MN Photo Forum format...input please

[Andy Cosgrove]

Prior to using Google, I was hosting this group on a phpBB board at
cameratalk.org. I had a little trouble getting locals to find it. Now
that we've got a good handful of people on this board, I'd like a
little input from you.

What does everyone think about Google Groups? Matthew sent me an email
a few days back saying he hated it and wanted to create a phpBB board
for this. I thought that we're a small and simple enough group that GG
would be the easiest solution for now.

I still have the cameratalk.org site and am willing to start the phpBB
forum back up if others think it would be a better experience for
everyone.

So, please tell me what you think. If you think that this group has a
future, it might be a good idea to get it on more robust software.

Does anyone know a better solution than phpBB? Of course I want
something free. I've know vBulletin is very nice, but it's also $160 to
buy. I can't cough that up.

Thanks for your input.

Andy

[Andy Cosgrove]

Just another note...I'd love to integrate a user photo gallery with the
forum that we can all upload photos to. I can integrate Coppermine with
phpBB.

[joroho]

Andy,
I can live with the Google group, but it is not very user-friendly.
I'd support a move to a better board.
.joroho.

[Steve]

Either way is fine with me.....I am not familiar with phpBB....but am
just happy to make contact with others anywhere. If you decide to
switch, I will come along. It is your baby....

[Matthew Kieren]

I decided to grab mnphotography.net before it was taken by someone else
(like a domain name grabber who re-sales it later). mnphotography.com
is redirected to a non-photography ISP for some odd reason.

There would be many many advantages to going with phpBB or something
like it. We could have detailed profiles, edit an already existing
post, "sticky posts" (which would be great for organizing field trips),
better layout, better look, and it will be easier to insert a picture
into a post.

I've been researching free alternatives to phpBB, but it still seems to
be the best free one out there today. However, there are some
super-modded versions that include a ton of extra features without the
hassle of adding them (which I can do, but it's a painful
time-consuming process for the larger mods). I've used phpBB a number
of times in the past, including some businesses I did web design for,
so I am quite familiar with it.

Coppermine is a really great photo gallery script. I also used it
before switching to PBase. I decided to go with PBase simply because
of the exposure you can get by people searching for images with the
PBase search engine. One custom feature that I added to my own
Coppermine photo gallery when it was up is something I called
"jumpnails." You would see the usual thumbnail images in each gallery,
but if you moved the mouse pointer over one of them it would slightly
enlarge it (by stretching the image, which would cause pixelization for
a brief moment) and then download a new high-quality resized image with
the new dimensions. This was a great feature for modem users, but it
was also nifty for broadband users too.

I'm not sure why we would need a photo gallery though. Everyone
basically already has their own photo gallery (i.e. PBase), and it will
be easy to upload pictures to posts. Personally I think pictures in
posts would be sufficient and won't gobble up web-host disk space.

Andy, I hope you're not offended by me sort of grabbing the web aspect
and going full throttle with the idea. I do a lot of web design
(examples at my www.stellararts.com/portfolio.html website) so I see it
as a fun challenge ya know. :) I've been wanting to do something like
this for a long time, and this looks like a great opportunity to put
that stored-up enthusiasm to good use.

[Andy Cosgrove]

I really don't appreciate your attempt to steal *my* "fun challenge"
out from under me. I know your intentions don't mean harm, but they're
certainly very inconsiderate. If it's something you've been wanting to
do for a long time, then I think you should start your own instead of
trying to finish someone else's. There's more work involved to creating
a forum than designing the site...work that I've done myself.

Please understand where I'm coming from here.

[Matthew Kieren]

Andy,

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to step on your toes. *sigh* I'll let you
take it over from here. Please understand I had the best of intentions
for everyone. I figured once the site was up and running that we could
maintain it together with perhaps additional help as needed. I didn't
realize you are a web programmer yourself, I don't remember you ever
mentioning it. I've been working with computers for over 17 years, and
programming for nearly just as long (started with GWBASIC in the
beginning, then moved on to better things like ASM, Pascal, C/C++,
CGI/Perl, and lately I've been loving PHP).

I was just trying to help, sorry...

[Andy Cosgrove]

Hey, no problem. Like I said, I know your intentions weren't malicious.
I can't say that I'm a professional web programmer (I work with
Oracle), but I think I'd rather be. That's why I dabble in this stuff.

But in the end, it's a good MN photography board that we want and I
think we'll have that. I'm not nearly as good at the design portion of
it, so you could probably lend your expertise there to help create a
good look?

Thanks for understanding.

[Andy Cosgrove]

As for the gallery, what I was envisioning was something where we could
all post photos to a category, or theme, and then be able to comment on
them. Not necessarily something to replace people's Pbase gallery or
website.

It'll be a work in progress. Stay tuned.

[Minnesota Wild]

I like the gallery with comments idea -- it goes towards the spirit of
critique on each other's work!

[Justin Holmes]

I have no problems with google groups, but I do think the php boards
are more friendly, particularly with regards to posting pictures. I
post on another one that is pretty much user supported. Donations are
voluntary, but I think most of us paypal in 5-10 bucks a year to keep
things going.

One word of caution, which you may be aware of, is that the php BB
doesn't seem to run itself. we have a guy who is very committed to
working on it, but he has put alot of sweat equity into the site.
Bottom line, I like the php better, but I'm not sure if it is worth the
cost and effort when we have a decent thing going here.

[Michael Mingo]

We used a php bb for our condo homeowners as a discussion forum - we
hosted it through www.doreo.com and it was $10 a month i believe - it
worked great and Doreo was very responsive to our needs for hosting
questions, which weren't all that frequent - however we discontinued
due to lack of support form the homeonwers - but I did like the layout
of the bulliten board format with php and you could also load different
'skins' onto the site.

[Guy Schmickle]

The Google group, while a bit cumbersome, does do the job. That said, I
certainly wouldn't complain about moving to a phpBB style site as it is
much more intuitive for browsing and posting (at least to me). I also
like the idea of having a little critique forum. If you're willing to
do the work, I'd say go for it!

[Steve]

Wherever we end up, I really like the idea of having galleries we can
post to and comment on. I love seeing other people's work and their
comments on the images, as well as getting good suggestions on my own
photos.....I am no web designer....I will just follow.

[Justin Holmes]

I'd love some comments on mine...

www.pbase.com/poliscijustin

[Steve]

Very nice galleries, Justin. The panos of the falls are reallly good.
The only suggestion I can make is in your Fall gallery the shots are
very well exposed, and sharp, but sometimes lack an obvious subject. I
think I notice this because a lot of mine look the same....nice photos,
but no subject to really capture your attention. I did think the oof
layered shot was cool. Take my suggestion for what its worth....not
much LOL.

[Andy Cosgrove]

OK. Everyone can head on over to cameratalk.org. It's not pretty at
this point, but I'll keep playing with that.

At least we can get our discussions started. I'm still working on the
gallery, but I plan to get something working.

Thanks all for your input!

[Steve]

Can you post a link to our group's home at cameratalk?

[Andy Cosgrove]

I can, but I'd like to replace this group, so we should start new
threads there instead of here.

[Justin Holmes]

Thanks. I feel kind of the same way about the falls shots. The camera
did its job, I need some work... Thanks for looking