PBase Updates

[nooutlet]

I don't know exactly how this is going to go, but here goes.

For the last month or so, I have been working on making the page that allows someone to set up printing configurations and purchase prints. We've got something working very well now and it's nifty as all get out. Currently, when I'm not busy on the forums like I have been today, I'm working on putting some bells and whistles on the page where you configure a particular image to be printed.
ckirby does not support telling you what we're working on.
nkirby has been updating the look of all the pages to make them consistent(and updated, actually) with the main page.

The print page is something that we want to put out there ASAP. We are working with the actual printing company to get this service to you guys. It's hard to promise things, but I'd like to say I'm sure this will be live in some form before the end of the year.
The new look for PBase is a larger project that won't happen until every page is complete. This will take awhile, so you won't see that very soon, but that's what is being worked on.

[andrys]

Thanks for giving us some news about movement and for answering
questions on the forums too, nooutlet. Much appreciated.

I want to request that the new changes not break our changes to our
home pages since many of us have put a lot of work into the CSS revisions
that give them their current look. It will be horrendous if the default CSS
changes and affects our main pages especially.

If it's just profile pages, which most of us have not touched, that's different.
But let people know who have worked on their profile pages.

Printing: this will be of little interest if it's ONLY expensive framed shots,
so I hope you folks are working on the type of printing offered by other
sites for smaller prints and that you give us the option of whether or not
we want visitors to be able to order inexpensive prints form our galleries.

If there's something being done that quickly so we can order larger
prints ourselves, requested by customers for sale by us, that'd be nice
but I don't expect that by year end.

[flemmingbo]

Thanks for giving us some news about movement and for answering
questions on the forums too, nooutlet. Much appreciated.

I want to request that the new changes not break our changes to our
home pages since many of us have put a lot of work into the CSS revisions
that give them their current look. It will be horrendous if the default CSS
changes and affects our main pages especially.
....

I'm with Andrys on this, very nice to have some updates on what is being worked on.

I also agree with the css bit, I have spent weeks fine tuning my css (and I LOVE that Pbase offers us so much control!) so please please don't break any of the existing css when you change the Pbase look.

Does the printing company have offices around the world?

regards, Flemming

[nooutlet]

A lot of work will be going into making sure things work. It might not all be perfect at first(because what ever is?), but we're going to try our best to make it happen with as little effort as possible on the part of the members.

At first, printing will be available to members only for their own photos. I'm talking about unframed prints and we're working with the printer to make them affordable.

We will only offer this in the continental US at first, because shipping from the printer overseas will be prohibitively expensive.

We're looking into other printers abroad.

[andrys]

A lot of work will be going into making sure things work. It might not all be perfect at first(because what ever is?), but we're going to try our best to make it happen with as little effort as possible on the part of the members.

Even that much said is helpful, and your willingness to give feedback is a
real plus for pbase.

At first, printing will be available to members only for their own photos. I'm talking about unframed prints and we're working with the printer to make them affordable.

EXCELLENT!

Thanks again for stepping in to talk, which as you know, won't be easy
but in the long run will help pbase.com retain its membership and help
its rep for customer attention.

[tom1468]

I assume this is the long rumored buy and sell feature ? I understand you can not give to much away yet but I assume this is what we are refering to in this thread ?

[nooutlet]

I'm not sure if we can't give too much away. The only reason I can think of is so that it will be a surprise, which is sometimes nice.
Currently, the non-framed printing of images will be available only to the person that owns the gallery where that image can be found. In that way, I guess it is only a buying feature as of now. The plan is to make a selling feature out of this eventually, but there are A LOT of issues that come into play with that. A couple of issues that come up with that: Does the seller want only particular size prints to be available to purchase for a certain image? and Does the seller want only certain PBase members to have access to a particular group of print configurations?. There is also the coding of all the pages for setting a markup, setting configurations available for printing by the public/usergroup/password-enterers, etc.
It'll be a big project.

[dang]

Jon,
Thanks for the update, information is always appreciated.

[sdwinsor]

We will only offer this in the continental US at first.

How about at least making it available to continental North America. Ie. Mexico & Canada

[djwixx]

Why all the effort on printing?

There's no real mechansim for securing full size images from others to download, and I can't imagine many people wanting to waste their paid for space uploading full size images. I use shutterfly, mpix and others and the space does not cost me anything if I'm uploading to order prints. Unless you are using a note worthy printer I think you're putting all your effort in areas that are already suffiiciently covered elsewhere on the web at a fraction of the price that you're going to be able to negotiate.

I think the original point of Pbase and what people still use it for is being lost to services that people aren't going to use.

[andrys]

I'm not sure if we can't give too much away. The only reason I can think of is so that it will be a surprise, which is sometimes nice.
Currently, the non-framed printing of images will be available only to the person that owns the gallery where that image can be found. In that way, I guess it is only a buying feature as of now...

nooutlet,
I just saw, under Edit image, that we can order prints (or it would appear we can).

But the text for that says:

"Coming soon we will activate the print-only part of the system. We realize many of you would like to be able to order just the prints in standard sizes.
We have most of the software written, and if all goes well with the business side of things, we hope to have this online in the next few weeks.

This is Phase I, during which only you will be able to order framed prints of your own photos"...

I guess that last paragraph should say "during which only you will be
able to order framed or unframed prints of your own photos" ?

[nooutlet]

Why not Mexico and Canada?

It is not up to me at all where it can be sent. We are aiming for global service in the future, but as far as I know now the service will begin with 48 states. That's part of the business side and I don't deal with the printers myself.

Why printing?

Enough people have expressed interest in buying giclée prints directly from their galleries as well as having others buy prints of their images directly through PBase. It's all leading to the second part.

You can't just send someone a full size image and who would want to upload one and waste the space? Why wouldn't users just use some other site?

If you set a small mark-up on a popular image, you will make money from having it wasting your server space.
I suppose people could use some other site if that is cheaper, but it would be more convenient if it were all in one place. Not to mention, it will be easier for others to buy your prints from you.

Should this say "during which only you will be able to order framed or unframed prints of your own photos" ?

Ahh, no. That is from the Print Frame page and that was written when Chris wrote the pages for printing images with a frame. That will have to be edited, but that is not a new page.

[djwixx]

Why not Mexico and Canada?

It is not up to me at all where it can be sent. We are aiming for global service in the future, but as far as I know now the service will begin with 48 states. That's part of the business side and I don't deal with the printers myself.

Why printing?

Enough people have expressed interest in buying giclée prints directly from their galleries as well as having others buy prints of their images directly through PBase. It's all leading to the second part.

You can't just send someone a full size image and who would want to upload one and waste the space? Why wouldn't users just use some other site?

If you set a small mark-up on a popular image, you will make money from having it wasting your server space.
I suppose people could use some other site if that is cheaper, but it would be more convenient if it were all in one place. Not to mention, it will be easier for others to buy your prints from you.

Should this say "during which only you will be able to order framed or unframed prints of your own photos" ?

Ahh, no. That is from the Print Frame page and that was written when Chris wrote the pages for printing images with a frame. That will have to be edited, but that is not a new page.

I'll stand corrected, but more importantly I'm pleased about the prompt responses. It's been an issue on Pbase for a long time, and most people gave up expecting anything, so it's great to see. Personally it was never a concern to me but I've seen complaints about it numerous times. I think the 'customer support' is very important to keep 'floaters' on board, but I hasten to add that most people who know the Pbase mechanism accept the foibles!

[nooutlet]

For those of you that can't tell how old something is by the style, this forum is rather old.
I'm creating a new forum, but there are a lot of things to modify before it gets released to you guys. At the very earliest, it will be released with the huge update that nkirby is working on that will make all the pages consistent stylistically with the main PBase page.
Some timing worked out in our favor because phpBB 3 was released today!(we're using phpBB 2 here...) I've installed phpBB 3 and I'll be tweaking it for awhile so I can make it work a lot like this forum, but with all the crazy new functionality that comes with phpBB3. If you'd like to know what crazy new functionality that includes, go here.
How about I get some suggestions from you guys about what you'd like to see. I understand that you want non-paying users to only be able to post in Q & A and I'm thinking about that. But what else? (use the link above as a source for suggestions as well)

In order to keep this thread a little tidy, please make your forum feature requests here

[tim32225]

How about I get some suggestions from you guys about what you'd like to see.

In order to keep this thread a little tidy, please make your forum feature requests here

This is not related to the forum request, but I wonder if you could please give us an update on the status of fixing the exif bug related to flash. Many here requested that this be fixed about 6 months ago, and it's stlll broken. The exif data under flash photos says Flash Used: NO, even though flash was fired in the photo.

I wouldn't have thought this would be very complicated to fix.

Thanks...

Tim