PapaTango

Seems to me to be the words of someone who has never begun or operated a small business. This is exactly how many such sally forth--and it sure has provided me and others I know a comfortable retirement... 😎

Dang man, what are you thinking? The migration was a complete bollix, with an admin that popped in once a week. As far as I can tell, he only got about a quarter way through things and then stopped. And then the site was left to simmer for two months in which we had no tech help, no questions, no solicitations of thoughts. And then nothing. Now we seem to have what appears to be two tech people working hard for the PAST WEEK popping in every day and starting question topics. It looks to me like a whole lot has been done in response to comments. It further looks like a lot of things are fixed too. We have albums, a better interface, and everyone sees and has permissions for the same things. It looks like a whole lot of functionality has been given. If you know how to code websites, perhaps you might volunteer to straighten things out.... 🤡 I think that we just need to continue suggestions and stop griping.

The layout for this site is two columns--body and side column. This is a typical layout, and if you want to consider what "professional" developers think of that, have a look at one of their forums: https://www.theadminzone.com/ . Or the Nikonians forum: https://www.nikonians.org/forum . Or https://www.dpreview.com/forums/1034 and on and on. What I see the developer did here is leave the side column out on any of the threads themselves, giving a wider topic display with no visual distraction. That's better than a whole lot of the others... There is likely a plugin that lets users edit their own theme appearance. Several photo sites have this, and it is usually a perk of subscribing. We don't. I am happy that things are moving along at all! Admins can edit blocks. That's what Sandy's screen shots showed. Regular humans such as ourselves cannot. And gee, isn't it awful to be exposed to a random sampling of the Gallery work of others on a regular basis? No hiding in the tech boards. The horror. And that is what I thought this place was really about. 😎

For at least 15 years, this motto greeted every visitor--new or old: Now it's been replaced with a generic tagline that tells us we inspire each other. 🤡 I suppose so, and that's the honest truth and that's why we stick around. Since no one told me at any time the original spirit and 'mission statement' has changed--nor has new ownership made any declaration of other intent--I am sticking with what I have been doing for 20+ years. That has been enjoying good company, getting help and helping others, commenting on stuff when I should be doing something else, and posting images. I have albums, galleries, and forums. I will make the most out of that, and store my images on hard drives... 😇

Does anyone truly remember a time in the last 20 years when PN actually billed itself as a "storage" site? The best I can come up with is a limitation to the quota/size of the main image gallery/portfolio by subscription level. That was the presumption at one time for the PhotoNet Pro member group via our subscriptions. But nowhere did it tell me I could use PN as an Amazon S3 bucket...

Everything was simpler then. I had all of my teeth, most of my hair, and arthritis was unknown. Some tell me I looked better too!

Not for high-res originals, at least--nor EVERYTHING someone has... The last fully working version of PN that I remember was the one we had for many years prior to being bought by NameMedia. We had "Picks of the Week", Editors Picks, critique galleries, and a rating system that even generated academic controversy. Here is a dynamite read about the old PN: https://reagle.org/joseph/2013/photo/photo-net.html The thing is that all of that version of our home back then was custom programmed from scratch. As Sandy wrote, there is no going back. But the fantastic part about now is that we have Albums in addition to Galleries and the ephemeral forum board postings. I note that some (including myself) are curating collections. Folk are catching on to the fact that they suddenly have the ability to make them. Those and the Gallery lot have a rudimentary comment and review system. This may be as far as it ever goes, but at least it's something we have in hand. I have always understood that PN had two distinct sides; the visual and the textual. We have members that rarely move from one to another. And then those part of both. While the textual has remained intact over the various muddled migrations, our visual side has suffered. Perhaps we are seeing an effort to stimulate and rebalance that side?

The only thing that can be malicious in a forum post is malformed code posted or nasty links. For fun I tried putting some known bad HTML and JS into a post. No dice, so that's a good thing for us. Links, well anyone can post those. You may be remembering something from an earlier version of PN. That was Xenforo, and neither it nor Invision have any mechanism for reporting a post before you open it. This is true also for vBulletin, SMF, and WPForo. The mods do have a way to see suspicious things--that's what keeps Sandy preoccupied!!!

We don't seem to be in Kansas anymore... 🤩 The main category listings seem more organized now, and some things are in a better order and the titles are clearer. It looks a lot better and with the nested boards is a lot easier for me to navigate on my smartphone. The top boards are still open for general posting--and the latest post in any sub-board appears on that page. This is what happens when you click on Digital Darkroom whatever board: Sweet! Our board categories were always pretty generalized with a few specialty "name brand" boards. Trouble is that everything and everything got tossed in them. I agree that the current layout has some flaws. But what I am also seeing is that admin is responding pretty quickly to comments, suggestions, and problems. Let's continue to make suggestions and see if anything productive happens!

Click here in the thread window:

Sam, it seems that editing time is limited to 15 minutes. For a while it was unlimited. That's not really a good thing--as I saw people go back in days later and "massage" their posts. Three cheers to the admin crew for fixing this. I don't have any Apple stuff myself, but have you tried clearing your browser cookies/sessions, logged out, and then back in?

A humongous no here, Sanford! Some sites that host advertising and have paid memberships offer the ability to hide or limit advertising as part of the value proposition of subscription. None of our various iterations of the last few years have sponsored outside advertising--outside of what Creative Live or our new owners have put up for themselves. At one time the two levels--Member & Pro--were different. Right now, they are just artifacts of a previous forum platforms, and are not connected to any ability to subscribe, which seems to be turned off. As Matt Jensen once posted somewhere here, the Pro title just carried over from the migration. As best I can tell, both groups have exactly the same permissions now. We should be very glad that we have Sandy and our other moderators. Without them, this place would be completely filled with noxious rubbish and fairly useless.

It seems like we all have the same permissions now. Whaddya know--a holiday present?

Here is what is known--it should settle some of the debate. Most of this has already been related. PN was acquired as a part of Fiverr's interest and purchase in Creative Live--which was our owner of that time. Fiverr saw Creative Live as an adjunct to their freelance service offerings. Only one person at Fiverr was interested in PN, Matt Jensen. Leadership had no idea of what to do with the website. He advocated for the project, which required changing forum platforms. Fiverr uses Invision Community (this brand of forum software) and was migrated to it. Fiverr purchased a yearlong license from them and their hosting service in late August of last year. It is a reasonable cost, so there is no fear that finance will shut down our photographic home! Several of us were working with Matt on changes. Then he was pulled off the project and we have received no further communications since October 23, 2022. The forum core is stable--the issues deal with things that were never set up as part of completing the forum setup. A 'campaign' has been underway since late November to contact anyone with influence or control. This is a directed effort, in that the message is very consistent across contacts--please provide us an explanation, an administrator, or let us self-administrate. I have yet to reach anyone who knows anything--and it always gets kicked "upstairs." This work will continue--so those who want to "rattle the chain" I invite to PM me here on the board to maintain message consistency. Nothing worse than many voices with many different ideas... That's it right now. Let's enjoy each other's comradery and post some photos!

Dave's not here man...

Ain't it great that we all have the same permissions, right? 🥸

Dustin is right--subscriptions and whatever benefits come from such an action are not set up. That does not mean that anyone who had a recurring subscription does not automatically get charged from the old setup. Whoinhell gets that money given our current status and outlook is unknown. There is a Broadway musical number running through my head, something like "Some enchanted evening..." 🎅 I am very relieved. From the title, I first thought you were writing to tell us you were dead.

Yeah, well, don't think that this thought has not crossed the minds of many... What is the most aggravating is KNOWING exactly what has to be done, where the particular settings are and what is optimal--understanding it's about 1-2 hours of work to remedy 80% of our complaints--and then not being able to touch the levers. I was sending such to Matt before he disappeared and he was quick to act on them. Then about a quarter way through, POOF. 👻💀👻 While your idea excites me, I am too damned old to clamber up on a dumpster and shinny through some little window--thence falling to the floor. Perhaps I would be better served waiting for some other option... 😎

Arthur, PN does not have an active administrator at this time. Matt Jensen has been pulled off the project--and no one in authority at Fiverr or Creative Live responds to our messages. It's limbo with many things not set right for permissions--other things misconfigured. And no interest on the part of our new owners to reach out to us and explain why Photo Net has been abandoned--or when it might be set right again...

More than that, John! I remember the first setup that Phil launched--there was no posting of photos. Then came another version or so under his control. Then other rearrangements. This makes the THIRD amateur night out attempt to update PN since 2016. Bah... Meanwhile @victor2 enjoy the people here, the resources we have, and your photography!