point.

 

In short, we moved from a technological antique in v1 - into something that can be supported by programmers and developers of todays skill set. It wasn't easy and we're not done yet - I believe this is a never ending journey and there is a reason why they call it a "pursuit of perfection" - its because it is never attained. We appreciate your support.

 

BTW - check out the lightbox within galleries - lower right hand side < > arrows for navigation within galleries.

 

Good Read for developers today: "shipping beats perfection" - by Ben Kamens VP of Engineering at Khan Academy

Edited February 22, 2017 by G-P

Methinks thou do protest too much. It is improving, but you could have forestalled a lot negative experience and commentary by simply releasing basic user instructions prior to launch. Since the release is clearly a work in progress, the instructions would have had to be (could be) V1, V2, etc. ad infinitum. I'm sure I'm not the only one to make that suggestion after the last aborted relaunch. "Those who ignore the lessons of history...

If you want to have complete control about how your images are displayed you should have and use your own website for that and not depend on ( and whine ) about any of the photo sharing website services. If you want to interact with or create a community, It's not that hard or expensive to do so by using software like vBulletin. In terms of graphic design, the new photo.net still looks like it's a decade or so behind...

 

Well, then - that sounds like progress doesn't it! 1993 to 2007 is a decent jump! The pursuit of perfection continues. In other breaking news, have you noticed the navigation within the galleries? Hmmm...just checked your profile - no photos, no galleries.

Current modalities would lend credence to catering to smart phone users who comprise the majority of new "photographers"........There's nothing here to attract new image makers. Because the nature of their image making has totally changed.

<br> </br>

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<p>I will partly agree with you on this Phil. The entire innernutz is hellbent to cram everything onto a smartphone or small tablet screen. Unfortunately, many things are not really amenable to that sort of thing--and this appears to be one of them by virtue of the expectations of the supporting community. Here, we want to see an overview of a gallery--and drill down into sets and make a number of actions on them. This goes for the photographer and the reader. The historical and current intent is not a Flickr swipe and gawk...:rolleyes: </p>

<br></br>

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<p>The traditional linear, threaded forum is suffering as well. Such is overkill for those who wish to impart their deepest and most extensive knowledge of something into a format that is 140 characters or less. Combining the swipe and gawk with the turgid tweet is a distraction for those who cannot put a damned phone down--not an honest communication tool and community. Those enamored of such things will vehemently deny this--but they do not fare well in other venues that require real participation and curation of content. However we may lament, this is the new way of things.</p>

<br> </br>

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<p>Luckily, there are those of us who are 'old school' and embrace a longer attention span and fear not the "TMI" (Too Much Information) platform. There are young and old among us--and those that are moving to more serious discovery in this wonderful avocation will find a place. That is of course unless we run everyone off with trying to be deliciously trendy... :cool: </p>

As hard as the staff are working I'm wondering if it wouldn't be easier to just go back to the old site. I worry that corrections are not coming fast enough to keep our members active.

I'm glad someone else said this. It would be wonderful if we could opt out of this mess and go back to the old stogey format that worked for so many years. Sigh.

For some, yes - but not everyone is looking to mix those paints. Maybe I am nuts, but I believe Instagram and Facebook have their places and use cases - as does photo.net. One size does not fit all.

To me this is a reboot. I would agree - photo.net needed an update 10 years ago (how could i not!)....but it didn't get one, the parent company didn't want to invest in it until recently and even then we had to go through some bad developers to make traction. Trust me, getting this far wasn't easy. Photo.net was one of the first in its space (online photography community), but slow (an understatement) to adapt and change with the times - fully agreed.

 

 

Is an upgrade in photo presentation and an upgrade in forum functionality (IMHO) and streamlined navigation on a site that is now largely responsive moving in the right direction? - I think so, and so do many others. Many that are in the negative camp, only wanted 1.0 to "stay as it was " because it was familiar to them but in the next breath wanted change. More and more people treated it kind of like driving their classic car - they'd do it on Sundays, maybe, if the mood struck them, but the traffic trends showed that people were relying on it less and less for dependable community. Now over those 10 years since we "needed a redesign"- the space blew up, so there were many other shiny sites to explore. Wants and needs change in time - nothing is static with the internet (well very little - photo.net v1 was a rare case).

 

The analogy made in the first few exchanges this thread was accurate - then the conversation seems to quickly veer into bug talk towards the middle and end - many of the bugs have already been address and organized in other threads but you will get the point.

 

In short, we moved from a technological antique in v1 - into something that can be supported by programmers and developers of todays skill set. It wasn't easy and we're not done yet - I believe this is a never ending journey and there is a reason why they call it a "pursuit of perfection" - its because it is never attained. We appreciate your support.

 

BTW - check out the lightbox within galleries - lower right hand side < > arrows for navigation within galleries.

 

Good Read for developers today: "shipping beats perfection" - by Ben Kamens VP of Engineering at Khan Academy

Why can't you update and reboot but retain the part of Photo Net that I enjoyed: posting pictures for ratings and critique and seeing them (my pictures!) for a few minutes on the Photo Net home page? Unless it's a "me" centered fantasy, I don't really see the point of Photo Net. Advice, reviews, etc., you can get in so many places.

Just checked whether the gallery sort had been straightened out. But no . . . every time I clicked on a picture, the rest of the gallery re-sorted. Makes it impossible to search through a big gallery. So, gone are the parts of Photo Net that I found fun and the parts of it that made it a decent organizational tool are still thoroughly messed up.