Better gallery questions

[tblanston]

...
But Really they're all pretty ugly (yes even the RFF gallery), and in the end the best option for presenting images online is a personal web site.

Yes, clearly it is impossible to have everyone agree in that regard. Visually, I find the RFF gallery quite pleasant, personally. i like to see the image centered in the page, at maximum resolution. Within reason. There's no cause to share something any larger than 1000 pixels these days.

The whole left-aligned thing is so confusing, but it's a product of their ****ty web design. The images all come up on the left side. If I wanted to present my images like flickr does I'd just throw the in an empty directory on my webserver. Seriously, what's the point. It would even be a plain white page, like flickr, except without the unecessary clutter at the top and bottom.

Question: Any people familiar with the deviantart system? I think presentation wise, it's pretty good over there. Where DA fails is in organization. You visit someones gallery and you basically get it ordered by chronology and that's it. No sub-galleries or anything. There is a possibilty to filter by genre/caterogy but it's not very intuitive. However, they've coded a system that has no equal when it comes to community interaction, with a very simple subscription/notification system. The message centre is an ace job.

Then again, I'd never suggest relocating RFF to DA either. Keeping RFF gallery in house is ideal. There are some ways it could be improved though. I'll put some thought into it.

 

[AShearer]

Horses for courses. One of the best things about the RFF gallery is that it's NOT Flickr or Pbase.
There are so many high quality images posted here on a daily basis, I can't keep up as it is. If it became "the gallery of choice" we'd be overloaded with heaps of images and the overall quality would be diluted.
I like it the way it is. Improvements would be a notification of when comments were posted (I thought this was implemented but I haven't seen it) and maybe a tagging system similar to Flickr.
Any other improvement would be on the part of the members. For example I no longer post in Rate My Photo because no one ever does!

I could not agree more with this post. Bigger would not be better in my opinion.

I like the small community and I'm willing to put up with a few nuts to have that.

 

[jano]

flickr may be nice for uploading, but the interface makes no sense when browsing. It's horrible!

 

[peter_n]

Agreed. I don't use flickr so I can't comment on the uploading/organizing experience, but the site has a horrible UI. The only time I've been able to view for more than a minute or two is for Tommy Oshima's Noctilux stuff.

Please don't move the RFF gallery to flickr!! 😱 😱

Getting an email when someone comments on one of your RFF pics would be really nice.

 

[pesphoto]

Agreed. I don't use flickr so I can't comment on the uploading/organizing experience, but the site has a horrible UI.
Please don't move the RFF gallery to flickr!! 😱 😱

Getting an email when someone comments on one of your RFF pics would be really nice.

Agreed. I like some of the photos I see on Flickr, but the site itself us a pain in the butt.

 

[popstar]

OK - I have a question. In the gallery, there used to be a place underneath the photo and member's name for a statement explaining more about the photo. I've used it many times before. The statement was between the user's name and the 'additional information' section.

Today, I don't see those statements. Am I alone or do others not see these statements if they entered them for their photos as well? If I disabled a viewing option and the system is blocking these statements for me, where do I re-enable them?

I might be nuts on this, but I'm sure they have been there, and I'm sure I don't see them right now! :bang: Thanks for any help.

 

[RayPA]

flickr may be nice for uploading, but the interface makes no sense when browsing. It's horrible!

😱 😱

Jano. You must not be a member!

Browsing is Flickr's strongest point. It's the reason why it's so popular. With one click you can see all the recent uploads of all your contacts. And then browse your contact's contacts, and their contacts, etc. With one click you can see which of your groups has new postings. You can browse the galleries of group members. You can browse the groups of members. You can browse any/every group that a photo has been submittted to. You can submit a photo to any group you belong to with one click. You can browse via tags. Etc. Etc.

Check out the Nikkor group to see the power and potential of groups and tags. Practically every Nikkor lens is listed and with one click you can see hundreds of images made with any of the listed lenses, organized and easily browsable. If I want to see images made by a particular lens here, I have to lobby for it in the forum, wait for a response and for someone to pass along a link to their gallery.

Flickr horrible browsing? Sorry, Jano, that's just crazy talk. 🙂Become a member. It's free. I'll add you as a contact and I invite you to use my contact list to add more members. It's got lots of RFF members. You'll never look back.

🙂

 

[wintoid]

IIRC PHPNuke (software which does the whole forum news stuff) integrates with PHPBB (almost as good as the vBulletin forum software we use here) and with Gallery2 (better than the gallery software here I think). It's years since I looked at it though, but perhaps it will provide a useful lead.

Additionally, the guy who runs http://www.photography-on-the.net/forum has written some gallery software which is freely available and meant to be quite good I think.

 

[c.poulton]

Agreed. I don't use flickr so I can't comment on the uploading/organizing experience, but the site has a horrible UI. The only time I've been able to view for more than a minute or two is for Tommy Oshima's Noctilux stuff.

Please don't move the RFF gallery to flickr!! 😱 😱

Getting an email when someone comments on one of your RFF pics would be really nice.

This says it all for me...

Also, being able to up the number of thumbs shown on a page to something above 24 would be nice.🙂

 

[Pherdinand]

A notification on other members' comments on my photos and a notification on other members' reactions on my comments on other members' photos is all I miss.
😀

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

A notification on other members' comments on my photos and a notification on other members' reactions on my comments on other members' photos is all I miss.
😀

Jorge put that back on about two or three weeks ago.

When you upload your photo there's a yes/no box for email updates lower right. No email updates is the default. It should be yes email updates. (Jorge, can you fix that?)

After upload you can enable email updates for any photo, yours or anybody elses, under the photo in the long line of actions on the right end: 'Enable Email Updates'

 

[Pherdinand]

Uh, that would mean I have not posted anything to RFF lately. Thanks for the reminder, Jon🙂

 

[RayPA]

...

"Date" - This field is useless for obvious reasons.
"Dimensions" - I doubt many people care about the dimension of the image while browsing thru thumbnails.
"Comments" - I don't find this information useful when browsing thru thumbnails, but some might...

...

I didn't catch this the first time around, but I think the date feature needs to come back. If you participate in the Picks of the Week and you use your Favorites to save images, the Date is very important.

Bring back the Date!

.

 

[rogue_designer]

FWIW - I Hate flikr.

Or more accurately, it is blocked by the corporate firewall (as is pbase) - so I can't tell what's good or bad about it in contrast.

For that reason alone, I stick to RFF, DevArt and PNET as my primary galleries (aside from my own website of course).

PNET is probably my favorite - only because I can view several dozen thumbnails, in different sub-galleries all on one page.

RFF is my next favorite - and that is due mostly to the crowd of people here.

DevArt is fun for goofing around and trying out some different types of work to see what response I get.

My top suggestions:
1. More thumbnails (with less information under each in that view).
2. Ability to see new posts and images by people in my buddy list/subscription list on one page.
3. New image posts (not "random" ones) on the main page.

Cheers Jorge - and thanks for a great site.

 

[jan normandale]

There's already an RFF member flickr group at:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/66333716@N00/

But how would the RFF ads be seen if everyone browses thru Flickr?

Ywenz, aren't you the admin on that flickr group?

 

[jan normandale]

Jorge, thanks for asking..

What I would like is a gallery that when it opens shows what activity occurred on my shots (you have a notification by email now and that is an improvement) I would also like to be able to see who that I follow has uploaded shots also.

I don’t think that I want my email box filled with notices about someone has made a comment. My email load is large enough without adding to it. So a front opening page showing my shots and recent activity on those shots would be what is useful

Next is my contact activity , what have they been uploading so I can see recent activity without specifically going to their site to see if they have been active.

The ability to go down into those focus areas to sub levels would be key.

However I think that RayPA and several others have put it accurately. The flickr model is pretty intuitive and quick to grasp and navigate. Uploads are fast too.

I do like RFF however I have been uploading less for the reasons given here. It has been difficult to find comments on my work or see what other comments have arisen on shots I have commented on in my contact base. The recent email notification was welcomed by me but long due.

The spirit of RFF has always been collegial and that is its single greatest strength. It has been confirmed endlessly. The lack of ‘attitude’ at RFF is it’s draw. There’s more but this is more than enough to start on.

Good luck

 

[iñaki]

... and the views number too! 🙂
thanks.
nico

I like the view number too, but I find "rate" useless.

 

[nico]

I like the view number too, but I find "rate" useless.

I agree with you, if you wanted to really write "rate" because i do not rate other members' job (mainly because i don't feel so good and expert enough to do such a thing) but if "date" is what you wanted to write i think it's useful to organize folders and for the reasons Ray wrote above.
The views counter is important to understand what's the reaction to a photo so I'd like to have it back.
ciao
nico

 

[BJ Bignell]

My wants:

1. Larger, clearer page navigation text at the bottom. A copy of these links at the top wouldn't hurt, either.
2. "Film strip" of user's photos below the photo I'm viewing, otherwise I have to scroll down to see every single picture.
3. The ability to view pages of random photos instead of last-uploaded.
4. The ability to view photos based on two parameters, similar to the p.net gallery. For example: number of folder views (my favourite statistic) for photos uploaded in the last 30 days, or most comments (second-favourite statistic) for some other time period.
5. One more thing: user-defined tagging or keywords that can be searched. Assuming people actually use them, and use them well, it makes it easy to find pictures of a certain subject, such as architecture or portraits. Useful for a little inspiration before heading out for the day.

Cheers,
BJ

 

[steamer]

a vote to bring back the view number, since few comment at least you can tell if anyone had a look.