TheDarkTower.org Gallery

[Matt]

You may have noticed a new link in the tool bar above that says "Gallery".

This is a member photo gallery for the board that we picked up. It is stored fully in house and all uploaded pictures reside on this server.

I contacted our hosting service (host rocket) and they assured me it would take a thousand people years to exceed the memory for this site.

(we are using about 5% for everything we have now)

and, we can always buy more, its cheap.

also--our site package was purchased with unlimited bandwidth

Simply click on the link and follow along, its pretty straight forward.

Pros to the Gallery:

• Photos are fun and bring folks closer together
• This will allow things like a Google Earth member map and Vbay, an internet auction system for the board
• Your photos are secure and easily accessible, you can also easily email a link to friends. That creates traffic
• You can establish private albums--with a password
• We can "watermark" owned photos such as fanart and some SK collector stuff
• We can establish web pages based on the album
• ability to post and rate photos or albums
• Slideshows
• it really goes on and on...

Bugs I have noticed

• No return to forum page at the moment from there, you guys will have to be creative
• Category icons to designate what they are coming soon

Obviously still under serious development but I would love for you guys to check it out, upload some photos if you like.

Please post in this thread with questions

[sarajean]

ummm...are you trying to tell me something?

[Matt]

I'm not quite done with it SJ

I had floor today, the regular "about us" page with you on it is still the site standard.

[sarah]

Matt, this is so cool and a super idea!

[Matt]

Thanks Sarah

Great pic out there by the way, I gave it a very high rating.

[Matt]

I just wanted to post a list of user features for this new program. I am hoping to make the job of storing and showing our images easier.

Users can upload photos to a category or to their own gallery
Users can create their own subcategories/subgalleries within their gallery
Users can upload multiple photos within a zip file
Users can upload more than one file at a time (can be disabled by admin)
Post comments about photos
Users can create personal albums
Search by keyword
Rate photos on a scale from 1 to 5
Edit or delete user's own comments
Edit the description of user's uploaded photos, or delete their photos
Move their photos from one category to another
Image manipulation: When using ImageMagick, users can rotate CCW, rotate CW, Flip and Flop an image after it has been uploaded (by editing a photo).
Users can choose to be notified of new posts to their photos or photos to which they want to subscribe (email notification).
Send a photo as an e-Card (greetings card / post card, etc)
Choose how many thumbnail images to display per page
Sort thumbnail display pages by alphabetical, most popular, most active, by date, and by number of views
Uses time offset and 'posts per page' user preferences from vBulletin user DB (when in use)
Member Galleries section displays disk space used by each user so they can keep track of their disk usage
Private Personal Albums - Private Albums are assigned a unique URL which the person can share with friends and family for restricted access.
New Comments/Photos indicator - for users who are logged in, the arrow for comments and posts will glow when new items have been posted since last visit to the category.
View Recent Uploads - A link to show the posts in the past 1, 7 and 14 days.
View All Uploads - can be viewed and then sorted (for example to see the most popular uploads in all groups)
My Favorites - Users will have the ability to "tag" images for their own "My Favorites" feature. Viewing My Favorites shows the tagged images in a gallery format.
There is also 14 different languages that can be used in there I believe

[Matt]

I have added a special category called "funky images" to the gallery. Feel free to upload stuff there if you like.

[sarajean]

i know darkthoughts was having a difficult time posting anything other than a link to her photo, even using img tags. is there any way to get the bbcode to post the picture itself, or is it by link only?

[Matt]

You should just be able to right click on the photo in the gallery, then...

for IE choose "properties" and copy the link location

for Firefox choose "copy image location"

click in a thread to post and choose the Insert Image at the top

paste the link in there :dancing:



She's such a cutie darkthoughts

[Darkthoughts]

And a poser
Thanks for that Matt and SJ!!

[Frunobulax]

You should just be able to right click on the photo in the gallery, then...

for IE choose "properties" and copy the link location

for Firefox choose "copy image location"
. . .

Translation:

for the most evil browser known to man, choose "properties" then do more things then you should have to because it's a Micro$oft thing.

for nice open-source free browsers, choose "copy image location."

The Firefox thing also goes for Camino (which is so much better than Safari).

[Darkthoughts]

^ I do find IE confusing sometimes, but then again I'm so computer illiterate that I wouldn't know how to even go about switching browsers. Better the devil you know in my case!

[Matt]

It is kind of crappy to deal with but once you get the method it goes pretty well.

Great fan art pic btw.

[Darkthoughts]

Thank you! My Dad has a scanner, so next time I'm at my folks I'll upload some more stuff.

[Matt]

If you haven't checked the gallery recently, be sure to have a look.

We have many collections all in one place, all the comics--member galleries and much more including a few recipes!

[Daghain]

Yeah, I have to stay out of that recipes section. Jerome's pics are making me hungry.

[Matt]

I have added a new sub category to the Gallery called

The People of TheDarkTower.com--second one down on this page

I would love it if people (who wanted to) would upload a photo of themselves there. Since guests can't see our personal photo albums, having a pic of each of the members in this spot will put them into the random images that appear throughout the site.

Guests can see what a warm community we are. If you are not familiar with the gallery, here is how it is done

--Click on the Gallery--there is a link at the top of every page.
--Click "upload photos" on the upper right
--Choose "People of TheDarkTower.com" from the drop down in the first option.
--The name can be your own
--The description can be anything you want to put about you. I would love it if people used this to relate some sort of SK fandom passion
--Keywords are your name again (so it will show up on a search for you)

Click "upload" photo. Its as easy as that.

If you already have a photo uploaded and would like me to move it. Post here.

All admin are already in the random rotation from "about us" so they do not need to do this.

[Randall Flagg]

Bump!

[razz]

why? ._.
XD

[5winks]

pos t number one

[Míchéal]

#5

hmmmmm?

[overhoser]

#5

hmmmmm?

My guess is 5winks was trying to get her/his 5 posts in to unlock all user privileges on the site. That probably wasn't the best way to go about it and is most likely against the spirit of the rule.

Whatever my feelings on that, I'm glad this thread got bumped because I knew nothing of the gallery and now I will check it out.

[Daghain]

Methinks 5winks is bucking for a banning. We shall see.

ETA: 5winks, I'd like to take the high road here and think you just really, *really* want to join into the site.

Please don't prove me wrong - Roland will get you if one of us don't. Just sayin'.

[Míchéal]

- Roland will get you if one of us don't. Just sayin'.

I like it.