Now this is not an impressive change for PN.

[guyscrivner]

When anyone clicks on my name and when I click on a lot of names <a

href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=1126740">this</a> is

what is seen. It has not been a problem for months, why now?<p>

[bennyboy]

I think it's an attempt to coerce people with custom pages into abandoning them.

[jhenry]

I agree with you Guy and quite desapprove the way this was done. I have seen people writing how much they hated the members page with pictures scrolling or background colour or different font, then they should simply pass their way. We have been doing what was at our disposition, using the tool provider by PNet. Anyway the 4000 characters was limitative enough to prevent real abuse <p> BTW, upload of such pages is must faster than the one of whom has thousand posts in memory. <p> I found that 2 pages of bio 'the extended' and 'the standard' a nonsense. So I destroyed my scrolling presentation of portfolio. As a paying member, I found the way it was done quite tactless, the least to say...

[ken_thalheimer]

Hate to differ, but I like it. The custom pages take longer to load on broadband, than does the standard format. I'd rather see the member's work I'm looking for rather than images scrolling across automatically

[jayme]

Oooh Ken, I gotta agree. The scolling pages are nice, but when I visit a member's page, it does take a while, even with a DSL. Maybe the scolling should be used only on a special presentation?

 

I admit, it is neat, but maybe just a bit much.

[jhenry]

Looking at things in a positive manner... Ken and Jayme, I conclude that people I portrayed will receive more visits... and, believe me,I am just happy for that!

[ken_thalheimer]

I've got to stick with Jayme on this. While it looks good, what's the point if one sits there and has to wait. Even with cable, I'll click off and move on rather than wait. I'd like to see the photographer's newer work. If I want what's presented in the rolling revue, I'll just browse the photog's gallery. Jayme does have a point in using the technique for presentation purposes

[mottershead]

There is a conflict here. The purpose of the Community Member page is basically to give the posting history of the member. It contains a user-written biography and 3 recent Gallery uploads along with much other information. But it was never intended to be a "Me, me, me" page, or to be a page that presents the members' portfolio. There are other pages for presentations, folders, photos, and portfolios. IT is not desirable for customizations to make the posting history hard to read or slow to load.

 

On the other hand, it is the page that tends to show up when you Google on the name of a photo.net member, and people want to treat that as a kind of home page.

 

So, the compromise is that if you are a suscriber, you can edit your biography to make it 4000 characters of arbitrary HTML that are displayed separately in an IFRAME. There is still the photo.net header on the page, and a link to the standard Community Member page. If the customized page sucks, it is because the person customized his biography that way. In that case, he/she he can either improve the HTML so that the customized page does not suck, or he can remove all the non-standard HTML from his/her biography and allowed the standard Community Member page to be displayed.

[bennyboy]

Members pages who have a lot of photos, comments, ratings etc take a long time to load, am I correct in thinking that much of these statistics are compiled dynamically every time the page is requested?

 

I won't dare to suggest how to improve this because - a) I don't know the code b) I don't know the database schema c) I'm sure you're all quite capable. Surely the payoff here is that less time spent building a page = more visits. My average page load seems to be above 10s during what are probably prime site times (over a minute isn't uncommon) - I'm on 10mb cable and am reasonably sure it's not a local issue.

[jhenry]

Sorry but talking about numbers... when I click on name to see the full pages of people here:<p>

It took me, watch in hand, 40" to reach your full page Ken, while 23" for Jayme, 9" for Brian M, 25" for Bob Atkins, 5" for Amelie*, and 11" to see mine when I had those scrolling pages... so let me know about the exact quickness, and stop the bullshit... that said I like your Ashley pictures.<p> PS: I dispose of regular broadband japanese YahooBB + latest Toshiba Sattellite portable pc.

[jhenry]

seems that Brian and Ben and I were posting at the same time... my latest answer was dedicated to Ken and Jayme!

[ken_thalheimer]

Jacques,

 

Thank you for the compliment on the particular photos. As for you getting twisted & mentioning "cutting the bullshit" I won't address you after that statement. This is, after all, an open forum. If you disagree that's fine. To begin a verbal attack will not elicit a response

[alexguerra]

I have to agree with this change, since there were a lot of people with dramatic changes in their pages, from which many were even hard for the eyes to read due to the used colours, and some were not even readable at all! Besides that, I don't believe it is a fair thing for some people to have an extra exposure of their photos by means of marquees, while many others because of lack of HTML knowledge do not have that possibility (and they are equally payers). I had a tiny webcounter, but hey too bad. The ideal solution IMO would be to create a customized page with the same customization options for everyone, and one that wouldn't change radically the appearance of photo.net website. There could be for instance a place in the member's page to display some 4 or 5 photos that the person would like to have more feedback on.

[guyscrivner]

my portfolio had no such scrolling pictures or other HTML that caused my page to be slow to download. The only thing in my portfolio that was other than text was a page counter (something that should/could be provided by PN - many members have/had/want them.<p>

 

As someone mentioned already, it is ok that PN curtail the use of extensive HTML used to make the portfolio something it was never intended to be. Again, instead of addressing those individuals that were the source of the problem and who in this instance would have probably voluntarily complied with a request to get in line with PN policy, we were all surprised to find that our pages no longer worked the way they had for months or years.<p>

 

As a side note, is there a herd mentality at work in these forums? Why would anyone assume that my pages were either cutom or a source of a problem for PN? Did my page load slowly or subtantially misrepresent the PN community? If it did, I am a pretty nice fellow, all it would have taken was a notice posted by PN or an email and I would have galdly removed the counter. Instead, I along with others have had to see <a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=1126740">this</a>. <p>

 

I only asked why this change had to be made on a wholesale basis, without notification or explination, and without any consideration for those like me who did not have massive custom pages that served neither to slow down the system or present it in a negative manner. IMHO this could have been handled much better. To use a terrible analogy, let us say that I rented an apartment that had a pet policy. The policy stated that one small dog or cat was permissable. A few people took liberties with the policy and kept several dogs, cats, lizards, birds, fish, etc. in the building. The management needs to control the problem so instead of notifying problem makers of the need to change and enforcing policy they unexpectedly and without prior "official" notice post a NO PETS ALLOWED sign at the front entrance. I am a little shocked when I come home carrying my cute little mut, Bigsby.

<p>

All I am saying, is how about a little consideration for the members. Official notice of changes to come should not be a problem. There could even be a special forum devoted to that subject. Oh, discussions of possible changes hidden in previous forums do not in any way constitute official notice.

[bens]

IMHO too many rules, too many changes . . . to me, the site's principal appeal has been its accessibility. Slowly, that is being altered and the site is becoming a much more regulated, more conformist and less appealing "ratings game."

[seven]

Guy - one can insert a page counter into the standard bio page; I've seen a few since the blitz on customization.

[stevemarcus]

<p>FYI, it's still possible to include a page counter in your standard PN bio. I have one myself. You just need to avoid using the "naughty" html tags that Brian mentioned here: <a

href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00ESXA">http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00ESXA</a></p>

[tholte]

Guy, no offense but you sure complain a lot.

[mottershead]

There were three hundred pages including tags that were on the "naughty" list. A script tag runs a script. It can do something trivial or it can do something that could be a serious problem. A font tag changes the fonts. It can make one word green, or it can make every word white against a white background so that the page is not readable. And so forth.

 

I can run code to determine whether a snippet of HTML contains a script or a font tag. I can't write code that tells me whether a script is harmless or not. And it was not possible for me to read the HTML code of three hundred biographies and figure out what all that code might be doing. So, subscriber's bios that contain risky tages are trusted but displayed separately (and before) the standard Community Member pages. Non-subscribers bios that contain risky tags are not displayable.

[mmmee]

I lost my naughty black background that I wanted to go with my animated .gif bio photo that needed a black background. Just as I finally figured out how to make all of the information visible, the whole thing was gone. So, am I crying about it? I don't think so. The place for learning to use our HTML is on our own home page, I think. Photo.net is about photography. I spent far too much time playing with those naughty HTML tags, on this site. Time that could have been better spent looking at photos, critiquing, or reading some of the excellent information that is available in all the forums. I have to agree that the site looks better with the same page for everyone. It centers my interest on the photos rather than the innovative biographies.

 

I am gonna write a letter to Santa Claus and ask him if we can have a choice of color (on the grey scale) for the slide shows. I saw some fire photos that would look absolutely hot on a black background slide show. (Just thought I would throw that suggestion in here, since I have stopped my naughty tags and am struggling to be nice.)

[jayme]

Jacques: watch in hand- it took 7 seconds on Ken, 6 on me & 5 on you, I have DSL if that makes a difference. Satelite must be kind of slow.

 

I'm noy complaining about the scrolling, I just think it might be more artistic in a presentation than on the front page.

[jhenry]

Ken, I was just direct, no need to feel offended, if so, I am sorry about that.<p>Jayme, it's not the first time i notice that, the upload time for pages on the net really depend... on time! generally nightime (Tokyo time) it's much slower, while it's far more quicker at noon. What I noticed also is, at a given hour and relatively to other pages, members' pages which have a substantial number of post are, and by very far, more longer to charge than other members' pages (including the one with scrolling): try AZ or Marc G page and compare with other people...

[jhenry]

PS: Jayme, 'Satellite' is the model name of the Toshiba portable pc. As said I dispose of a BB sccess, which is a kind of highway for internet...

[guyscrivner]

Ben: It is clear that you are not alone in your opinion. Because of this regulation and control the conformist attitude is so evident.

<p>

Steve: Thanks for the help on the counter. I may give that a try.<p>

Tim: For a guy that means no offense, you sure have a way with words.<p>

Brian: I do not diagree with your decission to make these changes. I just do not think that it is very considerate to surprise everyone with them. With all due respect, it seems it would take little effort to notify members in advance. None of us were doing anything behind your back. Good communications has always been important in any shared/creative endeavor.

<p>

Others: There has been much discussion about downlaod time. I am not very knowledgeable technically but I know that these times are dependent on many factors. I found <a href="http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:RWs7FbG70wcJ:www.canadaone.com/ezine/expert/expert_qa.html%3Fid%3D101+download+time+canadaone&hl=en">this website from CanadaOne</a> to be very informative. Perhaps you will too.

[mottershead]

Guy, what aspect requires notification in advance? If you are a subscriber, then your biography is as visible as before and is formatted the same as before. When people click on your name, they see your customized biography. The only thing that changed is that I put the standard part of the Community Member page on a separate page. That is the part that I control, but in asserting my control, I display the customized biography first. Why does it require a notification for me to put the standard part of the Community Member page -- i.e. the non-biography part -- behind an additional link?

 

If you aren't a subscriber, they your customized biography is no longer displayed at all, and you didn't get notified either. If you are still are active, the next time you visit your Community Member page you will notice.